Musings on Life and Living

I wrote a blog post about Mothers' Day last month, so it seems only right to write a companion post today. My Mothers' Day post focused primarily on why I felt it was not only appropriate but also necessary to address the reason I use the plural posessive form of mother when talking about the holiday. I feel the same way about Fathers' Day, but I don't think I need to go into it again. After all, the argument is essentially the same. Today, though, I want to share some bits of wisdom I've picked up from my father over the years. This is in no way going to be an exhaustive list, and I am sure that there will be plenty of things he's told me that were incredibly insightful and important that I will leave off. Sorry, Dad. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of wisdom my dad has passed on to me is this bit of advice: If you ever want to identify what is most important to you, make a mental list at the end of the day of things you accomplished; you wi...

When Gretch and I first moved into our current place, nearly two years ago, we were pleased to see that we had a large background and a space that appeared to be suitable for gardening. Of course, that space was filled with a vast jungle of weeds, spiders, and other various critters, so we didn't do much with it for the first year. After the weeds died during the autumn and winter, I considered pulling them all up and preparing the ground for a garden. But I didn't get around to it. Then spring came around and the weeds returned with a vengeance. Vague dreams of planting a small garden still floated around in our heads, but we had work and other worthy tasks taking up our time and so we delayed and put it off. After the school year ended, we started thinking about it more seriously. Then one day Gretch decided it was time. We were going to plant a garden! Not that either of us really  knew what we were doing. I mean, we had the basic downs: get rid of the weeds, turn th...

Gretch and I were out of town last weekend and, in an effort to focus our energies on what we were doing and those we were with, we tried to limit our computer time. Which is why I didn't update the blog last Sunday. And then we've been busy all week working on a new project (information about that to come tomorrow). So, what were we doing last weekend? Well, because neither one of us had work, we left on Thursday morning and went up to Washington for a day and a half. The first order of business was to get to my parents' house, and then I called up my old grade school and arranged to visit with my fourth grade teacher. We chatted for about half an hour about teaching, education, technology, classroom management, and students. What a wonderful experience! For those who did not know or just forgot, my fourth grade teacher is the reason I chose to go into elementary education. Over the years, I have kept in touch and she continues to tell students, teachers, and anyone who ...

It is no secret that I like to read books. Correction: that I love to read books. What does seem to be a secret, though I can't for the life of me figure out why, is that Gretchen also loves to read books. Contrary to popular belief, the 1,900-some books we have in our living room are not all mine. In fact, not a few came from Gretch's collection. Now, to be fair, I did have a lot more books than her. And I do talk about reading more than she does. And, yes, I do tend to refer to our book collection as my book collection. That's just an odd quirk of mine. After all, I refer to the intermediate hallway in Wiley Elementary School as "my" hallway" in "my" building. I think I started claiming things as my own as a mental reminder to treat them with the utmost care. Pretty certain it goes back to the days of operating the spotlights in high school and running the sound equipment for the jazz ensembles. Anyway, back to books. Gretch and I both love re...

Champaign is an interesting city. Three hours to the north, we have Chicago, Illinois. Three hours to the east is Indianapolis, Indiana. Three hours to the south is Louisville, Kentucky. And three hours to the west is St. Louis, Missouri. We have friends in Chicago, so we've been there from time to time since we got married. We've never gone to the east or the south as a couple. But we have two things in St. Louis that bring us to the west several times a year: one of our church's temples, which we are encouraged to visit frequently in order to worship and contemplate, and one of my older brothers, who lives there with his wife and children. We are always meaning to visit St. Louis more often than we do. It is hard to get away, and it is hard to spend the money for gas. So we are also always looking for a good reason to make sure our birds have plenty of food and water and hit the open road. Earlier this week, I got a call from my brother wanting to know what we were do...

I finally got around to updating our blog last week and, as those who read it hopefully figured out, it was quite the marathon writing session! It took me over an hour and a half to write the 2,900-plus post! I told Gretchen that I wanted to start updating our blog at least once a week on Sunday mornings. We have church in the afternoon this year, so it means we have a lot of time in the morning to prepare and plan and spend time together. (Somehow this doesn't seem to work when we have church in the morning or in the middle of the other two congregations with which we share our building.) The funny thing is that I am not at all opposed to blogging. As many of you probably (hopefully) know, I blog every day about my adventures in teaching fourth grade. (If you didn't know, the blog is at http://teachingfourth.wordpress.com. It is updated every day I have work, and occasionally on weekends or holidays if I have something to write about.) But for some reason, Gretch and I jus...

This is the blog post that I have wanted to write for several months. Since the end of August, in fact. I have delayed and hesitated and drafted then discarded and doubted and planned and drafted and discarded so many times that I find myself wondering why I didn't just get it done with. The quick answer to that last bit is that I was hoping for the last piece of the puzzle to show up and fit in the right place so I could put it together. But recent events have made me realise that I shouldn't have doubted and struggled with this post; that I should have just written it. First some background. This is mostly going to be information that close family and friends already know but I want to share it for the benefit of those who may be visiting this blog for the first time, or just stumbled upon it while searching for information. Gretch and I got married in 2008. This was right after I had graduated, but about a year before she did. For the first year of our marriage, we ...