It’s November: NaNoWriMo!

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m absent from this blog at the moment. Once again it is NaNoWriMo time and I am working sort of feverishly on my novel yet again. Doing this project makes writing in my blog look oh, so attractive. Short concise posts, adorned with a photo. No dialogue, no longterm commitment to any uncontrollable characters. Writing in my blog in November is an expensive (timewise) distraction to my mounting wordcount. I mean, I’ve already written 60 words in this post that could’ve gone toward my goal of 50,000 this month. So I’ve gotta go. We’ll see if I post any snippets of the novel here. I might be onto something today, but don’t hold your breath. You’d do just as well to wait for December.

I’ll just post a little self portrait I took out at the river yesterday. And then I’ll be back after I hit 50K! Have a good month!!

Time for a shift

After posting it on iPhoto, I looked and looked at this photo, trying to figure out what it was.  I recognized the white circles as part of my blouse.  Oh, and above them my hair.  I have not a clue how or why this shot happened, but it seems to be fitting for the way I’m thinking tonight.  Over the past couple of days or so it’s become obvious to me that it’s time for a shift.  Long ago I learned from a wise person that if you want to make a change, you don’t have to make a big one all at once.  You just have to make a small shift somewhere to give your energy room to move and change will follow.  The weather has changed and it’s time for that little nudge.  I’ve been so mired in past sludge, and pulled down by ongoing drudgery that I seem to have lost my glow lately.  Everything hs been hot and dry and kind of gritty around my house.  At work, oh I don’t even want to talk about work. When someone asks me what I like to do when I go home I don’t know what to say.  Read?  Only just before bed.  I seem to just sit around and wait for it to be time to start tomorrow.

But this week the weather changed.  The hot tub is once again an attractive option.  Taking walks in the evening sounds pleasant, as does cooking something simple to eat.  Reclaiming my house as my own safe haven by cleaning it all and fixing a few things feels like a necessity all of a sudden.  I had no problem ignoring it all summer, but now I want it cozy.  The list of changeable things is long, but for now, just a little shift is all I need.  More to come…

I seem to have gotten stuck

on White Peach.  I have started several new posts, and each remains a draft, week after week.  I imagine most people will have given up on me by now, and I am sorry about that, but for some reason it just can’t be helped at the moment.  There has been no lack of what to write about, just a lack of mental and emotional wherewithal to do the actual writing.  I’d better get over it though, because…

NANOWRIMO IS COMING!!!

I imagine I’ll be back soon.  Now that I’ve brought it up.  Thanks for your patience.  If you are patient.  If anyone is reading this…

White Peach

There is a place on Highway 70 in Yuba County, California, called White Peach which one can only see during the months of August and September.  Every year on a morning in early August the plywood sign appears, the words “White Peach” spray painted in green to entice passersby to stop and visit.  It is clearly a roadside attraction.

One year you decide that you’ll stop.  Is it a village, a fruit stand, a space ship perhaps?  Given the location of the sign beside a peach orchard (not to mention that it says “White Peach”), you assume peaches might be sold there.  But there is no fruit stand visible, so you can’t be certain. Still, you have been intrigued by it for a long time and you want to take a picture of the sign for your daily photo, so you turn into the orchard. Immediately you are surprised to find a lovely little house, surrounded by vines and flowers.  With a some relief you think, “Oh, they must sell peaches here.”  But no, there is no fruit stand to be seen.  Not even a little table with a box or two of peaches.  So you continue along the rutted dirt road, deep into the orchard.

The car bumps along for a ways, when the road suddenly takes a sharp turn to the left.  There you spy a porta-potty, an old cafe chair and a few piled up fruit crates.  Ah! Peaches must be for sale here.  But again there is no sign of anything at all for sale.  You drive on and encounter some trucks loaded with fruit boxes and a barn.  In the distance you can see a little white house with someone sitting in the front yard, next to a big orange water jug.  Still no peach stand and the person in the yard gets up and  walks away.  So, feeling like an intruder, you back up and turn around, feeling like you’ve failed.  You really wanted more than a photo from this venture.  By now you want peaches!  As you drive back along that rutted road, you spy another sign:

Now it’s definite.  There are clearly peaches sold here.  You can just call the farmers on your phone.  Except what are those two last numbers spray painted on that plywood sign?  You can’t tell, so once again you turn around.  You drive into the driveway with a bit more confidence this time, and this time the man in the yard stands up and waves.  So you park and get out of your car, and walk toward him.  He is somewhere between sixty and eighty years old, with beautiful crinkly brown skin and is wearing a dirty turban of an unrecognizable color.  He calls out loudly,”Peaches? Bag? You?  Peaches?!”  In case you’ve missed it, he demonstrates with his hands a shopping bag.  Relieved, you say, “Peaches! Yes! Peaches!  How much?” “Fifteen dollars,” he shouts.  Once you are close enough to converse, you drop your volume.  You are, after all an ELD teacher and you know that increasing the volume of the conversation doesn’t increase its comprehensibility.  He doesn’t know that, apparently, and continues to shout at you.  “Peaches! Bag!”  Thinking that fifteen dollars sounds like either a lot of peaches or a lot of money for a few, you say “Five dollars worth” and hand him a five dollar bill so there is no mistake.  He looks at it, and says “You car.  Peaches.  Bag” and he takes off walking toward the orchard.

You get in your car and follow him slowly along the rutted road through the orchard.  When you get to the cafe chair he signals you to stop your car.  You do, and you get out.  He comes up and pats you on the shoulder and says, “Bag?”  Frantically you rummage around in the backseat, looking for a bag.  He has your money, and you apparently must supply the container.  Fortunately your giant size Chico Bag is there, in a box, so you grab it and open it up.  He looks at the size of it and nods.  Clearly it’s too big for five dollars worth of peaches, but you figure he can put the right amount in, as it’s all you have.  He signals you to follow him, and he takes off into the orchard, trudging along between the rows of trees.  For a minute you think about the fact that there is no one around for who knows how far, as you head deeper and deeper into this orchard with this unknown man.  Finally, when you can barely see your car any more, he stops and points to a tree.  He grabs your bag and starts putting peaches in it.  One after another peach is tossed in there until it is completely full of beautiful (unripe) white peaches.

As you walk back to your car, he tries to ask where you live, “Marysville? You?” he shouts.  He speaks a few words in Spanish so you think maybe you’ve found a common language, and you reply in kind.  But no, those were his only words in Spanish, it seems.  So you reply, “I live in Chico.  I’m a teacher in Marysville.  I’m a teacher.”  He smiles broadly and nods, “Teacher?  Teacher.”  He pats your back vigorously and says, “Thank you!  Teacher, thank you!  Teacher.  Thank you!”  In a moment of clarity, you realize that today has been about way more than peaches.  The peaches are the bonus part of today’s adventure.  You’ve been to White Peach.  And it was a good trip.

If you want blog readers, just review a movie!

Holy cow!  Ever since I went to see that movie whose name I won’t mention again, I’ve had a mountain of readers.  I wonder if they read anything other than that movie review.  I feel popular.  Well, not really.  Anyway, I’m surprised that so many people find me just because of that one post. So, hooray and welcome!  I hope you all read another post or two along with the movie.

San Diego AVID Summer Institute

This is the view from my hotel balcony in San Diego, where I’ve just completed my second AVID Summer Institute of the summer.  This one was great.  My presenting partner and I have very complementary personalities, the participants were eager and interested and it really all went quite smoothly.  I kept setting my alarm for 5:00 AM, to get up and walk or swim and after the first day, I did neither. It was so hard to wake up that I just puttered around in my room until time to go to work at about 7:00.

Each night I’d lay down to sleep with my balcony door open to the breeze.  It was nice until the cigarette smoke from the balcony below wafted in.  The first time it happened, I called the front desk to ask if I was in the wrong room.  They assured me that the smoke was not supposed to be happening, and they called and took care of it.  The next time, the desk said that if they were smoking on their balcony they couldn’t do anything about it. That seemed wrong to me, but I didn’t know what else to do apart from confronting the scofflaws (Heaven forbid!), so I closed my door until the middle of the night when the room got too hot and the smokers were sleeping.  Then I’d open it again and let in the coolness.

This thing about rights of smokers and non-smokers is a tangle I think.  The freedom of one so overlaps with that of the other.  And of course, I think my freedom of breathing clean air should surely supercede the freedom of someone else to breathe smoke.  And I know the smoke breathers see it the other way.  I just wish they’d stop.  For their sake as well as mine!

HEARTHEARTHEARTHEARTHEARTHEARTHEART

I’ve always loved these cement benches in downtown Sacramento.  I never thought of how many ways you could read the word “heart.”  It pleases me every time I see it.  Tomorrow the AVID Summer Institute begins.  This is my fourth year of leading the High School Administrator strand.  I’m a little uneasy because my co-presenter is unable to attend and I don’t yet know who I will be working with.  That’s right, I did say that it starts tomorrow.  I always like some time to arrange things with the other person before this event begins.

I have another issue.  I don’t think I have enough clothes with me to make it five more days.  I’ve already been gone for five days, to a wonderful event in Lake Tahoe  (More about that in another post.) and I’ve kind of depleted my store of good clothes.  I went shopping at Macy’s today and bought a dress and sweater, good for the first days of school as well.  They were having this wierd sale, in which they took off $10 for every $50 I spent.  Great, I thought.  The only catch is that I can’t pick the items up until Wednesday, when the sale officially begins.  I went for it.  I can make it until Wednesday.  Definitely.

My biggest issue is that I’m bone tired and I’m about to begin a very high energy, high pressure week of work.  I went out tonight and had a fresh Chinese chicken salad at the Asian diner, small stuff compared to all I’ve been eating in Tahoe for the past week.  I feel like a stuffed turkey, ready to truss and roast.  Unfortunately, I kind of look like one too.  (Possibly more about that in another post, if I can bring myself to talk about it.)

And on that note I guess I’ll go upstairs and do some laundry in the bathtub.  Enjoy your day.

UPDATE:  It’s over and I’m home.  I worked with an awesome guy who was super dynamic as a presenter.  I sort of felt like I ran along behind him, which wasn’t exactly a great feeling, but is actually inconsequential.  We received good evaluations and it’s done.  Now I have a week off  before I go do it again in San Diego.  This time I’ll be more prepared and less tired going into it than I was in Sac.  Bring it on!