Sometimes a Smoke Is Just a Smoke

Students have long suspected that English teachers sit around just making crap up about the symbolism and theme and literary devices in pieces of literature.  That they just pull stuff out of thin air.  I'm here to say, it is true.  In my class today, we were doing an activity with a piece of artwork, and it involved analyzing the elements of the painting and the theme.  Here is the painting and some of the observations that were made:

• The man does not want his son to go off to college.  You can tell because the unlit cigarette in his mouth is symbolic.  If he wanted his son to go, he'd have it lit and be puffing away.  (Wait, wha??)
• The color (or pattern?) of the son's tie and socks shows that he is ambiguous about leaving home. (scratching head??)
• They are sitting on the running board of a truck.  This is symbolic because a running board is something to "assist" you in getting into the truck and moving forward, and college will "assist" the boy in moving forward.
• The color (red) of the flag and lantern is symbolic of the father wanting to "stop" the son from leaving, and of love and power.  The lantern symbolizes knowledge (light).  
• The title of the piece is "Breaking Home Ties" and that's an allusion to the railroad ties.

This piece of artwork has plenty of things to analyze without having to just make this kind of crap up!  You can look at body language, facial expressions, the physical proximity of the dad and son, their hands, how they are each looking in different directions with one weary and one hopeful, the hats, the difference in their clothes.  All of these things are legit ways to analyze what the artist was trying to say. You don't need to stretch that far.  Pretty sure that the flag is red because.... the flags they used to flag down a train back in the day were red!  It's not like the flags used to be purple but the artist changed it to red to make a statement.  Der.  Crazypants English teachers.  Actually, mostly just one or two crazypants.  And me in the back trying to not make WTF faces.  

Summer

I love, love this hot weather.  Winters in Utah seem to last soooo long, so I try to enjoy the heat while it lasts,  no matter how sweaty it is.  I don't care.  We have pools, air conditioning, lakes, streams... It's not hard to find a place to cool off.

In the last few weeks we've spent a lot of time in the water.  We've been to grandma's pool twice, to Seven Peaks waterpark, to Layton Surf and Swim, and up to the river.   Also, Sean bought the kids a small pool for the backyard, and they've played in that quite a bit.

Last Saturday we headed up to Perception Park, one of our favorite campgrounds, to the day use area.  We had a picnic and played in the water.  I had enough tubing taking the kids to Seven Peaks water park the week before, so I just stuck a lawn chair in the water and sat there.  It felt great.

Courtney's 21st birthday was today.  Mindi, Cami, Connie, and Marilyn threw her a wedding shower.  It was probably the most fun birthday she's ever had!  So many really nice people came and brought her so many lovely gifts.  She was so grateful.  Courtney, Brittney, Lexi, and I took her out to dinner tonight.  Sean, Curtis, and Josh went fishing, and they weren't back yet, so we had Girls Only Dinner.  It was really fun to get to spend the day hanging out and having fun.

Tomorrow we are going to Grandma Saundra's house for some more family history fun.  Scott, Katie, and I all kinda got bit by the family history bug in different ways but at the same time.  It's been fun.

Next week I have a class I have to take for school.  I was excited about it a few months ago, but now I feel meh.  Partly because I don't have a babysitter.  Hmmmm.... Not sure how this will play out.

I lost one of my students last week in a terrible car accident.  So sad.  She was so sweet and just so beautiful.   Life is way too unpredictable.

This is a crazy summer.  There is something scheduled every day.  It's going by way too fast, but man I'm just happy to be alive, so I'll take it.

Luka from E.R. came to fix the spring on my garage door last week.  I kept thinking he looked familiar, and then I would realize it was because he's Luka from E.R. disguising himself as a man named Chris.

Man I hate these guys.  Not just garage door guys... any "specialists".  They judge you and your stuff and tell you why your stuff sucks and you need something new.  Dude.  I don't want a new garage door, no matter how crappy you think this one is.  Even if it had a giant hole in it, I'd still be all... yeah, we'll throw some plywood over that, a little duct tape.  I'm not buying a new garage door right now.  You are competent at what you do, and I respect that.  That's all I want.  Just fix the dang spring.

Something that's been on my mind since my insurance company called me last week and my father-in-law and I were talking about it last Sunday... Obamacare.  Basically, my thoughts boil down to this.  Yeah, it sucks.  And yeah, it's going to need some fixing.  Actually, they're going to have to scrap the whole thing and move to single payer health care.  Do I want the government running health care?  Hell no.  But it's the only way to do it in today's world to ensure that everyone is covered at a cost that doesn't bankrupt us individually and as a nation.  Bottom line.  Sure it sucks.  I don't like it.  What's the alternative?  Go on the way things are?  Can't do it.  Rely on charity care?   Not a solution.  Let people go uninsured and take care of them in the emergency room?  Contributing to the mess we're in now.   I said to my fil that if Obamacare were to be repealed, I'd be in big trouble.  I have a child with diabetes, and my insurance company would love to dump me if they could.  My fil said... well, they could write the law so that insurance companies couldn't exclude people for pre-existing conditions or cancel their policies when they get sick.  Ok, I said, that costs the insurance company tons of money.  Makes health care costs soar.  Well, he said, they would have to spread the costs out through the population.  Yes, I said, that's the insurance mandate that has so many people up in arms.  Look, bottom line... you can't keep the parts of the Affordable Care Act that are popular without having the parts meant to bring costs down... the parts everyone hates.  I am not unaware of the problems with ACA.  I'm not happy about it.  But in the words of the infamous Mick Jagger.... You can't always get what you want.

We went up and mowed the lawn at the cabin on Friday afternoon and the kids played in the river.   The weather up there was so cool and nice.

We had a bird nest in one of our backyard trees, and the eggs hatched a bit ago.  The birds were so cute sitting up in there.  It's been fun watching.  I guess they flew the nest last night or early this morning... and ended up in the window wells.  One of them was in Brittney's and it woke  her up squawking at 6:00 this morning.   They couldn't fly out, so Sean went out and lifted them out with the end of the hoe.  Don't know where they are tonight.  I hope they learned to fly.

Our garden sucks this year.  It's just too dry.  And the weeds.  Oh the weeds.  So many weeds.  But there are lots of potatoes, so that will be good.

June Sorts of Things

Josh's baseball season wrapped up last week.  He got hit in the side of the eye with a pitch on Tuesday, and luckily all he got was a little bruise.  His batting helmet protected him.   A lot of those little guys cry when they get hit by a pitch, because that business hurts, man, but Josh just took his base.  Scared me a little, though.

Tim McGraw was excellent, as predicted.  That is one fine looking man.  I was a little concerned at the very end when he brought Brantley Gilbert back out to help him finish up the last song of the encore... I was afraid that the stage might spontaneously combust from all the hot.

This was a lazy, relaxing weekend.  We did chores, worked in the yard a little, that's it.  For Father's Day, Sean's dad came over and we had dinner.  Courtney and Curtis came over as well.  Hopefully Sean enjoyed it.  He said he did.

I am very laid back in the summer.  I'm not a mom who gets worked up about her kids wanting to sleep in or sit around in pj's playing video games.  It's nice to just kick back in the summer.  It's not like they spend all day doing that; they get up and around and do other things.  But then I feel guilty and feel like I really *should make a schedule and make them do more chores than they do and be more regimented about making sure Josh reads and practices his times tables or whatever.  So I guess maybe I'll come up with a schedule of some sort and make a half-baked attempt at implementing it.

I've come to a very important conclusion about parenting and life in general.  Based on conversations I've had and things I've read over the last while, I think the most important thing a parent can do for a child is teach him or her to work.  Knowing how to work hard is a hugely important life skill, and I see a lot of kids/young adults who don't have it.  I'm really worried about if I'm teaching my kids to work hard enough, and how do I teach them?  My mom told me a few months ago that she wished she wouldn't have let us work in high school; that she now agrees with the idea that school is your job in high school.  I disagree.  It taught me so many important things.  School is very important, but the key component I think, no matter what, is knowing how to work hard.  We were talking with Sean's dad when he was here on Sunday and I said that I think college is overrated and I'm not encouraging my kids to go anymore. That's really not even true... I just said it to see if either Sean or his dad were listening to me.  I don't think they were.  But college isn't the end-all-be-all necessarily that people act like it is.

I told Sean that I'm going to get healthier (I tell him that at least once a month) and that I was going to start drinking less Pepsi and more water.  So today he asked me if I had managed to drink less Pepsi and I told him yes, but I'm switching to vodka instead of water.  He just said, "Well I guess we better hit the liquor store then."  Very supportive husband I have.  Today was not one of my better days.  The kids fought me all day long, and then they broke the garage door.  Sean spent the evening trying to repair it.  He did everything he could, but he can't do the thing with the spring, so I gotta call a guy tomorrow.  Over the last few days he fixed the computer, he fixed the dishwasher, he fixed his grandpa's leaf blower... he's a good guy to have around.  Everyone needs a Sean.

One of my former students made the Top 20 on So You Think You Can Dance.  If only I can remember to watch the show now....

Song of the Day

I'm so excited for this concert tonight!  Squeeeee!!   Tim McGraw and Brantley Gilbert.   I actually find this official music video kinda distracting because there's so much going on in it, so I looked for just a lyric video, but then I decided that looking at Tim McGraw is always better than not looking at Tim McGraw, so I went with this one anyway.

(Heather, give it a listen.  You might like this one.  Tim McGraw plays the dad in The Blindside.)

School's Out For Summer....

Last weekend we went camping at Rockport.  To continue my "View From Under the Awning" photo series, in contrast with our lovely view at Moon Lake, this was the view sitting in front of the trailer at Rockport.  Every once in a while, luckily not too often, but every once in a while the smell matched the view.   Oh well.  We had fun.  The big excitement for the kids was catching a giant nasty sucker fish with Sean.  He hates them.  He won't even touch them.  It makes me laugh.  We took a hike and the kids rode their bikes and did a lot of fishing.  We were going to go to the Ranger Show (childhood memories of Lake Powell and the Ranger Show!!  I was so excited), but they didn't get back from fishing in time.  Next time.

School is out.  My tradition is to relax and do absolutely nothing the first Monday and Tuesday of summer.  It hasn't worked out that way exactly this year, but I've got time.  I'll get some relaxing in.  It's always an adjustment the first week or two of summer, and I always struggle with some depression, but this year hasn't been bad at all.  Thursday, which was yearbook day, was the hardest.  Ever since then I've been fine, so that's a relief.  Got lots of wedding-related stuff done today, and we will have a few big things crossed off the list by the end of the week.  Feels good.

Only one more baseball game left.  It's been so fun to get out in the sunshine and watch these cute boys play.  I really like Josh's coaches.  One of the assistants in particular is just so good with them.  He gives them advice and encouragement in just a perfect way.  We were walking toward our car today and he made a point of chasing Josh down to tell him "Good game, son," and pat him on the back.  Josh isn't a star player, he didn't do anything extraordinary today...you can tell the coach just really wants to build each boy up.

I'm so excited for my hot date on Friday night.  Tim McGraw/Brantley Gilbert concert.  

Lexi's Birthday

Lexi turned 6 last week.

Presents from grandma

I hope she had a good birthday.  Josh had a baseball game that night, and then afterward we went out to dinner.  She chose Chuck-A-Rama.  Then we came home and unwrapped presents and ate cupcakes.  As if we needed to eat anymore, but we are not quitters in this family.  If there is cake to be eaten, we will do our best to eat it.  We see it through to the end.

The daycare had their annual end-of-year carnival last Friday.  They do a little program for the families, have a bbq, and have carnival games.  I deliberately came late because I didn't want to go to the program because it would make me too sad.  I'm really trying not to think about how she's "graduating" from preschool this year.  I mean, she graduated from kindergarten this year, but she was still going to the daycare preschool for half days.  Josh was a baby when I started teaching, so I've taken one or both of my youngest kids to daycare with me every day for the entire time I've been teaching.  It's going to be so sad next year not to be able to do that anymore.

The face painting was supposed to be a butterfly, but I don't think she had time to finish.  It was getting late and there were about 10 kids in line constantly.

Josh's face paint was the Superman symbol, but again... they drafted the boy who was making snow cones to come help paint faces, so, yeah... ya get what ya get.

I really want to read the book Half the Sky, but I know it will just depress me really bad so I'm not sure if I should.   I was watching a presentation on FMH that a woman gave to her ward on Congo, and it's just so sad.  A lot of what she shared I knew, but some of it I wasn't aware of.  Along with this, some ladies who are board members for the charities The Giving Tree and Anything For a Friend came to speak to a group of students at an honor lunch last week.  They talked to the students about finding your calling.  One of the women, who is a cancer survivor, told the kids that when life gets hard, and she said you WILL have hard, find your calling and serve others.  It will make your life better and your own troubles will feel smaller.  I have heard this many times before, of course, but I loved hearing it again from these women who have been through a lot more in their lives than I can imagine.  Still looking for my calling.  I feel called to do a few things, but am not sure I have the abilities needed to do them.

Josh's baseball team lost both games last week.  He still seems to be enjoying it, though.  He is struggling even more with hitting than before, though.  I can't help him either.  His coaches keep telling him his swing is good; he's just not connecting.  I wondered if he needs glasses like all the rest of us, but he says he can see fine.  I don't know.

We did yard work for the last 3 days.  I'm so sore.  The yard looks better, though.

I like Avril Lavigne's voice, and I've always thought she was cute, but now I'm just not sure what to think about her.  Like, I feel like she's way to old for her new song.  It's a catchy little tune and all, but how am I supposed to relate to this in any way?   And how she's all... we're never growing up!  Never, man!  Yeah, Avril honey, you may think you're all cool now, but "running down the street yelling kiss my ass" isn't so cute when you're my age.  At some point you have to grow up honey, and I think you might be about there.  You cannot continue to sing teenage angst songs any longer.  Another song I'm confused by is Taylor Swift's "22".  Isn't she like 23?  So why are they supposed to dance like they're 22?  What does that even mean?  Help.

Only a few days left of school.  I swear, every day for like the last 2 weeks I've thought that I didn't have work the next day.  My brain is already in summer mode.  But there's still a lot to do, so I will trudge on a little longer.  Camping this weekend, Tim McGraw next weekend.  Yay summer!