work – Peaceful Reader

A trip to the bakery

My friend, Barb and her family, own a bakery in Indiana and for the last 2 years Groovy Girl and I have traveled the 5 1/2 hours east to visit her and work in the bakery. Her uncle owns a strawberry farm and the bakery is attached. It’s hard to figure out which draws more; the bakery or the u-pick farm and garden center.

It’s strawberry season and this past weekend it was strawberry fest on the farm. They were super busy which in turn makes the bakery busy. As we worked in the back making strawberry donuts and buckwheat pancakes with strawberry syrup we could see the line wind several times through the store and out into the parking lot. It was crazy!

It’s a serious working vacation. I get to spend time with my friends and help at the same time. The only time they are not busy is late December, January, and February, right when I’m in school so we make this work. And my back can tell you I worked really hard this week. I made batch after batch of steamy donuts; measuring out and weighing the ingredients, mixing it, pouring it into the donut hopper so it can drop perfectly into the hot grease where it is a perfect circle of dough. It makes its way down the small converyer belt; frying and turning to create a golden orb (with the ever important hole) and then tossed into a bowl of sugar and laid out on a tray to be sold. I made trays, and trays, and trays + +.

I now dream about making donuts. Last year I didn’t make quite as many and we were not here for as long. I’m also a year older and I didn’t sleep well this week; I woke up this morning with a terrible pain in my lower back. Barb and I did about 45 minutes of yoga; deep stretching with modifications for my back and my heart. She’s a trained yoga instructor as well. I don’t know how she does it all! We did kayak which is one of my favorite things to do but it’s been off/on rainy for days and our kayak venture was cut very short.

We did prepare delicious dinners together as well but that is another blog post. If you get a chance to stop in Hobart, IN be sure to stop by Marilyn’s Bakery (her mother started the bakery in 1986). You won’t be disappointed and if it happens to be strawberry season you might just glimpse me in the back pouring and dipping donuts. I need a vacation to help me recover from this intense working…vacation?!

Tag your it…

A week ago my blogging friend Lisa from Books Lists Life tagged me for a little Q and A game and I intended to answer back the next night. Instead I obliviously went to a meeting the next day that involved the future of my job; the job that I love and had the wind knocked out of me for a few days (still). I’m not going to get into it but we all need to wonder about the future of education in the U.S.

I do want to honor Lisa’s questions with answers so here they are…

Here’s the rules:

1 You must post the rules.

2 Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged.

3 Tag eleven people and link to them on your post.

4 Let them know you’ve tagged them!

Here are Lisa’s questions for me (and the 11 others she tagged):

1. Could you eat the same thing for lunch every day? What would it be? Yes, Sushi.
2. How many library books do you have checked out right now? Only two but they are both overdue. ‘Nuf said.
3. Do you feel strongly about specific music? or more of a music in general type person? I love music in general but am not a fan of heavy metal or opera. I lean toward Jack Johnson, The Grateful Dead, Taylor Swift, John Prine, The Beatles, and Simon and Garfunkel.
4. What is your favorite brick and morter retail store? I love a store on our eclectic Main St. called Vintage Iron.
5. What is your favorite online store? The Gap
6. What is your favorite moment of heartstopping romantic tension? (Book, movie, music, tv, real life, art, anywhere.) Heart-stopping romantic tension makes me think of Claire and Jaime in Gabaldon’s Outlander series.
7. What is the first book you remember reading? Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss over and over to my two younger brothers.
8. Are you creative in any way? How so? Yes, I like to write. I do knit but have yet to really produce items that people will actually wear.
9. Not counting your family, pets, and vital personal documents/pictures, what one thing would you save in a fire? The oval table that sits by my side door. It belonged to my grandmother.
10. What is your favorite type of vacation (museums, beach, cabin, mountains, theme parks)? Hands down; the beach. My second though is the mountains of Colorado.
11. What is the most surprising or unexpected thing you’ve done in the last 12 months? disagreed with my superintendent. Eek.
My tags:

Tina
Leslie
Caitlin
Chinoiseries
Vanessa
Jana
Natalie
Reading Junky
Beth
Rebecca
and finally
Katie L. (who just needs something to smile about after her painful week)

My questions:

1. What book character is crush-worthy to you?
2. What is your favorite library memory; either public or school?
3. What is your favorite state?
4. What is the best time of day for you?
5. If you could direct a movie of one book-what book would it be?
6. What is your favorite guilty pleasure (massage, expensive haircut, high priced coffee)?
7. What is the worst book to movie adaptation you’ve ever experienced?
8. Describe your dream vacation.
9. What musical artist or song would play on the soundtrack of your life?
10. What is the one food that brings back blissful childhood memories?
11. What form of exercise do you actually like?

Have fun! Feel free to play along…

28 Days of Things I Love; #8

(photo credit)

I love what I do every day. I love to help students find the perfect book choice. I love to ask students if they finished the chapter book they are turning in only to be treated to a childish glare that says “of course, I did-I loved it, where’s the next one in the series.” I love to have my kid’s book clubs make remarkable discoveries as they read something like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever, 1793. I had one group this week put together a slide show about yellow fever and the book. It was impressive stuff and secretly it felt good to know that their tech skills came from a library lesson. I love connecting a teacher to a book for a literacy lesson and hearing later that it went great.

As the roles of librarians emerge and change we have a wide array of duties that fit in our hats. We feel, at times, out of place. We can learn a lot from teacher’s collaborative meetings but rarely get the opportunity to go. As our district buys into reading plans we don’t feel needed in a meeting about reading. Our role is ever more crucial to guide students into independent thinking, decision-making, and to nurture life-long readers. It is a struggle to get administrators at the highest level to understand it is much greater and as simple as picking a book. Long live librarians!

Lists and Life-Crossing off my to-do list

(Not an exact image of me)

I have a mental picture of myself, the librarian, juggling a variety of tasks every day. I wish I could draw so I could make that image appear on paper-it must be so cool to make that happen. I got so much accomplished at work in the last two days. I love it when I can cross off all the way down the list-items that have been hanging over my head for a week, maybe two.

1. ~~Mandatory Training~~-took all of it in one day-the day before the deadline!
2. ~~Extra Pay form for Intensive After School teaching filled in and handed to principal~~
3. ~~Three Little Pig versions to Pre-K~~
4. ~~Next to Love review~~ (seriously attempted to write it all week long…)-at home project
5. ~~November lesson plans-~~fun ones-better to entertain me as well as students
6. ~~Book Fair financials called in to Scholastic and money handed to Sandy, our school secretary~~
7. ~~Book Fair new books cataloged, bar coded and out on the shelves for new week’s classes~~

I know, whew! It feels great even though I know my list come Monday will be long again but for this weekend I can focus on my house which needs a deep clean, go to lunch with a friend, read and do some minor tweaking to lesson plans for next week. Oh, and I must remember to skype with my brother tomorrow night-add that to the list. See how easily it grows!

I finished the second of the Books of Elsewhere, Spellbound, and will write a review soon of both books. I hope your weekend is peaceful whether you have a to-do list or not. Peace.

School Days

I have to wake up in the morning and go to a meeting for several hours-a meeting where I will listen to many administrators talk, talk, talk about how we are all doing an amazing job. We ARE doing an amazing job (most of us). Only to go back to our teaching jobs and be treated like we don’t really do an amazing job because of the lengthy checks and balances systems that has been put in place. It’s downright creepy, is what it is.

I love working with students-the bonus of my job while I’m in school Summer is a huge draw as well. Administration, guidelines, (extensive) lesson planning, meetings, meetings, meetings all bring me down. We are all on some list or another which says we are not successful and we can never get ourselves off the list because we have the same students who struggle through school. It is a never-ending cycle.

I’m pumped to go back, really I am. It is just a bleak scene in my district right now and I am having a difficult time getting pumped up for this ding-dang meeting in the morning!!

Is everybody else ready to head back to school? Do you have your school supplies purchased?