Teacher Mom: Now I know what marvelous is...

Friday, June 27, 2008

Now I know what marvelous is...

I finished the Life of Pi and let me tell you the ending was the best part of the entire book. It was so amazing I want to read it again. My brain is dancing! I can’t even pick up another book now; I have to let my brain marinade in this one. It was so incredibly brilliant. When you read it, don’t neglect the extra chapter at the end, it will toy with your mind, make you wonder, and remind you why we read and why a story is a story. Yann Martel is a genius, an absolute genius.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: An interesting Canadian fellow!
Sending a book q2weeks to our Prime Minister with a very good commentary. Trying to educate Mr.Harper! It's funny. One of the letters praises teachers very highly, lamenting the poor appreciation and not-enough-salary for the educators of the next generation. You'll see that on Google if you're interested.; July 4, 2008 at 2:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Claudia, That is amazing, thank you! Yann Martel is a bit “cheeky” sending the prime minister a book every two weeks, isn’t he... But what a wonderful list along with his letters explaining why he has chosen each selection. Well, no worries for me about what I’ll be reading when I’m done with my list. I’m going to start on this list. I have read many of these and we both have To the Lighthouse on our lists, and as I’ve written about before I teach To Kill A Mockingbird. I haven’t read the second Tolstoy that he sent so I’ll have to read that along with Bonjour Tristesse written by a 19-year-old French girl, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and the poetry books. I am not reading the Kafka again, not a favorite of mine. Anyway let me stop dissecting the list. The letter about teachers was brilliant! I am going to put the link in the link area if anyone wants to check it out. What a treat, a list of what a wonderful author is recommending to someone else to read. It’s like finding out where your hairdresser gets her hair done! Or where your favorite chef likes to eat. Thank you!; July 5, 2008 at 1:22 AM
Anonymous said...: I'm happy you're happy. Of course, because of my age (78), I read many of those books. Yet, his commentaries are great. Did you notice, with the poems, the shortest (which Yann quotes)?

FLEAS
Adam
'ad 'em

I laughed so much!All the best.; July 5, 2008 at 3:04 PM

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Cute "Stuff" from My Kiddo

"Are leaves cavemen's underwear?"

"Mom, I think the sky is G-d's scarf." Hmm maybe it is...

"Ma you know how I get mad at you for calling me your baby? Well... It's okay now, I know what you mean." My baby!

"I know I'm new to the front seat, but do you have to actually put stuff on top of me?" Ha Ha my bad! Put my purse right on top of her...

"Parent's are so 70s!"

"Biggerest" ??

My darling girl gave me gift certificates for Chanukah. I keep trying to cash in my gift certificate for a back massage, and don't you know it she keeps telling me the coupon machine is broken so I can't redeem my coupon!!

My kid has a wonderful imagination and she shares what she's thinking. "Mom, I'm a fairy princess. I'm a pirate. I'm the President. I'm a kindergarten teacher," and on and on. Yesterday she gets out of the shower and yells out, "Mom, I'm a naked psychiatrist!" - OMG two words one never hears together I had to sit down I was laughing so hard. Since I was laughing so hard now randomly she'll just throw it out there "naked psychiatrist" and get me cracking up again!

My friend came over who doesn't have a dishwasher and spotted ours. She says to my daughter, "Oh you have a dishwasher, my sister swears by hers." My daughter answers, "So does my mom, but only when she's really mad." - outa the mouths of babes

We were looking at that grabby tool and I said, "That's for lazy people who just don't want to get up." She responds, "I guess really lazy, lazy people just get a husband." Hahahaha tear ha ha ha ha ha

"I get dibs on sitting." "You can't get dibs on sitting." "Oh yes I can, I called it." "But need your help." "Sorry I got dibs on sitting..." - what??

After I got tomato sauce on my shirt at lunch, my girls says, "Mom I wouldn't recognize you if you didn't have stains on your shirt!" OMG that is so true and funny.

Showing her the proper way to open the lip gloss, "Mom I don't like to do it that way. I like it my way, you wouldn't understand because you're so mediocre." I'm still laughing...

Negotiating our purchases to come at the book fair, "MOM you don't have to sharpen your point all the way to the top." Ha Ha, yea I think I made my point. :)

"Ma, what goes up and doesn't come down?"

"I don't know, taxes."

"No, dead people."

`Can't argue with that one either. RIP Freedom We Love You

Daugher acting singing, dancing and pulling me around by my hand in a parking lot: WHAT are you doing? "I work in mysterious ways ma, just like G-d." -yeah I guess :) How do you argue with that?

Getting her hair cut last weekend at my girlfriends, my daughter was listening to our conversation and my friend was talking about parenting and doing things, giving rides, etc. General talk, my daughter is sitting there and then she asks, "Ms. C., is that how you roll?" It was so funny - well I guess that's how she rolls. :)

Mom, can I ask you a question - well, if you say what I want you to say..." Hee Hee, I guess so

"Mom what does enurises mean?" "That's not a word honey." "Are you sure?" "Yes that's not a word." "Really?' "Yes I never heard of it, where did you hear that, you must have heard it wrong." "Ha ha mom, I didn't hear it wrong it's an infection in urine." "What? Spell it and let me Google it." ---Sure enough it is a word! Its the word for bedwetting. And I'm an English teacher, ooops. I think she's still laughing.

I have a wretched cold. I told my daughter I was sick as a dog. She thinks I should go to a vet! Badum bum

My girl was getting upset about something and said, "Mom, my inner cat is starting to get hissy." Hee hee hee

After we read a poem by Shel Silverstein about a lazy girl who is thirsty so she lays on her back and waits for it to rain, my girl comments, "Wow she is lazy, she can't even say Mom I'm thirsty." Ahhhh

My daughter was singing a grown up song from the radio the other day. I told her that song was too old for her to sing because it was about sex. She replies, “I know about sex mom. I know a word for it, mucha gusta.” OMG where do kids get these things?!

I have been running at night now. So we have been talking about weight and body image. My daughter told me I wasn't fat, I was just skinny on the inside. Heeheehee

I tell her she could have had her room cleaned and been halfway where we were going if she would stop complaining and do it already. She storms off, “Mom, stop rubbing it in to my skin, it’s rubbed almost all the way to my blood.” Hee Hee (It’s funny how kids try to learn our strange expressions.)

Introducing her friend to my friend, "This is my friend Christian. (pause) He's not Jewish." Hahaha

My child is calling me “woman” now. Everything she says ends with woman. It sounds so strange. I am hoping this will pass soon, like when she called me my first name instead of mom when she first started to talk. “It’s time for my bath woman,” just doesn’t sound the same as, “It’s time for my bath mommy.”

Listening at the window, I heard my daughter’s buddy say he was going to work for a construction company when he grew up. Leading her to answer when she grows up she is going to find a job buying beautiful shoes, admiring her new sandals the whole time she was talking. Dreamer, just like mom!

The geiser on her cap fell off. :)

"Can I have a drink? I'm as dry as the Bahamas in here." ;)

"Ma come watch me dance, I'm dancing to beat the band in here!" :)

Well, my first grader beat me at Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader! I'm f eeling low :) (Fossils are created in sedimentary rock. Yeah, you didn't remember either until I said it.) I told her since she was so smart she could make dinner. She loved that and filled up a chip and dip dish with different fruit in all the sections. Yum. Great, now she prepares healthier meals too!

Reminiscing - When my daughter was three I asked her what she was going to be when she grew up. She told me she was going to have beautiful dark skin like her friend and marry a girl. - Good for her. Now if you ask her she says a teacher like my mom. Good for me. I think she should be a scientist, she says maybe. Good for the world.

"Why don't you like to shake the chicken in the Shake-n-Bake bag anymore?"

"Mom, I'm growing up, it's like pulling teeth trying to get me out of my shell."

Whaaaaat? LOL

My daughter may be cured of perfume sneaking, as she was pretty embarrassed when I busted her spritzing eyeglasses cleaner on her neck today. Boy did we laugh.

I asked if my daughter needed help spelling a name for a card she was writing and she said "No, I can't put the name in now I already wrote the excited mark!" ;)

Lesson: Don't ask loaded questions. I asked my precious child, if my butt looked fat in my new pair of jeans. She said, "Mom your butt looks like it always does." Good, I'm smiling. She walks further away and yells back, "Fat!" :)

Tearing up hardly used recesses of our apartment searching for the missing library book (can you relate?), I stumbled on some old pictures. One was a picture of me when I was in kindergarten or first grade with a horrible boy's hair cut. I was joking around and said, "Look at my hairdo, Grammie didn't like me much." She answers, "Ma, Grammie must have HATED you!" Ha ha ha.

Wanting her grandmother to hurry up, "Grammie, you are charging like a snail."

Books I Recommend

*These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf ~ This book came out in March of this year and it is absolutely amazing. You will fly right through it because it absorbs you so into this story told from four different people's perspectives... Amazing!
*Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett ~ You haven't read an amazing book until you have read these. They will change your writing forever. 20 years to wait for a sequel was worth it!
*Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - Best Book ever, No question
*To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf - "...woman and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems."
*Life of Pi by Yann Martel - incredible
*The Liars Club by Mary Carr - wonderful memoir
*The Tender Bar - memoir by J.R. Moeringer - Excellent
*Song of Solomon and Beloved by Toni Morrison - These books are so incredible, her way with word an imagery will transport you
*Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples both by Ruth Reichl - If you like food as much as you like reading, devour these
*Pere Goriot by Balzac - Seriously, makes you smarter
*We Are All The Same by Jim Wooten - if you want to cry endlessly
*Hotel DuLac by Anita Brookner - Great characters, a romance novelist's own love story, sucks you in

Teacher Mom

Friday, June 27, 2008

Now I know what marvelous is...

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