Hi y'all!

The funniest thing just happened -- I clicked on my google link and was brought to this page.  My blog.  A blog I didn't even remember I had!  It's strange reading through what I was writing about and thinking about before I became who I am today.

It's like reading the thoughts of a young child.

Anyway, if you want to read my REAL blog, the blog I actually write on, please visit me below.  If not, have a wonderful day :-)

http://www.indisposablemama.com

Why??

One day I swear that my life will be perfect. I will wake up on time and casually get in the shower to start my day. I will have so much time that I will be able to take my radio in the bathroom and listen to the NPR news while I prepare for the day. I will then go out to the dining room and eat a healthy and relaxing breakfast consisting of fruit, granola, milk, and decaf coffee and then slowly saunter out to the car. My day will continue on at this blissful pace until I can come home at the end of the day, sit down with a cup of tea, and knit the one project I am working on. I will not have numerous projects in waiting because I will finish something before I start a new project.

To give you an idea of how I am doing with this, check out the following.

Here is the baby blanket I started when I got sick of the never ending afghan:





The afghan I started when I wanted a change from the baby blanket (I think it looks like what old 1970s curtains would throw up if they had GI tracts):




Here is the first granny square of yet another afghan I started when I was sick with the aforementioned two:



And finally, here is the scarf yarn I bought (and proceeded to knit) when I finished the other scarf I started to avoid the afghans:




Oh well, maybe I should try a sweater...

Scarf

I have quite a few works in progress at this point. I decided to make this scarf in a single rib because I wanted it to be as soft as possible. It's the first time I'm knitting with non-acrylics. This is a baby alpaca that I got from a quilting fair a few weeks ago. I'm not so crazy about the colors, I wish I would have gotten the deep red, but overall, I still love it.

Marley and Me

So, I just finished the book Marley and Me. I will admit that often I am a snob about best sellers and avoid reading them, at least as long as I can, but I got so many good reviews about this book that I decided to jump in. I think I'm glad I did.

What struck me most about the first half of the book was more about family than about the actual dog who is the book's namesake. Having just gotten married about 3 1/2 years ago and having been trying to start a family for awhile now, it was interesting to see how this couple turned into a family. They had their newlywed moments, time with their children, and the sadness of miscarriage, and the dog was there through it all.

As I said, we've been trying to conceive for awhile now which can bring up a lot of fears and insecurities about families. To be honest, at this point it seems like just a pipe dream, something that happens to someone else. But, as with any good book, you get to know the characters; they feel like close friends. It started giving me hope that maybe we too could have this family.

It was also cool to see how to seperate people join together and create a whole family unit. I had a lot more ideas on this subject as it pertains to this book, but I'm exhausted and am being quite a bit less than eloquent right now.

The ending of the book was sad. There's no other way to say it. I hope I'm not ruining the ending by saying this, but I think that anyone who plans to read a memoir about a family dog would know how it ends. I knew this beforehand, and I actually didn't cry at the end, but I did have this overwhelming feeling of dread. I almost stopped reading the book as Marley got older. I kept going though, and I'm glad that I did. We see in the last couple of chapters all that the dog had meant to the family. We see, as he grows older, the silent desperation the parents feel at the thought of losing this family member. I guess it's when he starts to lose his physical and mental capabilities, once he no longer has those, that we remember how precious they were. I don't think it's a matter of not appreciating what you have until you don't have it; I think it's a matter of celebrating the great life that was. Maybe it's like that with everything in life.

All in all, I would recommend this book highly. The writing style is easy to read and familial. We recognize this family in ourselves, and as it's portrayed, we can't help but like them.

Cat in the Hat

Maybe I'm just not an afghan knitter. Maybe I have ADD or something, but my otherwise strong attention span just does not seem to follow over to my knitting. In oder to avoid the other two afghans that I am making, I made this. Happy Halloween!

The never ending afghan

I just taught myself how to knit about three years ago. In that time, my knitting obsession comes and goes. I have since finished two afghans. This is the first one I've given as a gift. I'm not going to even mention how long it took my to complete. The pattern itself was very simple (maybe that was part of the problem) but for so long, I just could not make myself work on it. In fact, I learned how to knit socks because I wanted to knit anything but this afghan. The good news though is that I finally finished it, and my sister-in-law loves it. I didn't have time to take a great picture, but I think you can get the basic idea from it.

"Some New Approches Towards Teaching"

Today I read the aforementioned article by Mina Shaughnessy in a book on teaching developmental English.

The article mentions two facets of writing - form and content. She details formatic concerns that students and teachers have (grammar, handwriting, spelling, organization) and she also discusses how when too much emphasis is placed on the formal aspects of writing that the exploratory aspects are overlooked. In other words, students try to 'fill in the blanks' of their pre-set essay with ideas, but that these ideas are often superficial and are often not what they think. Since the writing process is stifled, many students will not even learn what they think. Students tend to shy away from their own ideas because they are too complex to put into words. The papers are shallow.

I agree with her overall ideas. I feel that, as of late, I have spent too much time on form to the obvious exclusion of content. This changed over the years as I have become more comfortable with form and grammar. I think it was a necessary evolution of my teaching in that I now had a set form and I knew what I was working my students towards, yet now it must be reigned back and I need a happy medium between the two.

Like much theory, that is where this article ends. There are no practical considerations or ways to carry out solutions. Indeed there are no solutions given, but I do not feel that was the purpose of this article or the purpose of theory in general.

I was thinking that I could start my developmental classes out by having students do extended freewriting on topics. This would allow them to explore their ideas. Then I would have a class discussion. All of this would be based around a reading we did for class. Then, once students have thoroughly explored their ideas, then they could write the paragraphs about it. This wouldn't work for the first assignment as persuasion is not until the end, but it could constitute my writing sample. It could deconstruct ideas of good writing just as it is starting to build up the constructs.

I also thought about journaling as a way to come up with ideas. Students could react to their readings and also one other day a week. Would this be better than giving preset topics for the journals? Would it best be in addition to it? Preset questions ask students to explore ideas and I get pretty good responses from them. It shows them that they have ideas and it helps them express those ideas and put them into words. Freewriting journals may produce a lot of shallow ideas, but it could also show them that their own minds and experiences are fodder for writing.

Just my thoughts.

Introductions

I've dabbled in blogs before, and my biggest challenge has always been keeping up with them. They are strangely addictive at first, but then usually I trail off and only post every couple of months. I have been wanting to start a blog about different pieces that I read. I am a writing teacher, and I always talk to (lecture?) my students about how we can better understand what we read through writing because it is through writing that we are able to explore our ideas and opinions. Too often when we read on our own, we become mere consumers of the work and we never achieve a state of intimate involvement. That is my goal for this site - not to entertain or to enlight, but rather to just make me think. Maybe that's too much to ask of a single website, but we'll see.