polka-dotted proof

I always try to read books my students recommend to me. Something about them knowing that I value their literary opinions really helps us bond and encourages them to trust me. I just finished Sarah Dessen's Just Listen. It was a good little chunk of adolescent lit, and I quite enjoyed reading it.

The passage that stuck out to me the most:
"...[I]f someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don't change because of it. It's just part of the relationship. It happens. You deal with it."''

My husband and I just can't seem to catch a break. I'm sure this is everyone's story and that right now I'm just hung up on feeling sorry for myself, but honestly, it seems as though it is always something. Back in November, he and I attended a wedding in his hometown (about an hour and a half away from where we live now). After leaving the wedding, we decided we would go see his mother and have a late dinner because he only sees her once a month (which honestly would be way more often than I'd care to see her, but that's another story). Anyway, he had been having some problems with a minor oil leak, but he had been assured that it was minor and could just be repaired the next time he had his oil changed. All of a sudden, his car began smoking. Now, I don't know much about cars, but even I know that smoking from the hood is a negative. We pulled over at a gas station, bought a quart of oil and $17.00 coolant and got the car ready to go. We made it to his mom's house and then it began smoking again. One of his friend's fathers came over to look at it, and the oil that was pouring out the bottom of his car looked like chocolate milk. We ended up having to stay with the mother-in-law with only the clothes we wore to the wedding. The next day, my sister's husband drove all the way there to tow the car, and us, back home. We were hoping for blown head gaskets. We got a completely ruined engine and replaced it to the tune of $2500.

After we got the car back, we drove it to a town about 30 minutes away to do some Christmas shopping. While in traffic, the car ran hot, so my brother-in-law again had to come tow us home. Apparently, when the mechanic fixed it, he forget to plug some fan or something back in. Fantastic!

The next week, I was meeting the members of my carpool when it was my week to drive. Because they are always late, and I am always early (which is another topic altogether), I switched the car off to save some gas. When the first rider got there, she got in the car, complained it was cold, and I turned the key to crank the car. Of course, nothing happened. My battery had to be replaced and my cables had to be professionally cleaned. It was great, really.

Add in a $113 doctor's visit, around $500 of dental work for the hubby, and Christmas shopping. We thought we were finally at a happy and safe point.

But then this weekend, my husband decided to visit his mother once more. Why? I can't answer that. I have no idea. While his car was parked in the driveway at her house last night, in a neighborhood where there has not been a break-in in seven years, someone broke into his car and stole everything out of it. Please note, his car was locked. His mother and his grandmother's cars were also in the driveway and were sitting there unlocked. His car was the only one that was bothered. So today we've dealt with police and insurance and all that jazz.

We could really use a break.

"Students cannot become facile at writing in general and using conventions in particular if they do them only now and then--no more than I can get thin by dieting on Fridays."

-Janet Angelillo, A Fresh Approach to Teaching Punctuation

The other day I was lucky enough to have lunch with my friend Rachel who also teaches high school English. We got on the subject of grammar, or at least the overwhelming lack of grammar our students seem to understand, know, and apply. Rachel teaches mainly ninth graders. Those of you outside the realm of secondary education might not understand what a feat that is. It takes a special person with a lot of patience, stamina, and entertaining teaching practices to be able to teach ninth graders, and Rachel does it successfully. At my school, I only teach eleventh grade, and I love it. There is a huge difference between ninth and elventth graders. My juniors are more mature, follow the rules because they've been doing it for two years before they get to me, and for the most part, they really want to buckle down to make sure they graduate on time. In ninth grade, graduation is so far away, it seems surreal. However, the one thing that my juniors and Rachel's freshmen have in common is their misuse, or in some cases, their neglect of grammar rules in their writing.

I'm not sure how it happens really. I learned grammar from second grade until my senior year of high school. I know the parts of speech like the back of my hand, can identify the purpose of a comma and where to place one, and know more about making nouns plural than I'd ever want to know. And I learned all that before I got to college, and most of it, before I got to high school. One of my friends is teaching eighth grade in my district now, and she's having to teach basic parts of speech. Her students can't even identify the subject of a sentence.

I would blame it on poor education, but the district in which I teach is considered to be at the top of the totem pole academically for this area. In a lot of ways, I think we deserve that reputation. Our kids outscore students from other schools on AP exams all the time, and a pretty big chunk of our senior class gets state scholarships that require a good SAT score. Most of the kids I teach write pretty well. So I don't understand how grammar is overlooked as frequently as it is.

I found two really great books this year to help me incorporate teaching grammar within my writing instruction because teaching grammar in isolation is definitely not a sound teaching practice. I'm using The Grammar Plan Book and Mechanically Inclined.

What do you guys think? How much did you learn about grammar during your high school years? How did your teachers incorporate it? I'm looking for ideas, and at this point, I'm getting quite desperate.

I didn't VOX much in 2008. For me, it was a year of adjustment and change, turmoil and stress, and while I really enjoyed parts of it, I'm wasn't sorry to bid it farewell last night and begin a new year. As a lot of you know, I got married at the tail-end of 2007 (Dec. 29th to be exact), and I began my 2008 with angry in-laws who intentionally made my life worse than pure hell, a confused husband who was attempting to play all the roles he'd played his whole life while adding on the role of husband, and me, little ol' me who did not know the first thing about how to be a wife and maintain a household and all that jazz. Bundle that with my first year of teaching and you can probably see why much of 2008 was a doozy (as my Nanny likes to say).

Around March, I decided I'd had about all I could take, called the mother-in-law and really just explained how I felt. Just to back-track a moment, she didn't even say one word to me on my wedding day. Not "hello" or even "I hate you." Just nothing. When I called, I simply told her that I felt like her son could have done a lot worst than me. I care about him and put his needs before my own. I have an education and work a steady job in an admirable field. I have a good family that raised me well, and I have manners. I don't go on drunk binges, and I've never been a whore. And in the end, he chose me. There was no forcing him away from her. He picked me.

Things got a little better until June/Julyish when his whole family went bat-shit crazy again. Now, we don't speak all that much, nor do I really find the need/opportunity to with them conveniently located an hour and a half away. But somewhere along the way, I realized I was focusing much too intently on my relationship, or lack thereof, with my inlaws, and not nearly enough on my relationship with my husband. We figured a lot of stuff out in 2008--lessons that will hopefully make 2009 not only bearable, but more enjoyable as well.

But of course, it wouldn't be a new year without some resolutions, which I'm hoping to keep.

1. Start my graduate degree. Application goes in next week. I should have no worries about getting accepted, it's just going to be difficult fitting it all in the amount of time in which I want to accomplish it.

2. Be better at life. This is a broad one. I want to take time for me, eat better, move more, love more, write more, etc.

3. Save money. Obviously, this is not the easiest time in the world to save money, when we're stretching our budget paper-thin as it is, but we're going to try our best.

4. Spend more time with family. As I sat at my Nanny's New Year's Eve bash last night, as I have every New Year's Eve except two (one of them I was eight and at home sick with a virus and the other we all went to a family wedding on New Year's Eve), I looked around and was so happy to be surrounded by my large, boisterous, and somewhat obnoxious family. My mother's family is HUGE, and we ALL get together at least once a month for a family dinner. We are pretty tight-knit, and it made me happy to be with them last night. I realized, though, that I want to be with them more, so I'm going to work on that in 2009.

I have a feeling it's going to be a good year. We shall see.

We've now celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple, and boy, was it fun! In four days, we will have been married for an entire year. It has been hard, some parts of this year have really sucked, there have been moments I've been angry, sad, and entirely confused, but more than anything else, this year has been worth it. W

e've grown as a couple this year and have learned how to deal with things a little better than when we came into this 12 months ago. Do we have it all down-pat? Not at all. We fuss. I forget to put the clothes in the dryer and we find them three days later, and he never resets the timer on the microwave. And perhaps we would have it "down-pat" if that were the extent of our issues. We've got problems like everyone else on the planet, but we've got love too, and a bunch of it.

So we've got one year down and hopefully a ton of them to go. I love my husband.

Christmas Ornament.1

I've put off reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight saga for a while now. I hear "it's about vampires," and more or less just kind of give it the brush off. However, the 11th graders I teach have become comletely captivated by these books, and at the suggestion of a very reliable media center specialist, I decided I'd at least borrow the first one from our school's library. I checked it out like three weeks ago and until Saturday, I still hadn't picked it up. (Don't worry, Bookishly Fabulous, teachers at my school can keep books as long as we want, so I haven't incurred any late fees!)

New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2)

Stephenie Meyer

Yesterday, I was bored, and my husband was watching the Clemson game, so I picked it up to at least attempt it. I was propelled through all 498 pages within in a few hours. I had finished the book by 6PM and was headed to the book store to buy the second one, New Moon. I'm halfway through it now, and I can easily see why my kids love these books. They are so intriguing. They really make me want to be a vampire...just a little bit though. And I'd have to be one of the Cullens if I were a vampire, but all the same, they're great.

Have any of you guys read them? If so, what did you think?

A student I taught during student-teaching was killed Friday in a car accident. This is the third time since I started teaching last year that I've experienced the death of students at our school, but this one was different. I had really gotten to know this kid, and I adored him. Whenever we got the news on Friday afternoon, I just sat in my room and sobbed. I can still tell you where he sat in the classroom, what he wanted to do with his life, and the quirky little things that stood out about him. 18 years old, and now his life is over. I need a job where you don't have to interact with or get to know people. 

I am absolutely, positively sick of being sick. I have had a sinus infection since March, and regardless of the various medications my doctor has put me on, the insane amount of rest I'm getting, and all the tons of fluids I've hydrated myself with, it will not go away. Sure, from time to time, it gets a tad better, and I get all excited, and the one morning I'll wake up with a horribly swollen throat, post-nasal drip like whoa, and I'm off again. My husband has also been battling a sinus infection off and on since about the same time. We think it might be something in our apartment, but we've cleaned and scrubbed and are as dust-free as possible.

I'm spending my first summer staying up way past my bedtime and waking up in the afternoon. I must get my sleep schedule on track before school starts.

I shamelessly stole this from Natalie.

Things I Loathe:

1. Having colds in the summertime.

2. Dirty dishes sitting in the sink.

3. Low-fat ranch dressing that tastes nothing like the real thing.

4. Spending money to see movies that I don't like at all.

5. Parents who discourage their children from reaching their goals.

Things I Love:

1. Quiet evenings with my hubby which make words unnecessary.

2. Quirky wedges (the shoes).

3. Authors who never cease to amaze me.

4. A good weigh-in on Weight Watchers.

5. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (which can really mess up #4).