Dogsta Paradise

Sand, water, and snow?

What a good idea!

Deep Freeze

We're rushing around getting organized for our annual Oscar holiday weekend. This year, like last, we're renting a place on the Chesapeake Bay. The idea came to me a couple of years ago when after taking the Monday after the ceremony off, we woke to nearly 70 degrees at the end of February.

Such a day cried out for a road trip and so we put the dog in the car and headed east. That day, we rolled up our pants and splashed through amazingly temperate tidal pools as we walked the sandy shore of North Beach. We should do this every year! I thought, and a couple of Oscars later, we found a place in Scotland, MD to spend the weekend.

Last year, the weather wasn't too bad when we arrived on Saturday, and we spent the late afternoon beach combing for fossils and sea glass. It seemed impossible that they were predicting snow for the next night, and we joked about being stranded in such a place. Truth be told, we did have a bit of a harrowing ride home, but it all turned out fine-- just part of the adventure.

Tonight we're preparing for our long weekend away in record cold temperatures with some more wintery weather threatening tomorrow, but I can't get upset. There will be a warm house right on the beach with plenty of firewood when we get there, and I don't even have to find room in the freezer for the extra stuff I got at the grocery store this afternoon. It's all chillin' in the car, ready to beat the storm in the morning.

Compromise

The collaborative writing project I mentioned earlier is in full swing-- students are working in pairs to create a story written entirely in letters and other forms of correspondence. Even though they conducted extensive interviews, some kids found themselves with a partner who wasn't exactly on the same page in terms of plot, setting, and/or conflict.

For the most part, I have been very impressed with their ability to to meet in the middle. Out of 40 pairs, I've only had to switch two and counsel one extensively. This latter duo was fraught with friction until they hatched a story about two students who didn't want to work together but had to find a way to successfully complete their assignment. They say write what you know...

My favorite bargain by far, though, was the guy who wanted to write about a zombie apocalypse and his partner who had her heart set on a murderous ballerina; united by their love of the horror genre, they decided to populate their story with killer zomberinas.

Buying the Farm

It was not uncommon at my first cooking job to chop up hundreds of chicken breasts a day. Lemon chicken, sesame chicken, chicken almond salad, all were staples on the menu of that catering and carry-out establishment. Over the years that was a lot of chickens sent to their demise for one small business. No wonder the classic Far Side cartoon made us laugh.

These days, we run a mostly vegan household, but that sensibility sure doesn't extend to our pets. They eat a pound of raw meat a day. They also enjoy an assortment of treats also animal-based. Beef trachea, kangaroo jerky, various tendons, they are all stowed away in our cupboard. Recently we came into a windfall of freeze-dried duck feet-- a friend with four dogs bought them in bulk and found that her hounds easily tired of those particular poultry parts. As a result we have a hundred of them in the larder, which just makes me picture 50 ducks bobbing rudderless on an idyllic lake down on the Footless Duck Farm.

A Deep Bench

When I was little we had a set of Corning nesting bowls. Turquoise and white with a ring of farmers and roosters, the three of them were in heavy rotation in our kitchen. To us kids, the largest one was most notably the popcorn bowl, the medium one was the salad bowl, and the small one was often used for scrambling eggs.

The ones we had are long gone, replaced in my own kitchen by much more practical stainless steel, but several years back, I got a replacement set of the rooster bowls for Christmas, and I treasure them, even though I don't use them often, because there are certain times when those shelf-warmers are indispensable.

And on a snow day like today, when corn popped on the fire and Sally Lunn rising in the kitchen warmed us up after shoveling and sledding,, they were starters

Presidents Day Present

Historically, it seems that Presidents Day is the most likely time in our area for a big storm. '79, '03, and the Snowmeggedon/Snoverkill of 2010 delivered us multiple days of digging in and digging out right in the middle of February. And now this year, just when we thought that winter would leave us without a significant snowfall, we find ourselves at the end of three-day weekend contemplating a little more time away from work. And although our district hasn't called it yet, I've got my

fingers crossed,

because,

y'know,

I think the Presidents would want it that way.

Resolution

For me, it can be difficult to set school work aside, even on a three day weekend. For example, in my English classes right now, my students and I are focusing on the elements of fiction and plot structure, and so this afternoon when I was watching Marion Cotillard's Oscar-nominated performance in the French-language film Two Days, One Night, I was all about how that story of a woman who was forced to lobby her co-workers to give up their bonuses to save her job was being shaped.

At first, I found that I was a little confused at the lack of exposition, but also drawn in by the same, and then I noticed that I was marking events as they unfolded as "rising action". And when it came to a scene in the hospital that was clearly not the "climax", if one defined the conflict as the character of Sandra trying to get her job back, but was obviously the pivotal event of the movie, I had a true a-ha moment: in addition to realizing the central conflict was internal, not external, I also recognized that those little zig-zag diagrams can really be helpful!