Happy Halloween North Fargo!

So Halloween is here!  I love this holiday!  It gives me a chance to be super nerdy and dress up while stealing my son's candy!  Honestly, what could be better?  And then today I heard the same story you all heard at some point.  About the woman who wants to send out the following letter to children she deems as obese.

 If you live near this lady, go grab a carton of eggs!  Yes, a woman in North Dakota is handing out the following letter.  There are so many things wrong with this (besides the missing period at the end of a sentence and the over usage of a comma) Here is a helpful list of alternative things this woman could have done instead.

1. Mind your own business.  That's a pretty easy one.  Just pass out the candy lady and shut up!   But since you’re incapable of doing that…

2. Pass out fruit snacks or pretzels.  Both options are fat free.  Yes they are a little more costly, but clearly since you are so concerned with the welfare of the neighborhood children an extra buck or two won't matter.

3.  Short on money?  How about going to the dollar store and getting 2 bags of Halloween rings.  They come in quantities of 50.  100 should do it for the night!

4.  Stop judging everyone's kids!  This has come up a lot lately in conversations I've had with other Moms.  Who are these people who think THEY know best when it comes to MY child.  If I want to let my kid gore himself on Halloween candy I have something to worry about before obesity hits- the fact that he'll be pinging off the walls until Thanksgiving for one.  

So to the good people of Fargo, North Dakota, if your child comes home with one of these letters, here is what YOU can do!  Chances are if your kid leaves a house with a piece of paper, they’re going to complain right away.  Write down the address and do one of the following.

1.     Mail one back eloquently explaining how she is a pimple on society and should move out of the neighborhood.

2.    Sign her up for every possible junk mail out there; Rogaine, Weight Watchers, Jehovah Witness Monthly.  If there’s a mailing list put her on it.

3.    Better yet SEND Jehovah Witnesses to her house.  Every month!

4.    Egg her house.  On Thanksgiving.  Just because.

5.    Remember that episode of Murphy Brown where she had potatoes sent to Dan Quayle?  You know the crummy candy your kids don’t like?  Instead of YOU eating them and consuming unwanted calories…I know a house in North Fargo that could use a truckload of candy on their front lawn!

Yes, these all sound like mean and horrible things to do to another human being.  But sitting here as a Mom and a teacher, my blood is just boiling!  It’s scary enough as a parent sending your kid out into this world; you worry if they’ll get teased by their peers.  Now we have to worry about “grownups” doing the same?!  As someone who has worked with children for years now, I honestly and obviously understand that children need nutritious choices and parents need to supply that for them.  However I also know that children need to be CHILDREN!  Let the kids have a fun night out!  You know what the best thing was about Halloween growing up as a girl with insecurities?  It was the one night a year I could be anyone!  And this beast is trying to take that away from innocent children whose only crime is going to this witch’s house.  At least I know what to do with Brady’s Mounds bars this year!

Get Ready…Get Set…WRITE! NANOWRIMO is Almost Here!

November means a lot of different things for many people.  Here in Rhode Island most of us begin to use the heat November 1^st, some of us clamor to the malls for the start of the holiday season, some of us can’t wait to get our hands on that turkey.  And some of us, the brave (or the crazy depending on your point of view) look forward to November for the world’s oddest acronym; NANOWRIMO.  National Novel Writing Month; one month 50,000 words and countless pots of coffee!  I’ve participated in this crazy endeavor four times.  The first time was in 2009, I started midyear after hearing about it in my classes, and thanks to the encouragement of a young performer I was at the time directing.  I didn’t start writing until mid month, and made it to maybe 10,000 words.  Undaunted I tried again in 2010, and made it to 50,000 words and had a complete novel!  One that I edited with the help of my best friend and I have sitting in my bookcase; proof that I took the plunge and accomplished it!  The Reunion sits in my bookshelf and occasionally I send it out to agents in the hopes that someone will love it as much as I do.  The following year I won amongst the hardest month of my life.  November of 2011 I lost my Dad to a very long illness.  I have always found writing to be something of a therapeutic method, so it’s really no wonder that I latched onto my laptop as if it was a lifeline.  I took a break in 2012 since I was student teaching, (although I did attempt to do this as a class project with my students…another blog for another day!) and am very excited to begin this year.  I am going into it with a large online support group comprised of fellow students in the MA English and Creative Writing program at SNHU.  The encouragement is fantastic, and many of us seem nervous, and excited.  Some have begun to look for tips online, so I thought why not add myself to the list?  After all, I have been through NANOWRIMO and lived to tell the tale!  Why not offer some survival tips?

1.       Writing is not a luxury in November, it is your JOB!  You have to think like this.  Yes, there are dishes, and homework, and laundry, but your novel, the novel you MUST tell will no longer wait!  Get it out there and do it now!  

2.      50,000 words is only 1,666 words per day.  Some days you’ll do way more…some days you’ll do less, just always carve out that time in your day!

3.      Any extra time you have should be all about your novel!  Only have ten minutes?  Maybe you can quickly jot out 100 words.  

4.      Stuck?  Should you go back and read what you wrote?  NO!!!  Do something catastrophic, kill a character, invite a plague in; give your characters a real hardship to deal with and see that word count go up!

5.      There’s no shame in writing do not for don’t or will not for won’t…remember every bit helps!

6.      Coffee.  Lots of coffee.

7.      Tell your family; tell them that this is important to you.  At this point my family and close friends know that if I’m sleep deprived in the month of November it’s okay.

8.      Sleep deprivation isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you[‘re working towards the greater good.  Your novel IS the greater good!

9.      Did I mention coffee?

10.  Remember this, over 100 novels written during NANOWRIMO have found themselves to bookshelves via traditional publishers.  Does Water for Elephants ring a bell?  Sara Gruen’s amazing novel was conceived in a month-and yours can be too!

So what are you waiting for?  Go out there and write!  The world needs your novel!

Things My Son Has Taught Me

Tonight I took Brady, my very active five year old boy, to the Rhode Island Philharmonic.  Brady has been semi obsessed with music since I took him to a high school band concert last Spring.  He is insistent on becoming a conductor.  On top of that his music teacher at school is a violinist in the Philharmonic and if you know Brady then you know how attached he can become to people; he really wanted to see her play!  

Here’s the thing.  Although I am a self proclaimed theatre nerd, although I think the arts are vital to our schools and communities, I’ve never really been that into classical music, and have never EVER understood why people dole out so much money just to watch musicians play a piece of classical music.  Now true, my favorite Pandora station does happen to be the John Williams station, but I’ve always used that as background music when I write or teach.  Tonight I understood why people go out to see an orchestra.  It was amazing, beautiful and at times educational.  And I never would have gone if Brady hadn’t shown such an interest in it.  It made me think of additional things I have learned and experienced because of my beautiful son.

In life you have to be patient…sometimes this is a harder lesson for myself than my five year old!

Parenting is the longest theatre improv game out there! 

Dishes can stay in the sink if it means a few more minutes of playtime.

Things are cool, but nothing replaces time. 

Trips to the grocery store can be fun!

Fruit snacks are really good!

A Friday night playdate with trains and cupcakes is so much more fun than a Friday night at a bar.

Saturday morning soccer games for children under six are funnier than Saturday Night Live!

Magic is real…don’t believe me?  Come to my house Christmas morning…or on Halloween…

A straw is not a straw.  It is a magic wand…or a conductor wand depending on the fad of the day.

Kids ARE sponges.  Remember that when talking.

Or driving…nothing worse than a five year old announcing to a group of people that “Mommy drives fast and got in trouble!” 

If you set high expectations, your child will rise to meet them. 

EVERYTHING is negotiable.  Dinner portions, bedtime, playtime.

Everything except how much you can love another person.

Parenting is not a job…it is not a career…it’s a whole lifestyle!

Every day I learn something new from my kid.  Sometimes it’s a fact he learned in school, most of the time it’s about the type of human being I want to be.  Creative, loving, full of wonderment, kind, funny and enthusiastic. 

"Life Starts All Over Again When It Gets Crisp in the Fall"

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall”

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this in The Great Gatsby and it has been on my mind a lot lately.  Maybe because this week as a sub I worked in a classroom that was reading it, and it is by far one of my most favorite novels of all time.  I have teacher envy when it comes to this book because I am simply dying to teach it in my own classroom!  Nerdy aspirations aside, it’s more likely that I live in one of the most beautiful regions of this country, especially during the fall.

Now I know a lot of you, (or maybe two of you since this blog has been dormant for so long and I think only three people read it!) are rolling your eyes and thinking to yourself that I have officially lost it.  But it’s true.  Rhode Island is a beautiful state, and as an added bonus we get all four seasons.  And what a show off this state can be during the month of October!  Today we went to the Scituate Art Festival, a yearly tradition especially as someone who grew up in Scituate.  And as I walked under the banner this year, I couldn’t help but smile and of course snap a picture with my phone.  And it’s not just the foliage, the apple dumplings, doughboys oh yeah and the art; it’s the annual homecoming.  Taking a stroll down West Greenville Road I can remember walking hand in hand with my father as a young child to hit his favorite spot of course, the sausage and peppers stand!  I can see myself and my friends, experiencing some new found freedom as eighth graders roaming the festival by ourselves, checking out boys and feeling oh so grown up!  I remember the weekends spent behind cash registers to raise money for chorus trips, the one crazy weekend I thought my 86 Nova could drive down the center of the Festival, rushing to the Festival after taking the SAT’s, or singing in the Congregational Church with the Scituate High School chorus, the very same church I later got married in!

When confronted with memories of your past, especially those centered during high school, it’s hard not to reminisce and with that I had a feeling of a clean slate; of life starting over again with the falling of the leaves and the crispness in the air.  Now when I go to the Art Festival, it’s with my beautiful family and we have our itinerary mapped out before we park the car.  We know we are going to visit the same artist and buy a print since we have been doing so since we were pregnant with Brady.  We didn’t know if Brady was a Brady or a Betty when we bought the first print, we just knew that Eric Sturtevant’s pictures were what we wanted our baby to see on his or her walls!  Five years later and Brady picks out his own prints and bookmarks!  We know we’re going to get an apple dumpling which I’ll pay extremely close attention to so I can attempt to replicate it later in the weekend.  Much to my husband’s dismay, we know we’re going to stop at the library book sale so I can add to the growing bookshelves, bins and piles I have stashed away.  We know I’ll bump into at least a few people I haven’t seen in a while and reminisce on how young we used to be, and how old our mid thirties feels!  It’s the same, but different.  Life is starting over again, similar to the New Year, however for some reason the New Year begins Columbus Day weekend for me.  And it’s with this sense of newness, of life beginning over again that I have decided again to try and blog AGAIN!  Maybe I’ll stick to it, maybe life will get in the way.  And if so, there’s always next Fall to grab me by the shoulders and kick-start my "New Year's" resolutions.