Creativity-- Tick Tock!

I'm working on getting into a creativity schedule. It sounds a little silly-- because isn't creativity spontaneous? Eh, as a teacher of gifted children (and as a graduate of the "gifted" program), I tend to think giftedness and creativity are both nature and nurture. You CAN create beautiful things out of nothing, but it's a lot easier to create beautiful things with fancy-schmancy art supplies, computers, and journals. Creativity is also a state of mind. I see pictures in the clouds. (And Colorado has an abundance of beautiful clouds!) I listen for unusual sounds and think in lyrics all the time. In working with children, I speak up about beauty around us-- in a sunset, in the set up of a plate, in the humor of a tv show-- to encourage creativity there too. Eh, who knows.

So, I have many, many posts trapped in my brain and scribbled in a journal plus many pictures in my camera and my phone to share. What's the hold up? Energy! Creativity! Cleaning up! Going to work!

This day has started fairly productively-- but it also started above 60 degrees (I walked the dog in a tank top, pj pants, and flip flops!), but it's been so blustery and windy, my dog keeps barking at all the sounds it's making in the corridor of our apartments-- to set that apart now, it's below freezing and raining-- which means, it will be snowing in about 3, 2, 1...yup. I see snowflakes out the window. 

I know I moved to a state that has cold winters from one that has one or two snows a decade, but it's still instilled in me that snow= snow day. Stay inside. It's dangerous out there! There's a part of me that wants to just keep this cup of mint tea going all day and watch Buffy on Hulu. Le sigh. My little munchkin will be disappointed in the car line if I don't make it. :)

So some creative things on tap-- some recipes of yummy foods I've made lately, some hiking recaps with gorgeous pictures, more painting, more fiverr orders that I'm delivering (woo-hoo!), and concert reviews. I'm going to the Colorado Writer's Workshop on Friday and I can't wait to see what types of things I will learn to help guide me on a publication journey. We went to see The Airborne Toxic Event at the Ogden Theater in Denver over the weekend and it was incredible. I loved the theater and the whole evening. This is the second concert we went to where they were filming the music video that night. Chris nudged me at one point because I was so into the show that I didn't notice the camera man filming over our shoulders! We are going to see another one of my lyrical favorites tonight-- Bastille. Definitely looking forward to this. 

Some of my favorite lyrics have beautiful imagery and symbolism to history, gods, and pop culture. I wonder where these guys were in some of my younger years-- I could have used these words:

When all of your flaws and all of my flaws when they have been exhumed,  you'll see that we need them to be who we are, without them, we'd be doomed

If you close your eyes, does it ever feel like nothing's changed at all? How am I going to be an optimist about this?

I don't want to hear about the bad blood anymore. I don't want to hear you talk about it anymore. It's been cold for years, won't you let it lie?

Do you understand...the future's in our hands and we'll never be the same again.

Icarus is flying too close to the sun... Living beyond your years, acting out all their fears, you feel it in your chest...Icarus is flying to an early grave.

Are you going to age...with grace? without mistakes? with a path to trace? Are you going to age with grace?

Oh I feel overjoyed when you listen to my words, I see them sinking in, crawling under your skin; words are all we have, we will be talking, what is there to gain? I feel overjoyed when you listen to my words. 

And last but  not least, their Sesame Street-like take on learning vowels: Ay-ay oh Ay oh. 

So, thanks for listening to my words. I hope to have some put together a little more coherently soon. Stay strong, my friends. Shine. 

Feminism Friday! The Idyllic Land of Norovirus

I wanted to write a status update (a la my friend Joan who writes small missives about her day) in the moment about this little experience, but then it seemed like I had too many things rolling around in my head. (I love Joan's status updates. It reminds me the good things that can happen in rough schools with the right person wearing her heart on her sleeve!)

We have a wreath because adults have wreaths. 

Lately I've been taking a step back, career-wise, and re-evaluating what I'm doing with my life. I worked really hard and nearly non-stop in my twenties and had a lot of stressful years. I have a lot of things I'm proud of-- a Master's Degree, many travels, much writing. Lots of stories from times spent with friends, romance and breakups, and laughter and tears. I said goodbye to my grandmothers in my twenties and I hold them very close in my heart-- their words sometimes echo in mine and I smile to think of all the skills and loves I share with them. Crock-pot cooking with whatever is in the house? Grandma Jane. Flower arranging (ah, dried eucalyptus smells so good!) and wreath making? Grandma Marilyn. I pulled out my watercolor painting supplies and have been working on those-- a skill I practiced while in one grandma's native Italy, the other's love of travelling firmly instilled in me.

The days of working 12 hours and feeling like nothing I do matters, even though I'm pouring my heart into every minute of planning, teaching, listening to, working with, assisting...lessons with children? That's on pause. And man, it feels GREAT. Teaching is rewarding, but it's become a field synonymous with levels of exhaustion akin to having triplet newborns. You love what you're doing, but as soon as one mess of poo gets cleaned up, there's another one waiting.  So a gap year of sorts was in order for me.

I've been nannying and babysitting for families in the suburbs of Denver. I love it. [Any names I use for children have been changed for their privacy. Any pics have their identity obscured because I think kids should be protected from the evils of the interwebz before they're in high school!]

Crockpot stew like Grandma Jane's

The town where I have been working is a very special place. There's a manner of frozen in time going on with these kids' childhoods! Kids walk, bike, and razor-scooter to school. They ride their bikes and take the local bus to the ice cream shop and have milkshakes before heading to the library, skateboard park, or nature trail. They play musical instruments and soccer...and the parents are in the stands or audience, cheering for their babies. In a word, it's idyllic.

After working in inner-city and OTP Atlanta for 10 years, I was left with the sinking feeling that childhood was a myth. Kids had to deal with food stamps and immigration (and they still do), and were generally learning skills (manipulation and lying) to serve them in a life that I wouldn't be proud, personally, to live. They were learning that school was about test scores and nothing more. It is incredibly disheartening for all parties involved-- parents, kids, teachers, administrators, law enforcement. Where did middle class America go?

I found it! (And I dearly wish it for every kid everywhere.)

The cul-de-sac where I've been finding myself every afternoon, Monday-Friday, has kids with swings, apple trees, scooters, bikes, gardens, friendly Fidos, and sassy cats. There are a group of little boys (ages 5-9) who play outside every day. One was using a magnifying glass (from his chemistry set!) to try to start fires. I shared, "Oh, I used to do that when I was a kid!" and he responded, "My mom said the same. It must be a rite of kid passage." Gulp. Wut? Kids talk like that here.

No Holy Grail outfits, but they looked like this. 

The boys also were playing with one of the oldest toys that any parent knows will entertain kids for hours-- a big ole box. I looked out the porch window and thought, "Oh dear. That child has a battle axe."

Box. Best. Toy. Ever. 

Yup. The neighborhood boys were demolishing a large box with their medieval (plastic) swords and battle axe. Boys will be boys, but it sure looked like fun to me. They jousted, they hacked, they smashed, they pillaged. And when the box was in pieces (and had been converted also to a dinosaur costume), they placed all the pieces in the recycling bin. One of them asked if I could try to bring a box from my house tomorrow. I promised I'd do my best. (Recycling dumpster, don't fail me!)

One of the boys noticed my State Park sticker in the windshield of my car (oh skills of observation, very coveted!). I felt that I'd been transported to a beach in SoCal-- as he put his little hands up (in a stop gesture) and said, "Whoa! Whoa! Do you go to Eldo, like my Dad? He has a sticker like that on his car from Eldo." -- yeah, bro, the hiking and climbing at Eldo are totally choice.-- Not really, I said, "Oh yeah, this is a State Park pass for Colorado. You can go to any of the parks. You've probably been to Golden Gate Canyon and Cherry Creek? But I like Eldorado Canyon too." Totally rad sticker, dude-bro.

Just painting this picture of the nature of these kids. They play outdoors. They eat actual food (one of the kiddos had a playdate, in which she searched the fridge for cherry tomatoes she'd picked from the garden (because "they'll go perfectly with our snack!") to go with the berries, cheese, and pretzels. They make their beds. They have TV time limits. They are adorable.

So why did I call this post Feminism Friday? Well, one of the kiddos (who's a girl) was having a playdate with two other friends. They carefully sat down at the table and completed their math  homework and quizzed each other over their analogies. I interrupted only to remind them at you have to say all the words that the colons stand for in analogies, or they don't really make sense. "Ship is to sailor, not ship dot dot sailor, as the colon suggests." These kids are that driven and sweet. There was no inkling that "math was hard because we're girls" and that's refreshing.

There's tons of statistics  (like college enrollment rates) and research that support that women are still underrepresented in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. Women of color (more specifically Black and Latino) are terribly underrepresented, with this fear of science stemming (sorry) from elementary school years. Motivation, gender, and color are huge when it comes to which people will finish school with which degrees. Particularly, Latino girls see themselves as caretakers of others, and will, if they choose to seek a career, mention ones that relate to taking care of children and babies (teacher, day care worker, nurse), more than any other field. It's incredibly limiting and sad as a society to see this play out. The truth is, we need a society with women AND men scientists and doctors. Women and men bring different roles to the proverbial table, which makes better workplaces for us all.

(Quick side note: I just read The Green Glass Sea, which is a children's book that received the Scott O'Dell award for Historical fiction. It was GREAT. It dealt with a girl protagonist living on the base of Los Alamos when they were building the atomic bombs. The kids meet all the scientists you think about learning the early stages of radiation studies. It's a different side of WWII book than I'd read. If you have kids-- 8-12ish, make them read it.)

Imagine my surprise when the girls trotted upstairs to gather (it seemed like) every stuffed animal and

baby doll known to man to bring to the basement to "play daycare." I was a little disheartened-- these are girls who have scientist and engineer parents-- why are they stuck in this gender-role play?

I gave it some time, and laughed as I came downstairs to check on them. The babies were all in the side room-- in quarantine. They were using makeshift cell phones -- calculators, old phones-- to call all the parents at the day care. They'd come, not as day care workers, but as CDC doctors to quarantine the Norovirus. Yes. The Norovirus. One kiddo warned me, "Don't go in there. It's the Norovirus.  There's vomit. EVERYWHERE! We have to keep these kids on lock!" They giggled and laughed as they put on their imaginary medical gear to take care of the babies and to put on press conferences about spreading the virus. They put on serious voices and made day care outgoing messages for the parents of the children struck.

With the Ebola virus crippling Africa currently and scaremongering laypeople about hospital care of those aid workers returning home, (even in my native Atlanta and alma mater Emory) it seemed prescient that these kids were playing doctor/scientist/aid worker in the basement in Colorado. They are neatly living this beautiful idyllic childhood, but the real world exists.

And this highly-contagious world may have a few health care workers coming up through the ranks in a few years!!