Daily prompt: City Planners

Tags

children, postaday2014, school, towns

If you could clone one element from another city you’ve visited — a building, a cultural institution, a common street food, etc. — and bring it back to your own hometown, what would it be?

When my husband and I moved to Blandford twenty years ago; it was initially to provide help and support to his mother and grandmother and then we saw the benefits of what a small town could provide our children during their formative years.

We saw a small town with a strong sense of community, a brand new school, a pretty town park, a Historical Society, a Town Hall, a library and an adorable General Store. It seemed to be everything that small town Americana was supposed to be and we embraced it.

Sadly after we bought our house that I love with all of my heart; the school right behind our house was deemed to be superfluous to the district’s needs and was closed. We fought that decision tooth and nail, but in the end we still lost so we decided to take our children to another school district where they flourished because luckily that school and its teachers were amazing.

So if I were to do just one thing to change our town, it would be to clone that amazing other school and put it where Blandford’s old school is, to provide the town’s children a wonderful facility with amazing teachers.

What the regional school district failed to appreciate when they made their decision to close Blandford’s school wasn’t just the harm they did to the children, but the longterm harm they did to the town itself. Our town become much smaller the day it lost its school. Schools represent children, the future and investment in opportunities and by shutting our school we were given the message that the future wasn’t important for Blandford.

So there we are, the one thing needed to be cloned and inserted in my small town is a school; sadly, not an easy thing to accomplish.

The baby girl went back to school sniff, sniff

Tags

babies, parenting, postaday2014, school

Our baby girl left for Miami today, I am happy for her and relieved that she is so excited to be at Miami. On the other hand, I miss her already. The minute she left, our baby boy took her to the airport, the house seemed less; less full, less everything. When the baby boy was away at school, it was hard to adjust, what made it easier was that he was much closer and now having him home, I’m happy knowing that he is busy plotting his music career and making progress with his band with their music videos, gigs and recordings.

Last year when the baby girl was at Becker, she was only an hour away and she came back often on weekends, Miami is so far away. I’m glad that during her Christmas break, we did a lot together. This time we aren’t going to see her until possibly late May, it is so far away. She has already talked about how she isn’t going to be here for her birthday, she wants me to mail her a cheesecake, lol. She is going to be twenty, where does the time go? We will figure out what to do for her birthday, she needn’t worry.

The babies did spoil me these past few weeks; they, without my asking or even mentioning it, put all of the Christmas decorations away and they have been doing the dishes, taking care of Jack and just being the best children that you can ask for. I am so lucky.

I am going to do more face time with the baby girl much more often, it will be very good for both of us. It will make the distance less glaring. I am seriously happy for her that she is at a place that makes her excited, curious and independent. I hope that every day, she wakes up curious as to what new thing might happen, what new person she might meet or what new opportunities could present themselves.

No one can ever adequately explain the complexities of parenthood. How no matter how old they get, you can so easily conjure up memories of babyhood and toddlerhood at the drop of a hat. We talk about the push and pull of children towards their parents, but we neglect the talk about the push and pull of parents towards their children. I know that an important part of successful parenting is to provide your children with the best tools for becoming independent and strong, but it is so easy to fall into patterns of wanting to protect them, take care of them and do for them. That is part of why parenting can be tricky, walking the fine balance between the two.

I am a very lucky Maman to have two wonderful babies.

Daily prompt: By the skin of your teeth

Tags

academics, fail, pass, postaday2013, school

Share a time when you narrowly avoided disaster.

I am ashamed to admit that during my second semester at S.U.N.Y at Albany, my freshman year, I wasn’t the most responsible student. There was one class Introduction to Logic that I habitually blew off by not going to class as I should. The consequences made themselves known by the results of my quizzes and tests; failing grades. The professor made one announcement that gave me one shot and one shot only to redeem myself, he told the class and lucky for me that I had decided to attend that particular class that day, we had to decide how we wanted our final grade to be calculated that day, the average of all of our quizzes and tests or just by the final exam alone and we had to tell him that day. I didn’t have a choice, I had forced myself into a corner with my irresponsible behavior and I had pick the final exam, putting all of my eggs into one basket and hope that they didn’t scramble.

Luckily for me, I had done extremely well in all of my other classes, giving me the luxury to devote my brain power to that one final. Over the course of two days, I put the text book in front of me and committed the text to memory. Logic isn’t all that difficult as long as you have all of the rules in your head and you understand the applications. I took two entire days to understand and commit everything to memory and when the time came, my brain was on, the good old days, and I gave it my 200%.

I have to admit that for a few days my stomach was full of butterflies and I wasn’t having an easy time eating much of anything, I was that worried about my grade. I had never failed anything before and I didn’t want to start with college, I certainly didn’t want to have to tell my mother that I had failed and it was all my fault. There wasn’t any excuse, I was ashamed as I had said earlier and this was a lesson that I have never forgotten, when you commit to something, you owe it to yourself and to others to give it your all. Responsibility is a serious thing, it is also a matter of self-respect and you owe it to yourself to have self-respect, by throwing a college course away like that you are not giving yourself the respect you should and it is a big deal. Your success in life, however you choose to define it, depends greatly on how you treat yourself and if you treat yourself poorly, any success you may hope for will be so much harder to come by.

Having said that, I did learn a grave lesson, the hard way yes, but it was learned. I didn’t fail the class, I received an A, I got 100 on the final, but I would have not had to commit an entire book to memory or put my grade in such a bad way if I had simply been responsible and lived up to my commitment.

I never made that mistake again. I made sure of it.

Daily prompt : Sad but true

Tags

criticism, intellect, postaday2013, school, writing

Tell us about the harshest, most difficult to hear — but accurate — criticism you’e ever gotten. Does it still apply?

Most of the criticism’s that I have received have been from myself. I have not very nice to myself in the past. Over the past several years I have let up on myself somewhat, indulging in some understanding and forgiveness for slights that don’t even matter to anyone else. We tend to be our own worst enemy and we shouldn’t.

Actually thinking back as to why I decided to take a year off between college and law school and then never going to law school, I finally realize what drove me way down deep in my subconscious. During that year of deferment, I met my hubby, got married and then got pregnant and had the baby boy all by the age of 24; I can now say that it was due to my negative inner dialogue which sadly convinced me that I was in over my head with the prospects of law school. I had convinced myself that I was an intellectual fraud; objectively, I had the tremendous luck of having a near perfect memory, but aside from that when it came to second and third level courses, I had decided that I couldn’t get past parroting back the information and I was useless when it came to intellectual analysis. I diagnosed this fraud because I earned 2 B+’s in my political science courses instead of my customary A’s.This diatribe kept resonating in my head for close to two years and even beyond. It was quite debilitating and disheartening to say the least, but I threw myself into being a wife and a mother, cooking and baking, two things that I love doing, back then there was a bit of a learning curve to traverse but that is part of the fun, learning as you are cooking.

It has only been recently that I have realized that I had been far too harsh in my criticisms of my younger self. I had overlooked the fact that not only was I working full-time while taking a full course load at a very good University but I was also in full on anorexia. The amount of physical and mental work needed to sustain that mental illness is extremely substantial, I am not bragging, this illness is incredibly dangerous, not only because of what it does to your body and mind but by its insidious nature, it creeps on you without announcing its presence, effectively blindsiding you until for some, it’s way too late. I was lucky, but who knows how many brain cells had to die in the process of my self starvation. I was operating on a diminished capacity and thank the universe my mother figuratively smacked my out of my fog. I was an unwilling participant in my recovery, but my mother hung tough and willed it with her strength of character. She saved me from myself. It is sometimes scary how clearly things become with the gift of hindsight. Why can’t we have the power of foresight come to us as easily as hindsight does?

Daily Prompt : Back to school

Tags

classes, education, postaday2013, school

If you could take a break from your life and go back to school to master a subject, what would it be?

I am fairly certain that I have answered this prompt before but I don’t remember what I wrote or what of classes I would have speculated about taking. I’m not really sure what I want to be when I grow up or what kind of career I would want to pursue if I did go back to school. If I took more classes in the near future, I think that I would want them to be in the creative and artistic vein. I wouldn’t mind dabbling in drawing or perhaps painting, just to see what would come from learning and trying, it never hurts to try and to be curious.

Honestly though, I haven’t really any desire right now to be even thinking of going back to school. I am just too tired these days and I feel that I would be too tired and overwhelmed to do right by any teacher or subject material. Moreover, with the cost of any class these days, it would be irresponsible of me to pursue anything unless I was bound and determined to give it my complete 100% commitment.

I am not closing myself off from possibilities but I am simply taking care not to over-extend myself. Who knows perhaps in the future I will feel better and then I can seriously explore going back to see what types of classes would intrigue me.

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Monday’s can be fun

Tags

fun, marriage, movies, postaday2012, school, shopping, work

Yesterday my hubby decided to work from home since Monday was a floating holiday. However, our baby girl had school and needed to be driven back to her campus so we decided to make an adventure out of the journey once we dropped her off in time for her first class.

My hubby had a meeting with a colleague located not too far from the baby girl’s school and he turned the meeting into a breakfast meeting at a lovely cafe, so while my hubby and his colleague were discussing work, I was busy eating two eggs over easy, sausage and rye toast with plenty of coffee.

Afterwards, after saying our goodbyes to the colleague, my hubby took me to a spectacular food speciality store located solely in the Boston area, Wegman’s. It was so well organized, well stocked, well laid and so pristine. Everything looked excitingly delicious. The produce section with its varieties of fresh mushrooms, the choices between broccoli, cauliflower and romanesco, a hybrid of broccoli and cauliflower, it is such a pretty vegetable and tastes exactly like a hybrid of the two. The meat section was outstanding, offering locally sourced cuts of meat and organic choices as well.

Cheese had its own showcase stocked with local cheeses from Vermont, Massachusetts and even Maine. We bought a tub of Fromage blanc made in Vermont for the kids to try, to see if we found something to tide them over until they could get back to France for the original petit suisses.

The adventure wasn’t over, a movie was in the works as we got closer to home. Since we had been out and about so early, the day was still young. That is how the idea of a movie came about and we had the same movie in mind, The Man with the Iron Fists.

It was great, I have always loved martial arts movies and this one was fantastic. It was presented by Quentin Tarantino and the director is a new one, the rapper RMZ, who did a bang up job. It was an homage to the old genre of martial arts movies and the choreography was exceptional. I grew up watching the old style movies featuring Bruce Lee and his contemporaries on Saturday afternoons on channel nine. The acting was great, the movie had Russell Crowe, Lucy Lui and other Asian actors that I knew by sight not by name.

If you enjoy martial arts movies, you will definitely enjoy this one. When we got back home, Jack got extra attention to make up for our absence and we settled down for a quiet night of t.v, Bones was on and then Castle, so it was a night of not to miss t.v.

Like I said, Monday’s can be fun.

Soda in school, yes or no.

Tags

children, postaday2012, school, soda

• Should soda be banned in all schools?\

• \
• June 23, 2012 \

• Banning Soda in Schools
• School cafeteria

  Yes, empty calories and artificial flavors and colorings have no place in the school setting, especially since many schools have all but eliminated physical education due to budget cuts. Children need healthy foods and at least some form of physical activity but if our children are forced to do without because of budget cuts,how can anyone justify using what precious resources left by purchasing soda for the children? Milk, water and fresh fruit are far more appropriate.