Napkinigami

So I think our friend Lance should look into freelance napkin/towel folding for cruise ships. He could be like the clown rented out for kids parties but instead of balloons he could use napkins. Matt and I could not get anything to work from our napkin folding book without getting out our iron and a bottle of starch. But well, whenever we're in a bind to get some napkins folded into something neat looking...we know who to call.















But I did have success with my cream puff making earlier this month. I was sure they wouldn't turn out but when I opened up the oven those dough lumps had puffed themselves up into a golden Real Simple cover....if I do say so myself.

Our deposit money is down...

Wednesday April 9th:
I hear from yet another friend where they will be spending the next 3-4 years of their life for school. They ask me. I try to think of something decisive I can give them and the best answer I have is "it's boiled down to Michigan, Virginia, or Texas." They have no response as that narrows it down to "somewhere in the United States...and not California".

Thursday April 10th, pm:
As it gets late, I get tired and begin to have the first of several emotional breakdowns about not knowing where we are going to live; let alone how we will find housing without visiting, where I will work and if I will make enough to live off of, how often I will get to see Matt (every other student wife is telling me how you are basically on your own), who will be in our ward, if I will have any friends...as the list continued I began to choke on more of the words.

Matt promises me that by this time next week we will have decided for sure where we are going to live.

I settle down and fall to sleep with thoughts of a place where the Austin City Limits is held at the beach of all the Great Lakes and Jefferson's Monticello home.

Friday April 11th:
After calculating all the tuition, scholarship offers, grants, loans and living expenses in each place Matt and I decide on Virginia. It's bang for the buck. Matt is a sport about our decision but I can tell he is sad that we won't be living in the music capitol or as close to his "roots". I start to feel at ease knowing I only have to search one housing and job market from now on.

I post my status on facebook: "Cate is 'moving to Virginia'!"

Saturday April 12th:
The search for housing begins. Matt emails some inquiries to current LDS law school students for some help. We are flooded with suggestions. All with pros and cons nearly impossible to weigh. A wife of one of the law students takes the liberty to impress upon us that we could live in some really great reasonably-priced housing as long as we have a child or at least pregnant with one. She even goes as far to explain that all we do is have to tell the landlord's we are at least "trying".

I start feel an emotional breakdown coming on again and decide to take a nap before I think too much about the constituents of some Virginia housing or who else will be party of our ward community.

Sunday April 13th:
More job hunting. More house hunting. Apply to a bunch of housing places and one job.

Monday April 14th:
Read above. Can't stop thinking about the weird email from that girl.

Tuesday April 15th:
Try and figure out how the heck we can move all our stuff across the country with only 2 people and a two door sedan. We resign ourselves to taking a hefty chunk of our savings get a rental truck that can carry our stuff and tow our car.

Deposit deadline for Texas.

Wednesday April 16th:
Matt finally hears back from Yale. He gets the nicest email telling him he is waitlisted and that there could be slight possibilities of admittance or transfer but of course no guarantees. We continue to move forward towards Virginia. My mom and I look at a map and I realize that it is going to be a super long drive.

I go to work until 9pm. Matt comes to pick me up. He tells me that there is an email he wants me to take a look at. "I'm not really sure what to make of it." I ask him who sent it to him. "Let's wait until we get home". I start to get anxious. I want to know if it is serious. He tells me it is nothing I need to worry about but we still need to wait.

The email gives a link to Matt's "would be if he had made the deposit on April 15th" financial status/estimates at University of Texas. From what we can gather we have had a $35,000+ misunderstanding about the offer. Apparently when the scholarship letter came we read that "three-year" of law school resident tuition application was a "third year" only application. Apparently the absent "s" on "three-year" was simply a typo. With that and failure to realize that there were a handful of additional grants applied, it turns out Austin is/was the best choice for us. Woops!

We realized this at about 11pm. That makes a deposit to the admissions office 2 days late on the deposit deadline! Woops!

Matt and I sat about 4 "family prayers" together. Each one getting more "please please please....if it is at all okay can we PLEASE still go to Texas?" Then Matt tries to sleep. He gets about 4 hours of the 8 available in fitful nightmares about the conversation he needs to have the next morning with the admissions.

Thursday April 17th:
Matt wakes up at 7:30 and showers. By 8am he is on the phone with admissions trying in his most diplomatic yet pleading way to describe the misunderstanding. The lady on the other line is sympathetic but tells him it is not up to her. We need to fax in our deposit and then the committee will review it and "get back to us sometime". Matt goes and faxes the deposit.

I spill a yogurt shake on the carpet and start crying. Matt asks tries to figure out why "spilling a shake is such a big deal". I cry some more and tell him that I really need to know where we are living next year. Matt starts to feel guilty for the whole ordeal and says the mistake was his fault. I start to cry more not because of the shake but because I made him feel guilty. Matt sends out another email to some other person that has some sort of relevant authority on the matter. I eat breakfast and begin to try and focus my Chi or Tao or something. Somehow I get a mellow place.

Matt goes to work and I lay down again because I am yet again overwhelmingly exhausted from nerves. I dream of reading an email of UT that forgives our mistakes and welcomes us with open arms to their community. I wake up to my phone ringing. It's Matt on break. He wants me to check his email for anything. I do and this is what I read to him from the Dean of admissions:


Dear Mr. Sweeney-

Please do not worry; we will not cancel your seat. You will receive email notification once your enrollment deposit has been processed by the Student Accounts Receivable Office.

Ms. Terrie P. Barry
Associate Director of Admissions
The University of Texas School of Law

So there it is. Matt promised me "this is it! I don't care if someone sends me a briefcase full of money from some other school. I don't care if Yale accepts me from the waitlist! We are done with this business."

Let's go Longhorns!

Severing the can, hand.

Do you remember how your mom always used to tell you how dangerously sharp the lids are when you sever them from an aluminum can? Until last night, that story seemed like an "old mom tale" to me. At least now I know that they cut through real clean...deep...but clean. My experience last night got me to realize that you have to respect those lids and most especially those mom tales. But I guess the latter part of that not only means being careful with the lids on cans but perhaps no swimming for a half an hour after I eat, no swallowing gum because it will stay 7+ years inside my stomach, no taking candy from strangers (that means no more campus hand outs)...

What other mom tales I have missed here?

Tale from the Art Lab - my war with the Sunset View Dragon

It was made very clear to me when I was hired on at S.V. Elem. that I was a part-time art instructor. And although I would be responsible for managing my own classroom and dealing with nearly every student in the school (600) I was, let me reiterate, part-time. No contract, but the job description required me to work 9am-3pm M-Th which amounts to an average of 24 hours a week. The "part-time" nature of my job description was made apparent to me because if I was paid for any more than 25 hours a week for working then they would be obligated to give me basic health insurance. And as it seems that health insurance is now-a-days more of a high-class luxury than a necessity, like a house boat or a summer home, the school would not be able to provide me with such lavishness; thus, I have no health insurance. That's not the problem, well not the one I am going to address in this blog, because I agreed to it and there are some perks to only working part-time. That is, part-time means that you do not have to work more than part-time. That means less time working and less responsibilities because we all know that with less power (I'm no ceritified teacher with full-time benefits) comes less responsibility. However, it would seem that this truism is not as universally understood as I once thought. I began to realize this in the last month and half as parent teacher conferences approached.

Early in February my supervisor reminded me that for PTC I was responsible for putting together what was called the school's "Spring Art Salon". No problem there, as I was told about this shortly after being hired. Indeed it was pretty frustrating when I was asked to put one together for the Fall conferences that never got hung up. It was slightly aggrivating after getting 500+ students to finish at least one art project to submit, then getting them all to write their names and teacher's names on the back of their art projects, summarizing what each project was and what they learned, and finally coalating every class' projects to orderly distribute the artworks to teachers who were to put them up on their bulletins only to hear after the conferences that the teachers had all freaked out because they had too much to do without the art salon. I will admit that I felt like going into a faculty meeting and kicking some shins but I crossed my ankles while my supervisor sat me down and gave me back all the un-displayed art projects to pass them back to my students. Afterall, I do get paid nearly $12 an hour and that is a small fortune for someone who only has an undergraduate degree.

But this blog isn't about the Fall PTC Salon and how it never went up. In fact, it didn't even bother me when they found it in their busy schedules to meet with their measely instructor to begin voicing their expectations for the "Spring Art Salon". It got a little overwhelming when they started talking about these high aspirations for what it should look like, how diverse the artwork should be (at least 2 or 3 different projects from every class), how there needed to be at least one artwork from every student, what the summaries should include that would be posted next to the artworks, etc, etc. Wow! Great ideas for the salon...but who has time for this when there is only 24 hours in my work week here?

But that wasn't all. Apparently there is also a hall in the school that needs some bright decorations. The school vision for it is to have big fabric panels hanging from wooden dowels with painted shadows of school children running towards the school's giant mascot dragon, "Flamey". Who better for the job than the art instructor? Oh and there is also a closet full of local artworks appraised at a few thousand dollars in school storage. Someone needs to do something for them. Make a restoration plan... They thought of me. The way it was presented, they were giving me an opportunity to make "a few extra dollars" and what I began to hear was "we could save a few dollars if the art instructor did it because we pay her close to nothing compared to all the other people here or a real professional". Well, as gapingly overwhelmed as these burdensome projects seemed, I have trouble saying "no" to extra hours when part-time work can be feast or famine. So I consented.

In the following weeks I began to put together the Art Salon. There was about a month of scrambling to get students to finish the same projects and make them look presentable (It seems like Title 1 Public Schools are a one room school house even within one grade. You've got gifted and talented with ESL and Autism - not an easy group to homogonize into one set curriculum). Yet, in spite of how wildly tricky it was to pull off, I felt like it was coming together as long as no one interrupted my roll of things. There were countless times I went before or after school, during my lunch to go and check with Art Salon Visionaries about something I was doing but it seemed there were profoundly important things going on and no one was ever available for the art goings-on. I came to terms with being neglected in this epic task by telling myself that all I could do was my best and that was that.

Then I got stopped in the hall. They needed me to come in a week from that Friday to teach all the Title 1 students (ie the lowest academically and consequently some of the worst behaviorally) so that they too could have an art project in the salon. I would have 45 minutes with each class to have them produce something for the salon. It was near imperative that I come in that one specific Friday which was 3 weeks before the conferences. I told them I couldn't because I had made some personal committments that day (it was the day before the cake dome party and my mom and I had planned an elaborate day in her classroom). They told me they really needed me to come in that day. I told them again that I couldn't. They asked me if I was sure. I told them that I was sure. A few guilt-trip words for me about how life is profoundly hard for everyone else on the staff and then I was scheduled for a different Friday.

So I made a plan the best I could with what I had to work with. Hmmmm....only 45 minutes to produce a project students with short attention spans and difficulty following directions. It was not any easy task but I decided that I would do a cutesy project with the younger students where I would give them odd shapes to glue down to a paper and make into a picture and then the older students could do blind contour drawings (this had been a super popular lesson in both my classroom and my mom's). These plans seemed simple enough and easy to finish with minimum clean-up and background explanation. And man! was I glad to have something simple when those mixed groups of pre-deliquents and sincere students showed up. My head and throat was aching by the end of the day.

Point was, I did it! I made it! It was a nightmare of a week but last Monday, 3 days before the conferences, I was feeling all kinds of relief and self-satisfaction. I had only one question left for the Salon Visionaries and on my way to my classroom that morning I conveniently ran into one. I marveled at being able to talk face to face with someone who I could usually only reach by email and quickly started to ask my question about where to hang the murals the older grades had done. She skipped over what I needed to know and went to straight to what she wanted me to know. In listening to her I learned that these Title 1 students blind contour drawings were apparently "unpresentable" and "something we could not show to their parents". It turns out, according to the Salon Visionary that I "should have just done the 1st grade projects with all the 6th graders" because they would have "looked much nicer and it would have been easy to understand what the project was from just looking at it". It didn't help to remind her that I had written up an explanation to be read along with the display as I had been asked to; it didn't help because "hardly any parents were going to take time to actually read that". I found that last bit interesting and reflection on the several hours I had taken to fulfill that part of the vision.

After being sure I left the conversation without bursting into hysteric tears or punching someone in the face, I went on to teach until lunch. When I had made it that far through the day I walked down to the office and let her know that I "didn't think it was a good idea to take on these other projects as I wasn't sure I would be able to fulfill the expectations". I was assured that these projects were "no pressure" and even though it was up to me whether or not I wanted to do them, there was every bit of faith that I could do a great job. "Thanks but I think I better stick to what I was hired for". Concern was expressed as to whether or not I would "be okay not working during Spring Break". I took that as an opportunity to remind her in the most diplomatic way I could muster with my rising agitation that I had another job I went to after this one. However, I didn't bring up that I was planning on enjoying the Spring Break just like all the rest of the faculty, even if that meant a week without hourly wages. Although I hadn't spent the week complaining about how Spring PTCs were the mark of the elementary school apocolypse, like 2/3rds of the staff there I still had, remarkably, found a way to exhaust myself with under appreciated work.

That said, the Spring Salon turned out inspiring and beautiful. My students are up to the brim with creativity.

In case you missed it....

Happy "Ides of the Irish" Cake Dome to you!

Tale from the OPL - A search for the Good Report things in the world

While working in circulation today at the O.P. Library I had a patron come in and give me some dvds to check in. I noticed in her stack were a couple of different Faerie Tale Theatre episodes. Perhaps you know what I am talking about. I grew up on their campy splendor. If you were not so fortunate, it's not too late to experience this early eighties renaissance of fairy-tale reenactment. It's hosted by that big-eyed Shelly Duvall and has all kinds of well known actors playing the title roles. I mean, there's Jeff Goldblum as the "Big Bad Wolf", Jean Stapleton as "The Giant's Wife", Matthew Broderick as Cinderella's baby-face "Prince Charming", etc. Anyway, you've got the idea.

So I had to comment:
"My gosh! I love these shows. I remember checking these out on VHS from our library while I was growing up. My mom actually just bought all the episodes on dvd a couple Christmases ago. I am so glad there are other people that check these out from their local library."

She said:
"This is actually the first time I have seen them before. In fact, I only got to see one of them. I got them for a friend of mine who will not watch anything but G-rated movies.”

I paused and thought about how that bugs me when people decide to make being a Mormon harder than it needs to be; and I thought about how it irritates me even more when they make a big self-righteous deal of their asceticism.

Then I replied:
“Huh…well, Faerie Tale Theatre is about the best taste in G-rated material around. So well done on finding this undiscovered treasure.”

She smiled, sort of:
“Yeah. I really like the one I saw. It was kind of fun but she told me that most of them had a lot of innuendo kind of stuff that was pretty bad and she doesn’t want me to get anymore.”

Me:

Her:
“I mean she thought it was pretty suggestive.”

At this point all I can think of is: What in the HELL is she talking about? She might as well say that my whole childhood has been subtly polluted with perverse ideas and images. Who does this lady think she is making such claims? She’s worse than those over-analytical types you get in English class who make the shade of a tree in a story to be some metaphor of death approaching. Before I got too far I made my response:
“Well…that is wild. I guess…you know…gosh, that never Ever occurred to me. But there’s people that say that stuff is in Disney movies. Er…”

Her:
“Oh well…there is.”

Me: Huh?

Her:
“Thanks for your help.”

Me:
“Uh yeah. Have a good one….”

When she left I realized:

My gosh! I need to start reading up and learning how to uncover all the things around me that could be perceived as something abominable or perverted. If I could learn to do that, no doubt my life would be filled with joy and I would become so much more receptive to the honest, good and chaste things of the world.

Spill the Purse

It's more of a bag really. I had a purse once but I treated it more like a bag so it broke down this last fall. I replaced it with this cordouroy bag I got for free with some stuff I bought. Now I have no need for flimsy, can't-carry-more-than-a-wallet-without-breaking-down purses. This bag works a-okay for me and what's more I think it is pretty cool. In fact, I saw one of my 6th grade students carry one of these around their elem. campus. If carrying around an adolescent approved accessory isn't cool, I don't know what is...

Oh and here is all the stuff in it.

I promise I didn't take anything out. It's all there: my fancy peppermint gum I spent fifty cents more on than the Orbit brand, my ticket stub from seeing Juno last night, two chapsticks (one I just got last week from my DDS after getting my cavity filled) and a lip gloss I forget to use. Well, you can see the rest.

And because this is a tag from Miss Contrary I extend the offer to these five to spill the curiousities of their bag-purses:

1. Kelly

2. Joy

3. Chrissy

4. T.R. (we all know you have a purse even though you call it a "man-purse")

5. Joey

Ode to TJ Maxx and a Teal Pot

When I was little I remember throwing a fit everytime my mom took me shopping her to TJ Maxx. It seemed like she would spend hours puttering through the lotions, shoes, linens, cooking ware and specialty foods. If you have ever been to TJ Maxx you will know it was meant for puttering. It would bother me to bored tears how she would hardly ever end up buying anything when we spent so much time there (and the times when she did buy something she would most likely return it the next day).

While she tried things on and sorted through different novelties, my mom would quiet me while I sat in the half size TJ Maxx cart by letting me search through her purse to pick out all the loose change that had spilled from her wallet. Anything I found she would let me keep. Most of the time it was just stinky pennies but oh the excitement of finding a quarter! The way Mr. Swirly Patterns described me was money for me when I was little translated into "candy points". So a quarter was 25 candy points to me and meant a handful of stale sugar beads from any candy dispenser. I could mellow long enough for my mom's TJ Maxx wandering fix for candy points like that.

Fifteen years later, I will give up all (well maybe just most) candy points for any time to wander TJ Maxx. I can't think of anything more theraputic than poking through different stationary sets, kitchenwares and exotic foreign foods. Although I rarely even buy anything when I go, just like my mom, on one of my last trips I brought home a lovely teal enameled, cast iron pot. I can't tell you in words of its beauty, so I have posted a picture. It reminds me of Matt's Grandma Sweeney and her teal kitchen. Just looking at it and thinking of all the things it will slowly braise and boil takes my thoughts to happy, serene places. Matt christened it on Valentine's Day when he made Beef Bourguignon. And oh the joy of comfort food cooking that pot brought into our home.

How to Run through February

Do you ever feel like you're in a movie? I guess not just a movie but you...your movie. Sometimes I get that feeling when I'm running. Actually sometimes that is how I can get myself out the door when I keep finding things to do around the house to keep me from it. I tell myself that I will go and run and I will be like the cover of a Runner's World magazine. Not the cover. No. Those are usually of gaunt looking extremists that intimidate me at races. Instead it is more of the picture you see when you turn to the "Rave Run" section. The picture that shows the sillouhette or some dramatic form of a runner in one of the most beautiful places you could imagine to travel to on foot. I swear, everytime, I would run there barefoot.

I would never submit a picture of myself to a magazine that would show everyone where this place is for me or what I look like when I am there. Sometimes, though, maybe even more often than not, I find that place when I run. If I'm honest, most of the time it is in my head. There are no trembling aspens in February. The air isn't thick enough to fill my lungs and there is no irridescent hanging mosses in Utah. But I swear it's all there. I find a long stretch that sets me staring uninterrupted into the fog swirling Timpanogus and it makes me someone famous. Or maybe just someone who is really important just because I see it.

I can't get there if I can hear the rush hour around me. If I hear the traffic I see the the exhaust puffing from cars. But if I have my music I get caught up in something bigger and more extraordinary. I listen to something poetic that someone else wrote which really has nothing to do with me but should. A lot of the times I don't even know what the song is really about but that makes it even easier for it to be my song. Lately, Miss Camera Obscura has my been my lead voice on these runs. Sometimes I think she can sing the most beautiful things.

Unfortuately there is no way I know how to play one of her songs. I've tried for the last 2 weeks to figure out how to play her on my blog but alas, my techy-incompetence overcomes me. But I will share this part of my "rave run" with you. This song makes me feel pretty awesome too. If I swore, I would say I feel pretty damn awesome when I run to it...but I don't swear of course.

8...one more than 7

For the longest time I took up issue with "blog tags". In my mind they seemed like elitist forms of those absurd facebook applications like "throwing a goat" at someone or giving them a "super poke". I appologize for associating any of the fine blogs that I love and read with the superficial world of facebook applications. But the truth was, blog tags both confused me and made me feel like a loser. With no one tagging me I was left to think I didn't belong in this exclusive cyber game.

Until one day...all that changed. That was the day that I discovered that Cheese on Rye had tagged me. And this is my response. This is the story of how I became Cate the Great being tagged for questions eight.

8 Things I'm passionate about
1. My dear, charming Matt
2. Brooks and Sweeney fams
3. Running (especially where I can smell Sage Brush)
4. Mary Jane shoes
5. Art and understanding the visual world I live in
6. Baking up a party that bring friends into my home
7. Tomato Soup
8. A good book

8 Things I want to do before I die
1. Complete a full triathlon
2. Blow up the Glenn Canyon Dam (I got this from Claire and thought it sounded neat)
3. Have some chilluns'
4. Write a memoir
5. Learn the intricacies of French pastry cooking
6. Go to Argentina with Matt and sit in that tea shop he always tells me about
7. Learn the French language good and proper
8. Teach an art history course

8 Books I have read recently
1. Speak Laurie Halls Anderson
2. Out of the Dust Karen Hesse
3. My Antonia Willa Cather
4. Swimming to Antartica Susan Cox
5. Morality for Beautiful Girls Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Fountainhead Ayn Rand (well I tried at least-until page 350)
7. Twilight Stephanie Meyer
8. The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck

8 Things I often say
1. "I'm calling in a minute..."
2. It's not hip-hop, it's electro....
3. super much or super great
4. Can I have a bite?
5. Ain't no thing...
6. "I'm not okay with...."
7. lovely
8. "brrrriisssskyyyy" (thanks to TR)

8 Things that attract me to friends
1. sincerity
2. non-competitive
3. compassionate
4. loves good, interesting things
5. unassuming
6. non-judgemental
7. finds humor in irony
8. dedicated to being a good friend

8 Songs or albums I could listen to over and over
1. Anything Andy B.
2. About A Boy soundtrack
3. Underacheivers Please Try Harder Camera Obscura
4. "Mr. Tough" Yo La Tengo
5. The Il Postino title track
6. Quelqu'un qui m'a dit Carla Bruni
7. Round Our Way The Mint Juleps
8. Best of Sam Cooke

8 Things I learned this last year
1. No matter how much you love someone, you can love them more the next day.
2. Being engaged isn't hard....it's planning a freaking wedding that will ruin you
4. Fear doesn't help anything
5. How to write a coverletter
6. I am worth more than $7.00 an hour
7. Organic milk really does taste better
8. 1st graders might be cute but they are dumb

8 Random things about me
1. I am currently planning a high school reunion that I won't be able to attend
2. I adore Paula Deen (I have two cookbooks and I've read her memoir)
3. I hope I never have to go on a cruise
4. I once played Hamlet in the "15 Minute Hamlet"
5. I want a cardigan the color of split pea soup
6. I enjoy not liking Provo culture
7. The smell of pine and sage made me cry when we drove through a forest in France
8. I once ate a bowl of jam for breakfast as a kid until Mr. Swirly Patterns made me stop

I hereby tag the following:
1. Ellen
2. TR
3. Joy
4. Mary C.
5. Lauri J.
6. Chrissy
7. Allyson Ham.
8. Mairzy D.

Now you can all feel as blogily validated as I.