I've been thinking about what I want to be when I grow up.

And I've decided to be a drummer.

A really good one who can flip a drumstick in the air and catch it without missing a beat and then go on to do a fantastic drum solo that leaves the audience spell-bound and yelling for more.

For now, though, I'm in the middle of a school year and it's just not convenient to switch jobs. 

Which begs the question that I'd like for us to explore today: If you had to pick a new job, what would it be and why would that job work out for you?

Here are my top 5 career choices, assuming the whole drum thing doesn't go as planned, and assuming that I am not a teacher, which I am, but for the blog's sake, let's just pretend.

I could be a: score keeper for taekwondo sparring matches. 

Why I'd be good at that: The score keeper holds up fingers or number cards to show the scores that the sparring opponents have earned. As a score keeper, I would just have to watch the judges and see who gets the point or two and then hold the correct number up. I can so do that. My number recognition and identification skills are quite strong. Now, you are possibly thinking, "But Wendi hates sparring. She can't even put her helmet on the right way." And that is slightly true. But as the score keeper, I would not have to know a darn thing about sparring, per se. I would just have to do the math. 

I could be a: the prop girl for HGTV 

Why I'd be good at that: I love HGTV. And I am really good at sitting down and watching HGTV. I may as well be there and log more activity points by bringing props to the designers. Plus also, I may just get to keep a few of them for myself. Start a little collection of props, you see. I would be very good at that.

I could be a: life guard on a cruise ship

Why I'd be good at that: I've been on two cruises before, and I never got sick. Not once. Well, not seasick. I like the cabins. Even the small ones. And I like the food. I've also been a life guard before and nobody drowned on my watch. Though I did get to yell at dumb twits for running around the pool. Everybody knows you WALK around a pool. Gosh. Idiots. As a cruise ship life guard I would stand at the top of the cool water slide and tell people when it's their turn to go down. I'd get a nice tan, enjoy the breeze while having a bit of shade to protect my delicate skin. If I'm super nice to people, I bet they'd even bring me snacks from the open-all-day-and-all-night snack stands. The best part: I could go down the slide when my shift is up, order a drink from a nice little bartender person, and go to my cabin for a siesta. 

I could be a: mystery shopper

Why I'd be good at that: As much as I hate shopping, spending somebody else's money and then rating how I was treated sounds like fun. I would be plenty nice, as is my nature. But if I was treated rudely, then I'd let them know about it. I just don't like rude people and I think we should boot them off the island. 

I could be a: storm chaser

Why I'd be good at that: I really love storms. Thunder storms. Snow storms. Hurricanes and tornadoes. Blizzards. Storms are my thing. I'm all about the weather forecast and I could watch the weather channel for DAYS and be content before turning to HGTV. I get so excited when storms are a'brewing. I'd rather chase a tornado than spar. I wouldn't mind getting stuck in a blizzard if I was in my big honking weather RV. And to think that I'd be working in the name of science gives me a charge. No pun intended. 

Need I say more?

Yeah, I guess I could. :)

Anatomy of a Reader

Here is Benjy reading one of his Bob Books. I love these little books from Scholastic. They were originally hand-written by a teacher for her own classroom kids with simple drawings, a handful of sight words, and easy-to-sound-out words for emerging readers. That's my Benjy, an emergent reader. Let's have a listen. 

As an emergent reader, Benjy needs a lot of support to make sense of his books. He needs strong picture clues, words he can sound out with reasonable control, brevity to hold concentration, and practice, practice, practice to build fluency. While the most important thing about reading is that it make sense, the primary purpose of an emergent level book is to support readers as they juggle phonics, meaning, and sentence structure. In short, if it doesn't sound right, it's probably not.

When Benjy read his first Bob book, he was over-the-moon happy. So was I. :)

Camden is my fluent reader. He's into chapter books (mostly about Star Wars ... no surprise there). He doesn't need pictures or short passages to get into a story. He needs background knowledge, a wide array of word patterns and parts to help with decoding new words, and an ability to construct meaning while orchestrating a variety of comprehension strategies. Fluent readers can infer what the author doesn't say. They can ask questions about their reading and answer them as they read. They visualize what they read, make connections to their books, determine important information from the unimportant, and synthesize their reading to form new understandings. Add to that: fluent readers know when their reading doesn't make sense, and they know how to fix it. 

Putting it all together is an exciting process for these readers. I never realized all the thinking that I did to understand a book until I studied literacy development. And yes, I'm just blown away to know that I do, indeed, think.  I always tell my kids: reading is thinking. 

Oh well. That's enough of that. I have no idea why I blogged this. I just found the little comparison of Camden and Benjy's reading development so fascinating, so right on, so real. 

Eaglescout earned a new badge tonight - his black belt badge. I'm just so darn proud of him. 

His Eaglets are proud of him, too. 

He claims he was "stunned" when he got his belt. I think it was my surprise kiss when he came up to get his belt. That was stunning, I know. The belt was a breeze. :)

Here is His Highness signing the Black Belt Book.

I was in charge of The Book tonight. You can imagine how special I was feeling.

Here's the Eagle NAILING his board break. You could hear those boards CRACK.

State Champ also got her black belt tonight. I have better pictures, but I really like how you can see the State Champ badges on her back here. I think I can replicate them and put some on my uniform if I just enlarge this a bit.

And check out Gimp. She had to hop all night because of that broken toe. Kidding, she passed her red-belt-forever-before-you-can-be-a-black-belt testing. Even with a broken toe.

Here's moi last night doing my form. I later got a purple belt. It's very royal. I think I look down right majestic with it on. Almost as majestic as Lady Leslie. :)

And here is my favorite little Tiny Tiger. Benjy got his first belt last night - orange. He looks like an honest to goodness tiger with it on. :)

Sadly, Camden had to take this testing off because of his broken finger. But he's excited to jump in next time. 

Lookie what Eaglescout did tonight. I peeked out the window when I saw movement in the driveway. "Oh, he's gonna shovel," I thought. Strange, since we usually just drive over the snow and let the sunshine do its magnificent job of melting it for us. No wasted energy here. And then he comes back in, motions me upstairs, and tells me to look out the window. 

Ah.

He wrote our code in the snow. How darn cute is that? Is Eaglescout flirting with me? Did he just love the Little Caesar's commercial or what? He gets the flirt badge, that's for true.


And now, for the hero of the night, the one who doesn't flirt with me.

Go Steelers!!!

You're asking yourself about now, "Is Wendi so hungry from counting points over in Casa de Weightloss that she's youtubing pizza commercials? Is she that far gone?" Well, you wouldn't be far off the mark, because, yes, I am a bit on the hungry side and I'm all outta points for today. 

But this commercial is special. 

Back when Eagle Scout and I were but wee grown-ups, fresh out of college with nothing but the future to our names, we met at the Roanoke Times newspaper in town. We both were editorial assistants in the newsroom. Don't be fooled. The name sounds lofty, but it basically means we ran around the newsroom assisting the editors and reporters who had the real jobs. And we typed the free obits and weather for the next day's paper. Really, though, it was a cool place to work, and to this day, I often dream of working in a fast-paced newsroom again. I just don't wanna do the obits.  

So, we had this primitive version of email there - this was in 1990 when the internet was on the edge of something, but not there. I guess Al Gore hadn't got the patent squared away yet. So, we could message each other at the paper. I was WGibson. He was CRichert. Everybody sat at these hulking big computers with green dot matrix screens and worked on news copy and messaged each other in four lines of text or less. We had a pre-texting language of abbreviations like "wen r we goin 2 eat?" We didn't know how advanced we were at the time, but I guarantee every employee there can text their butts off now. 

So, as the Eagle Scout and I fell in love (aaaahhhhhhhh), our messages were sometimes not about what we'd eat or who died or what the weather would be the next day. Sometimes we just wanted to say "You look good in those jeans." and "I love you." And that just didn't seem kosher because we knew that our messages traveled clear around the sun and back and were stored on the Giant Computer someplace in the building. We were trying to be appropriate and all. That's so Eagle Scout, huh? Clearly, we needed a code.

This Little Caesar's commercial was hot at the time, all over the TV. And though we worked at a newspaper and got a free subscription as a perk, we still watched television. Don't let that little irony escape you. And, to top it off, we actually did like Little Caesar's Pizza. So, we're watching this commercial and we're just blown away by the talents of the little dog who learned to say "I love you." It made us laugh. And so we began to bark like the little dog, barking "Arooooo" as our own secret code to "I love you." Clever, no? Like I said, we had nothing but the future....

To this day, we still sign our cards "aro" and say "aro" even though we no longer need to send secret messages to each other. Now, we're pretty much just creatures of habit. And we're lazy.  

Aro, Eagle Scout!

It was hard to narrow this post down to my top 13 all-time favorite children's books, but I did it. In spite of the bitter winds and blowing snow, I did it.

I read this book a thousand times to Camden and then ten thousand times more to Benjy. I have it memorized. Apparently, Maurice Sendak orignally wanted his Wild Things to be horses, but he said he couldn't draw horses so he turned them into monsters. I like the monsters better than I would have liked horses. 

The night Max wore his wolf suit

and made mischief of one kind and another

his mother called him Wild Thing.

And Max said

I'll eat you up!

So he was sent to bed

without eating anything.

That very night in Max's room

a forest grew and grew and grew

until the ceiling hung with vines

and the walls became the world all around him.

And an ocean tumbled by

with a private boat..........

Trixie Beldon was the chapter book series of choice for me when I was a kid. Nancy Drew wasn't for me. But I did have a crush on one of the Hardy boys from the TV show - Parker Stevenson. I think I read all the Trixie books. But I couldn't tell you one single thing about them now. 

Oh. My. Gosh. 

This author is my new favorite kids' book writer on the planet. 

He is understated, grown-up and kid-like at the same time. I have all his books. And my kids at school strive to write like Mo. And we draw pigeons all the time. Love this guy.

This author wrote his first book when he was 5. And on every page were the words "No, David." and a picture of him doing something that he wasn't supposed to do. I love how the book's happy ending reassures us that no matter what horrible, awful, terrible things we do, our moms still love us.

Junie B. Jones is my favorite first grader on the planet. She talks like a first grader, bad grammar and all. She acts like a first grader, self-centered much of time. And she cracks me up. Completely cracks me up. I love this whole series, and my first graders BEG me to read a new one between every other chapter book we share after recess. There's nothing like a roomful of kids relaxing on pillows, blankets, and carpets, giggling their heads off over Junie B.'s antics.

This was one of my earliest reads. Except for the "bureau drawer" page. That's a tricky word.

I read every single Harry Potter book and I wish Hogwarts lasted longer than seven years so I could read more. I was on pins and needles between every book. This is a perfect story for kids and grown-ups alike. Now, where's my broom? I've gotta run.

Another from a series by Mo Willems. These are so simple yet so perfectly wonderful to read aloud. And my firsties are eating these up, reading them fluently and with such expression. Mo would be so proud!

Cynthia Rylant. Love. Her. Books.

Doreen Cronin writes such funny stories. And she's been writing them since she was a first grader. Ahhhhh. AND, her favorite foods are grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate shakes. (Wonder how many POINTS that is......)

Same author as the Diary of a Worm. Written in 20 minutes. It's HILARIOUS!

I cry every year when I read the part where Charlotte dies. This is powerful writing.

It's just fun to say "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day." Try it.

Leslie facebooked this, and I thought it'd make an easy post. So here goes:

16 random facts about me

1: I would rather drink my veggies than eat them.
2: I can remember the gas lines of the '70s and Cabbage Patch dolls. I used to have one named Bryant Nathan till Michael lost him.
3: One of my favorite things is telling kids they have jumped up in reading levels. They love to see how they've grown in their reading journey.
4: I take a nap most every single afternoon when I get home from school.
5: I am addicted to LOST.
6: I read The Report Card last night - a chapter book Camden's teacher is reading to his class. I just got hooked!
7: I will (hopefully) get my taekwondo purple belt on Tuesday night.
8: I have a sister who lives in the most desired resort in the universe - heaven.
9: I would rather get my news from The Colbert Report than CNN.
10: I make stuff up. Really. I have to create stuff to relax. And take naps, of course.
11: I love to surf the literacy education blogs. It's actually almost as relaxing as making stuff up.
12: I love disco and snow cream and Jesus.
13: I used to want to be a veterinarian. Now I want to be a drummer. Rock on.
14: I am applying to renew my National Board Certification in early childhood education. Because I will probably never be a drommer. Teach on.
15: I fondly remember my days at band camp.
16: I will read anything written by Mo Willems.

Coming tomorrow: Favorite children's books

Pray for SNOW AND SUBZERO TEMPS IF YOU'RE REALLY MY FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!

Today at 1:27 I thought about where I was nine years ago at that very moment.

Far away in a hospital in Virginia, my eyes were straining to focus on a Diet Pepsi. My epidural was dripping into my happy-at-last back. I could feel nothing so I had to wait for the nurses to tell me when to push. They only had to tell me twice. 

And then there he was. Camden Neil. 

My own little Jedi was born. He was a little bundle of just under 7 pounds. He cried. I cried. He was hungry. So was I. I ate a hospital tray of cardboard food while he fussily tried for Mommy milk. That night he pooped while he was in the room with me. I thought I'd be a knowledgable new mom and change his diaper all by myself. Long story short: I had to call for the nurse who taught me the ins and outs of baby butt wiping and have clean sheets put on my bed. Camden's was my first diaper change. I don't count the time I had to ask for help doing one when I mistakenly signed up for nursery duty in church once. I never did that again. 

 

Today he is a 62 pound string bean who looks more and more like his father every day. He's blessed to have his dad's handsome good looks. I pray one day he'll have his dad's gentle, patient disposition. Right now he's saddled with my uptight impatient tendencies. 

Here's a shot of Camden's new broken finger. He got it slammed in a door after school on Thursday. They interrupted the faculty meeting to get me. He was crying so hard. The finger was blue and bloody and looked crushed. We wound up at Children's Hospital where a plastic surgeon had to reset the bone and put two sutures in the finger. 

And Camden was the bravest kid I know. It would have taken 10 nurses to hold me down when they numbed his finger. Not Camden. I know God's angels were right there with him because this child of mine, this amazing little boy who's also a big boy, started giggling as the doctor e-v-e-r so s-l-o-w-l-y injected the numbing medicine into the space between his pointer and middle fingers. The more the doctor wiggled the needle around, the more Camden laughed. What's up with that?  And when the doctor manipulated the bone back into place, my son just jabbered away. He wasn't necessarily quiet, in spite of the late hour. (We got to Children's at 7 p.m and left there around 12:45 a.m.) 

He goes back for a follow-up appointment tomorrow where new X-rays will be shot and the surgeon will determine if he needs surgery. If the bone's still right where it's supposed to be, then he's good to go. Of course, I've banned any sparring in this house for the immediate future. 

Happy birthday, my sweet boy. I love you to the moon and back and to infinity and beyond and back and more than that.

It's sort of hard to explain the sudden transition from casa de pax to casa de rock and roll.
But, let it suffice to say that New Year's Eve started it all.

We went to our softball friends' house.
OK, you got me. We don't have any softball friends. We don't even have softballs.

We went to Staci's house. And she has a son who has a playstation and a game called Guitar Hero. I know, you know all about this from CTP's blog the other day. But, wait. Apparently, while CTP an SC are GH whizzes, Jimmy and SB are not. And neither are our kids. Though, let it be known that the drummer girl, SB, apparently ROCKS.

Please, try to stick with this. After the Eagles we have a videotaped performance by none other than Jimmy and Friends!



Did you actually stick with this blog so far?
You deserve a reward.

Did you see all the pets in this little Mac movie? Staci is stuck with three kittens if you want one. As much as Benjy and Camden loved the kitties, I abhor them. So Mom wins.

Did you notice that Camden conceded he and Benjy lost because their drummer left the game???
Well, who was that drummer?
ME!

And did it escape your attention that Jimmy needed his drummer to help him out, too? Somehow, the wonders of technology cut off him actually saying that he "needed" his drummer.

So there.

Yes, his fingers were strumming for quite a bit. Who knew? 

But in the end, he was booed out. He needed a drummer.
Somebody who could keep the beat.
That's ME.

Did you know I always wanted to be a drummer?
When I grow up, that's what I'm gonna be.

For now, I'll just pretend on this cool new game. Thanks CTP for the ringing endorsement, and Staci for the actual experience of being a rock star, and Christmas for the extra dinero to actually pay for it!

In case you're wondering, Benjy's trying to sing the only rock song he knows, "Don't you...forget about me. Don't Don't Don't. Don't you...forget about me. Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire. 

Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire."

What is it that a teacher on Christmas break does with her time?

Well, she carefully documents and counts every single bite that goes into her mouth. Gotta do something to fit back into last year's pants.

And she uploads pictures onto iPhoto. 

She might choose to blog them one day.

She connects her kids' new Didj games to her computer to help them "buy" characters for them and set the skill levels to their appropriate ages. This is kinda fun, but I draw the line at actually playing the games.

She finds herself mysteriously drawn to Days of Our Lives. Not much has changed since she had Benjy 5 years ago. Or since college for that matter, where everybody she knew scheduled classes around Days and The Cosby Show.

She analyzes her friends' dreams.

She is entirely too lazy to create anything herself, so she checks out what other more energetic and artsy people are doing with their time.

She wonders why she writes of herself in the third person.

Then she remembers that today is a full day of The Burn Notice on USA. And Michael Weston needs her to watch him for, oh, about 24 hours. 

TTFN ~ ta ta for now. She learned that from her 1st graders.

Today was our first Christmas without Michelle. And though we were richly blessed this Christmas, there was still a giant hole she used to fill. This is a shot she took of Mom and Dad's tree last Christmas. Her last visit home.

This was our last family picture, taken in October 2007 at Aunt Sandy's in Virginia. We were gathered for cousin Tonya's wedding, and it was a perfectly wonderful weekend. I found this long-lost picture on a link she had sent me to her Kodak gallery album. There are, like, more than a thousand pix on this, many of which are copies and crops of other pictures. I'm gonna order the copies of this photo that I promised my family I'd get them, oh, about 8 months ago or so....

Who's the chick with the skinny legs? Oh, that's ME?! I had no idea. My legs are like chicken lately. Pasty. Flabby. Cellulite-y. Yes. That's a real word now. There's not enough taekwondo in the world to take care of this job. I need to start counting points. (New Year's resolution, OK?) By the way, because it's totally relevant to the convo at hand... Santa brought me not one, but two RED Jhang Bongs for Christmas. Oh yeah, Baby! I'm armed and dangerous! (I have no idea if I spelled that right.)

See that sweatshirt Shell's wearing here? Mom passed it on to me, and I gave it to Camden. That child loves to wear this shirt. He's so proud to have a little bit of Aunt Shell in his possession.

Benjy talks of Aunt Shell a lot. Especially when he's tired. That's when he turns into Angel Benjy and seems to have thoughts and prayers for people he hasn't mentioned all day long. Serious stuff, too. He loves to talk about Aunt Shell having a picnic with Ellie, our faithful, loyal beyond belief, black lab mutt who passed away a couple of years ago. Aunt Shell loved Ellie. But Emma, I do believe, was her favorite. "Helmet Head," she called her. It must have been her ears. I think she felt sorry for her because she was second. Shell was second. Did I tell you that?

When Shell and I were kids we used to take the presents out from under the tree every night in the days leading up to Christmas. We would sort them according to the recipient, count them ~ because, hey, we had to be even, and rearrange them under the tree. A new arrangement every night. Mom never minded. It's just what we did. And so when Camden took to dragging presents out from their nest this year, I just smiled and let him. It's in his genes.

Michelle and Brian didn't have any children of their own. Here she is with her dog, Smokey or Abbie, I am sad to say I'm not sure which. And she's snuggling a new baby. It may be Baby Tatiana. I remember her talking a lot of her. But she had so many friends and family with children. And she loved them all so deeply, as if they were her own. She was so amazing like that.

Shell and Brian didn't have any human children. They had a menagerie of pets. Two wiener dogs and a whole passel of cats. I don't like cats, so I cannot pretend to remember their names. I think they were Ricky, Tigger, and somethingorother.

This is Michelle and cousin Tonya. Tonya and her new hubby Jeff drove all the way from Richmond last Christmastime to visit Mom and Dad and Shell. It was a blessed time. Dad was about to begin his cancer treatments and it would be a drag from that day on till he was in the clear. So he was relatively healthy - stronger and alert. This visit from family would be her last. We had no idea.

I'm not sure of the date here, but I'm assuming it was around summer-fall. Brian, her husband of 8 years, is with her and Mom and Grandmomma.  He was Shell's soulmate for true. We love you, Brian. 

Here are the two mates on their first real grown-up vacation since their honeymoon. They went to the Cayman Islands in early December of 2008. Right before she came home for the last time. Did she know this was her last vacation? Did she know she would come home one last time? I wonder these things often. I'll find out one day. But at least for now, I'm at peace knowing she's at peace with Jesus. 

She's a little hot tomale, no? I loved her so dearly. Even if my Barbies were better than her Sunshine Family.  

And I miss her dearly. I miss her phone calls. I miss her handwriting on her cards and letters. Even if they were always late. (it's a sister thing)

I miss her big heart, her love, her graciousness, and her voice. But I am at peace, thanks be to God, because I know where she is now and I am confident that my family and I will see her on the other side. 

Merry Christmas, Shell. 

I love you.