Do you know the Oxford American magazine?

They had a preview party for their first ever Southern movie DVD last night and I went and I got a couple of extra magazines. One is for you, the first commenter on this entry, if you would like to have it. The issue comes with the DVD–there are several movie shorts on there and the whole thing lasts a couple of hours.

I might be going overboard to call the OA the New Yorker of the South, so instead, I will tell you that it represents, to me, the best of what it means to be a southern writer.

I went to the party alone last night–everyone at my house went full tilt boogie (channeling Laura Bennet, a year later, still) all day. The Husband had a college alum thing right after work, where several alums were trying hard to woo a handful of undecided high schoolers and their parents. The girlchild’s school had a family picnic, so I took the Crabcake to play at what he calls Tah Tah’s beeeeeg school, and both kids (and one point two zillion others) went, uhm, full tilt boogie, for a solid two hours, pausing briefly here and there to stuff a cookie or a hot dog into their pieholes.

Then we hauled a [screaming] boychild away from the school and managed to mollify him with a big kid bottle of water, a cookie and an open bag of chips (it’s all carbs/no protein all-the-time at our house)* long enough to strap him into the carseat and headed home, where the Husband kindly got everyone to bed while I jumped into a pair of party pants and headed to the movies.

Afterwards, I sat outside at a bar with Meg and Andrew from parts northward. Here’s the thing about living in the south (and it may be true elsewhere): you will never meet a stranger. Andrew’s stepmother’s sister’s (you gettin’ this?) daughter was my sister’s best friend in kindergarten. Andrew’s step-cousin? Yeah. Meg and Andrew work in the arts, loved the movie, have been all over the place and, true to my second definition of southerners never meeting a stranger, welcomed me to their table and kept me company for 90 minutes.

And they were funny.

I hope they’ll come back down the interstate.

***

Job front: no news from the school, but they were very, very nice and the school was lovely. I don’t think I am a match for them and I think they will probably know that–and, yes, Octy, I would need a media specialist degree per the SACS people, but I would have three years to complete a one year program, so it could be done. But still.

I may have another iron in the fire right now, and it’s exactly what I want (and everyone involved in the job rejection angst has redeemed herself and then some in my eyes–they’re killing me with kindness right now and I do love that) and I am just not going to jinx myself in any shape or fashion, certainly not by saying something silly like maybe things do work out for the best.

Ask me in a month.

* I just remembered that the boychild demanded an apple from the fruit selection last night, a shiny red apple, skin on, a real apple that didn’t resemble his favorite apple sauce squish at all and then, instead of just handing it back to us after proving he could make us give it to him (crazy dictator boy, I tell you), he gnawed on it. His teeth touched a skin-on apple. These days, we take our victories in small doses.

if you wanted someone to know that you were truly meant for the elementary school library field, what would you say if you were me, besides the obvious natter about how the library is the hub of the school and so on and so forth?

I have a job interview at lunchtime.

I am ALL about the job that pays so little that it’s more like I am paying THEM to come work there.

The button swap package, that is. See? It exists:

That’s leftover silk from a cocktail dress and wrap I had made in 1999, the year we went to a wedding almost every weekend from March through June.

I got a swell package from Lori and I owe, owe, owe a package to another swapper from so long ago that it hurts me in my ribs to think about it. Will mail. Will mail. Will mail. And will post pictures.

I gave up: I am paying to change this site and possibly (cross yer fingers) to move the whole kit-n-kaboodle to wordpress. No matter what, it’s going to look different (and better! surely better! that’s the main goal, better, and if I never see another pink poodle again, it’ll be too soon–sometimes, even now, I have to make some sparkleprincess little girl a pink poodle luggage tag and I groan inwardly and think, really, no, I promise, you don’t want to look at that pink poodle hanging off your bookbag for a long time, trust me) sometime soon.

So, yay me!

Note to melissaf: if you want to sweeten the deal, send cash to my webmonkey.

p.s., The banana. Evidence that God exists. Did you know that? It’s extra special for people who grew up watching Growing Pains.

about Don Imus and the women’s basketball team from Rutgers: I think he should have been fired. I think what he said was reprehensible. I think he’s a stupid old man. I think the coach or someone from the school spoke eloquently about the basketball players when she said that the women are valedictorians, brilliant students, great athletes, future doctors and lawyers and business executives (I’ve still got the Weeds theme song in my head, can you tell?).

Why on earth do these women need to hear anything from Imus? What the bloodyheck does an apology from an idiotic 66 year old man help? The women are so above anything he has to say. I can’t believe that they’re all meeting at the New Jersey governor’s mansion (it’s breaking news on CNN) tonight. Imus doesn’t merit the time or effort.

Doesn’t anyone remember that there is a war going on? People are dying, for goodness’ sake. I bet Bush and Cheney are smiling right now, somewhere.

Would anyone who has template design skills care to trade a new [very] simple design for this website for something from me?

What from me, you say? I don’t know. I got my hair cut today and I expect there’s a fresh bag of hair trash. Hair is supposed to make great mulch, you know. But seriously, I’m open to suggestions. I have a decent hoardy stash of crafty things and have been known to turn out good projects every once in a while. Oooh, on that note, pray for me: I volunteered to make a simple quilt for our kindergarten teacher, who is retiring this year. I asked each student in the class to do a self-portrait and I’m going to scan everyone’s drawing and print it on inkjet fabric and go from there.

So, yeah. Barter. I’m so sick of looking at this website and I am clearly never going to get around to making the artwork necessary to change it. Plain and simple would be good.

Trying. Think it’ll turn out? I’ve already sucked it up and sliced the edge. Next, I’m going to do the accent lines. I’m saving the bun for last.

Here’s a question I ask myself when my mind is empty and needs occupying: what’s the worst thing that can happen to someone, when that worst thing is brought about by the someone’s own moral failing, somehow or other?

(purely rhetorical)

Goes with the bunny, hunh?

Or, specifically, the kindergarten, early-reading universe.

Kindergarten is for play. It’s also for learning about school, if you’ve never been to school before, and for learning to exist with other kids, if you’ve never had to do that, either.

It’s not about reading and writing and learning every single thing you need to know in life, thank you very much Robert Fulghum. It’s about getting used to things. Just ask my favorite early childhood education writer.

I think a lot of people my age (sigh–mid-thirties) remember learning to read when they were about three years old and wonder why their own kids aren’t magically taking up the skill yet or well as they get through kindergarten. We’re not all enjoying this memorization of sight words or watching some of our brilliant kids struggle with them or with reading enjoyment. It stresses us out.

You might remember learning to read–people help you out some and make books available to you, but really, you have to find the key to unlock it all yourself, don’t you? It’s like physics that way. You can study all you want and memorize all the ridiculousness you need to know, but you still have to find the key in your brain to unlock it all (never found that one).

When I was a little kid, I watched Sesame Street (and sometimes Electric Company and Mr. Rogers and 3-2-1 Contact and Saturday morning cartoons) and that was about it. I spent the day outside playing or inside doing, but I didn’t have video games or movies or 1001 scheduled, planned activities. I had tons of free time to unlock the reading bits in my brain and I got to it early on, as did my husband and every other person I talk to about this.

Early reading is swell; it’s swellest for parents whose kids soak up chapter books while their houses are blissfully silent (especially if your kid has a tendency to narrate her entire life in offtune, rambly, never-ending song, which is one of the most annoying things in the world, unless her brother is screaming, which is the most annoying thing in the world, but either way, if this lives at your house, it means there is never any silence ever except at 3 a.m., at which hour you are probably silent or snoring and missing out on the blissful household silence, wait a minute, back to the point). I cannot wait for the day when both of my kids are immersed in chapter books at the same time during hours when I am awake and the house is almost blissfully silent, except that I mostly can because when the Crabcake is not screaming, he now sometimes says funny things or great sentences, which I like.

Kid brains are busier now, and filled with so much extra stuff. The world complicates their lives if we let it, and I have let it complicate our kids’ lives, with the ballet and the riding and the videos. There’s not as much blank space in their brains, or as much free time to unlock reading early and on their own, I don’t think.

It’s nothing to worry about, in kindergarten. The brilliant genius kids will still be brilliant in third or fourth grade when kids mostly even out in terms of ability, and most of the kids who aren’t early readers will be right where they’re supposed to be. Also, I will note that my sister, who didn’t have a love of reading early in life (or at all, really, until jr high or later) was valedictorian of her class. So, my unscientific study of exactly one tells me that it’s okay to not enjoy reading for a while, but if you want to still try for a blissfully silent household, try great books to entice the non-reader:

Miroslav Sasek

Simms Taback–you should see his version of The House that Jack Built

Maria Kalman

Jeff Fisher–my sis gave McP a copy of Pass the Celery, Ellery and we love it.

Don’t sweat the early reading or the kindergarten education. Your kid is fine. Go play instead.