Scissor Happy

Joshua, Stacy, Kyle and I went to the Denver Roller Dolls Roller Derby today. We had a bunch of fun, and we even thought up a couple of would-be Roller Derby names for Stacy and me: Exstaci and Mrs. Derty. Anyway, I've been looking forward to going to the Derby for a while now, and I took the chance to dress up, and Joshua snapped the photo of me in my duds (above). The necklace is from Dharamsala, and the silk shift is one of my precious finds from Kathmandu.
Tonight, I finished my dress for Eamon's Bar Mitzvah. Among the accomplishments: pin-tucks, darts, zipper, stand up collar, interfacing, facing, and sleeves. All went according to plan except for the sleeves. Trixie little f****ers. One is slightly longer than the other.
Here's a view from the front.
Me: scissor happy; DIY proud.
Another gamine scissor shot :) Joshua says, "you look like a 50s housewife!" I say, "mission accomplished. Do you mind picking up your socks and doing the dishes, sweetie?"

Ms. Teacher Lady

So, as you may gather from the day's posts, it's been a busy month. As usual, the more I have to write about, the worse the writing, but I'm thinking of this as a functional diary - more who-what-when-how than prose.

Speaking of which, apparently some people think I do have a bit of a knack with the prose. This winter, a gentleman working with thegreathimalayatrail.org e-mailed me with a bunch of questions regarding our travels on the Tamang Heritage Trail. Just last week, he wrote me another e-mail with the link to my responses. You can also see my profile on the list of contributors.

Anyway, I've clearly fallen off the wagon when it comes to the blog and writing, despite all my resolutions while we were traveling. I tried my hand at some submissions and fiction during the Spring, but to be honest, my heart wasn't in it. What I really love writing about is traveling.

Speaking of which, I've got the itch again, bad. I'm trying to convince Joshua that we should live in Mexico for a couple of years in a few years' time, and I think I've got him hooked. I think we may never be able to buy a house, because I'll just want to keep traveling (and why have a house?).

Enough rambling! I began this post with the intention to talk about teaching, and here I am talking about writing and traveling instead! I swear this is not some Freudian slip :)

And it isn't, because for the past three weeks, I've been teaching summer school at my new school. It's been demanding and I've had a lot of prep time for two 100 minute periods, but after a couple of weeks, I really started to feel like I was getting the hang of it. I became more efficient, and already, I felt like I had good relationships with the kids. They're fab, and I love the age. 6th graders are a little doofy, a little squirrelly, and a lot adorable. I love them.

For my students, summer school means that they didn't pass their classes during the year. In order to get into 7th grade, they need to pass a cumulative test at the end of summer school. It's very high stakes.

And I'll be honest with you: although we worked very hard, I gave both of my classes a quiz mid-way through. It wasn't good. The no one got more than a third of the questions right, and I was basing all of my lesson plans upon the content of these quizzes. I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

On Friday, my principal came in to ask me how I thought my students would do, and I told him my fears: they had done terribly on the quiz last week, and although they were doing better on their Exit Slips this week, I was still concerned that many of them may not pass. Their reading levels are still significantly behind, and many of them had poor attendance. To top it off, I still feel as though I'm climbing my own learning curve. I wanted to maintain high expectations, but to be perfectly honest, I'm so accustomed to my students' and my own failure when it comes to teaching that I really do have low expectations.

Well. They all passed. Every single one of them. Even the three kids that I was almost positive would fail. It was a network-wide test with a fairly standard grading system, and I had a couple of students in the 90 percent range, a number of them in the 80 percent range, and all of them above a 65 percent. In average, they passed with a 81 percent average. I was ecstatic, and it felt like the most rewarding, meaningful thing in the world to hand them their tests with their grades and tell them they passed. They were so proud of themselves, and I was so proud of them.

So my introduction to teaching in Denver was a success. I feel good about the basic skills that I already have and was able to hone just a little bit, and I feel confident that I can become even better this year. I adore the students, and I'm convinced that I'm working for good, hard-working, and compassionate people who have extremely high expectations and have already begun doing amazing things. It's going to be hard work, but I think it's going to be good work.

That's all for now, folks. Lots of love, and happy summertime.

Backpack Food Prep

Had the idea to by bulk beans at the store, slow cook, and then dehydrate them on wax paper in our dehydrator. We've done black-eyed peas, black beans, and pinto beans, and they've turned out great! They're light weight and they won't waste gas because it will only take minutes to get them to a place where we can eat them!

Here is the equivalent of a huge slow-cooker full of black beans. Yum yum!

Pin-Tucks and Zippers

Here's my dress for my brother, Eamon's bar mitzvah. I picked out the fabric and pattern this winter, but after I cut out the fabric, I was paralyzed with fear and moved not further. This week, I pulled out the sewing machine and got to work. It's not finished (it still needs a hem and sleeves), but this photos shows you the zipper (which gave me nightmares). I've never attached a zipperfoot or put a zipper into anything before, but here's my first attempt, and it looks pretty good!

Front view of pin-tucks, pockets, and bodice darts.

I'm making the one in the middle with the short sleeves.

These are some of the vintage patterns I found at the Salvation Army in Red Wing. I absolutely adore the one in the upper right hand corner.


I've been crafty too! Kyle's mom, Gaylynn, was visiting Kyle and Stacy for the past couple of weeks, and she's a master seamstress. We went to Hancock Fabrics, and I went a little crazy finding fabric for some of the vintage patterns that I had bought on the cheap from the Salvation Army in Red Wing. In the picture above, I've arranged the fabrics I bought and the patterns I intend to use. I'm going to make a couple shirts with the tangerine fabric, the short short sleeved dress with the black and white and magenta fabric, and a skirt with the magenta and ochre fabric. Someday. Hopefully. One at a time.

Although I wasn't able to finagle a private lesson, Gaylynn did give me a bunch of tips, and I've been inspired to complete a dress that I started this winter. I haven't finished yet, but I've posted the photos of the half-finished product :)

Second-Hand Denver

And yes, I've been scoping out the thrift stores of Denver. One find, which I'm almost loathe to divulge on-line for everyone to see, is Cajun's Closet of the Cat Society. Rated number one by the Westword, it was my first adventure, and I've been back once already. I'm trying to save my pennies, but I did purchase a bunch of vintage earring for cheap, and these little orange pumps and hot pink pin-tuck skirt called out to me.

I've been to Goodwill on Broadway (so-so), but the other thrift store I'm a fan of (and yes, I've already been there twice, too) is the Arc on Colfax. Big store with plenty of Kitchen stuff, clothes, and furniture.

A Pietari Welcome

Some background: Stacy and Kyle Pietari are the fun, fab couple that we met up with in Nepal. As you may recall from this post, Kyle had a number of close brushes with death on our Kaligandaki Rafting Trip - namely, a close brush with a poisonous snake whilst trying to have a little private time in a rice paddy and a similarily terrifying underwater experience beneath the most dangerous rapid we crossed in three days.

If it's not crazy and wonderful enough that our travels coincided in Nepal, just wait; Stacy and I have had a number of stupendously serendipitous events. As freshmen, we were roommates. Stacy transfered after her first year at UPS, but during our senior year, she noticed my avid recruitment for a certain teaching organization on facebook and wrote to tell me that she had joined said organization and would be teaching Middle School Science in New Orleans.

As you may recall from the beginning of my blog, Joshua and I just so happened to have the exact same placement. While we were not the most social of butterflies in good ole Orleans, we did have an adventurous escapade in the wilds of Mississippi where the eating of squirrels, consumption of fire water, and near arrest of a belligerent fellow teacher all did happen. The trip, a rare and surreal foray during the school year, has become something of a legend.

After we got back from our long trip, Joshua and I took a weekend to go and visit Stacy and Kyle in Duluth, where Stacy grew up. We ran a snow shoe race (that's right; you think walking in snowshoes is hard? Try running for 5 miles.), enjoyed good food, and caught up on our respective job searches.

At some point, Stacy and Kyle came to visit us on the farm. I was already working, but we made lots of food and I gave an impromptu cross country ski lesson to all involved.

About a month after Joshua and I moved down to Denver, I was talking to Stacy over gchat, and she told me that they were widening their search for jobs. I suggested Denver and immediately put her in touch with a couple of the people I had been speaking with, and within a couple of weeks, we were picking Stacy up from the airport. After a couple of interviews, we spent a great, rainy weekend playing speed scrabble and making headbands. On the Monday, Stacy heard back from one of the principals, and she was offered the position. I'm sure that Stacy was the most excited out of everyone, but Kyle, Joshua, and I all gave her a good run for her money. We were all absolutely thrilled that they would be moving down.

ANYWAY. I began this post with an image of a cross-stitch, and I've yet to explain myself. Joshua and I decided that we wanted to make the Pietaris a welcome gift, and so, at Michael's, we looked around for some inspiration. Joshua suggested cross-stitch, and I told him I've never done such a thing in my life. So we bought it.

After probably a dozen movies, I produced a suitably sassy cross-stitch. Stacy and Kyle met when they joined a semester internship with Green Peace in Washington D.C. Since then, they've been vegans and vegetarians, but their culinary green-ness never ceases to amaze and fascinate me. Kyle sprouts, makes Kombucha and Kimchi. Stacy makes the most fabulous baked goods in the world, and some of them don't even have sugar, dairy, or wheat in them. (How the HELL does someone pull that off?) Anyway, if you can't see, these are the words and quotes I stitched around their last name (a hybrid of their pre-marriage last names: Saari and Peters):

"...without the carob powder it would be completely unpalatable..." (Kyle, in reference to his daily morning shakes that usually involve both fruits and vegetables of wide-ranging tastes)

SPROUT (in reference to Kyle's intense rinse-and-grow live food)

egg-substitute

KOMBUCHA

dehydrator (these two have MASTERED the art of dehydration)

Veggie Burger Cook Off (I can't remember who won, but they had one)

AGAVE = TEQUILA = SWEETENER (Kyle is a tee-totaler, but Stacy loves the Tequila ;))

HAPPY HEALTHY WHOLE

Breakfast Shakes

RAW

"...and sometimes it even tastes good..." (Stacy, in reference to Kyle's cooking.)

Since Stacy and Kyle moved (5 blocks away from us!) we've been hanging around, painting, building furniture, and planting an epic garden. The other night, Stacy and I spent the evening sewing. Both Joshua and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful friends here in Denver with us.

Primate Squash

Unfortunately, the great big radish you behold above had bolted and the radish was woody from over-maturation. However! It was our first pull from the garden (save some snips from the parsley and cilantro).

Here I am contemplating some of our finer radishes. Did you know that you can eat radish greens? They kind of prickle your tongue!

Chop. Chop. Do you notice the Spanish labels? That's because, my dear, we've labeled a bunch of things in our home to aid our learnin'. My favorite is "la juala de los pajaros" or "los platos de vendimia."

Garden: Part 1. This is our first garden. In front, you can see our herbs, then a few rows of leafy greens, a couple rows of purple onions, carrots, spinach, and then, in back, summer squash, cucumber, peas, and tomatoes. The layout was primarily engineered by Joshua, but I was a full participant in the seeding, replanting, and weeding :)

After roto-tilling Kyle and Stacy's backyard, Joshua was understandably envious of their urban farm. He decided to follow suit. Witness Garden: Part 2. Also: look at those mounds for all our varieties of squash! I made and planted all of them in two afternoons!

These are our happy happy tomato plants and our snow peas. While the tomatoes were starts, we began the peas from seed. They are by far the most satisfying to watch. They are curly and happy and grab onto anything they can wrap their little tendrils around. Joshua engineered these clever string trellises - thrifty and they more than do the trick :)

Apparently, summer squash goes ape-shit in Colorado. We're going to have summer squash coming out of our ears.