Seasonal Crunch

Every year since...way back maybe 25 years.... I have co-opted my friend Carla's toffee recipe and made candy for the staff that worked with my husband. ( recipe here) I used to make it for my staff too until the amount reached enough for 80 to 100 people, and I couldn't afford or deal with another 50 to 60 packages. It's a pretty serious arm stirring few days. Basically the stuff makes me literally ill to even see, when Jack walked in two days ago with his request for it I almost died of shock. What toffee? By when? Oh yeah, ok.

(remind me sometime to tell the story when we used nuts from the cabinet detecting bugs)



The ingredients await.......(my daughters) as we check the recipe.
butter, check
sugar, check
nuts, check
chocolate, check



In all I had six bowls like this to the brim.



You wouldn't think making toffee would take anything out of you but 12 packages of butter later, two bags of sugar, 10 bags of slivered almonds, 2 of pecans, 12 of walnuts, and 15 of chocolate chips and the elf shop is closing for the night. My daughters helped in round one last night, and I woke up early today for round two. I am hobbled, for sure, so it did stiffen up my back- but we did it. I'm looking at the finished work in two boxes thinking you'd think it was nothing....Packaging and tagging was greatly aided by my daughter Sophia. This is the long way to say we spent two days doing this. I never really realize until times like this what effort goes into gifts of food. What a labor of love it is.







Packaging the toffee....





While we were doing this I started playing a Facebook game I saw-Bejeweled Blitz- that one of my friends (and a teacher that taught my son, Ms. M.) kills at. Weeks ago I thought when I feel better I'm going to try that game out to find a pleasant thing to do sometimes when I'm dragging around, but when I talked to my father the other night he said this is actually rather important -talking about times to work and times to relax. I struggle sometimes with relax.

I thought I remembered this game specifically from seeing Sylvia play in the car when I used to take my daughter to dance and they'd get my cell phone in the back and laugh all the way. I am pretty obsessive with a game for awhile, so I stayed up trying and got some score of say 60,000. M daughter played again for the first time in years getting 150,000. Yikes, people are good at these things. Pretty much that describes my relationship to games. I do try. I think I keep repeating my poor strategies. My daughter suggested I "go faster."
So in retaliation I'm blaming the syrinx and moving on.
Anyway I'm thinking there might be something to that. The surgeon said it accounted for the astoundingly bad reflexes. It's lame but I'm blaming it on this.
Right now my kids are playing something called "the wii" I can only imagine how I'd do on that.
But you stand up and do strange body things on that one.



Oh and they conquered the world in risk, my daughter and her buddies.

Games, you know, are a fairly big part of a way I'd teach math if given a little leeway. I used to have chess going in 1st grade by this time in the year in the old un-scripted days.


Mom's , as you know, are good at bragging, guilt, cooking, and I hope loving and nurturing. So I am going to turn this into a momming post. This was kind of an up and down home week.
Plus side- my kids are all home. I realize all over again what great kids they are and how much I love them. It's just so great to have them together, for whatever it's worth I just have enjoyed looking at them. Just looking like some lovestruck puppy. I guess we just feel our kids are the most profoundly beautiful beings that ever existed. It's really great to fill up the eyes.....The girls out crocheted me already this week, making hats and scarves. I was like-wow.

Then there is the down side news...I had three cats, but two disappeared at the start of the week. Yeah as in dead. I went out back to find this hawk preparing to attack my third cat the day after they disappeared. I don't know what's going on. I just know this hawk was about a foot off the kitty wings spread and ready to attack. Right by the back door, it was the most intense thing I've ever seen. So my lone cat is locked up, and I can't talk about it too much.



I know the video shakes all over I'd just gone out and this hawk had no fear of me and it was a rather confrontational thing. Plus Mom was getting in the way.

My mother had sad news this week too. An old friend of hers died over Thanksgiving, but she did not get the news right away. Nancy Kotz was in school with my parents at Tennessee when they went to under-grad school at UT in the days of Johnny Majors. She and her husband became good friends. In the 1950's. Her husband died just after she had her second child, a long time ago, and Nancy raised her children and was a teacher. I loved talking with her over the years about the "state of affairs" in teaching. In March she called and just straightforwardly told my mom she had leukemia. We hadn't heard from her in awhile, and we both knew why I think, but Mom got brave enough to call two nights ago to hear it from her daughter. It's funny but it made both of us very withdrawn and just indescribably sad. She was a wonderful person.
Here is what I sent to her guestbook-but it was written for her two kids:

I wanted to write to you Steve and Karen because I don't think my mom can and we share a rather special connection.
Both your parents were a part of the oral traditions of my life, part of the fabric of friendship, concern, care of my parents lives. They met in Tenn. at school and my father always thought of your father as a dear, dear friend. One of his closest. Dad laughed with your Dad-I suspected was still a boy a bit with your Dad -and knew him as he started his family, and as he left the earth so early, too early.
Both my parents admired, loved and thought the world of your mom. What she did was decide to lift herself up from such a loss and raise her kids, above all as a rock for them, teaching, being a true exemplar for any of us. Boy, she was amazing.

My parents told many stories of their times together as young people, all through my years, and now that I've hit 50 I understand better why they held that so dear in their re-telling. It's a time in your life when you are learning to be-you are expanding, making lives.It is one of the most real times we live. We define "who we are" and what we are about then. And your mother and father did this in a way my parents admired and respected.

My mother has been helped immeasurably over the last few years by your mom checking in on her regularly (I've enjoyed that care too by the way), talking on the phone, coming out to see us 6 or so years past, it gave her connection and kindness that really was important as she faced a stroke and other things that aging brings. When she called down the other day to see why she hadn't heard- both of us knew that Nancy had probably just gotten too ill.A hard call for her to face. And Mom spent the evening so unusually in her interior spaces until finally I guess what she'd learned. People aren't made, I don't think any more, like that generation and I called my father-who is quite ill- to tell him the sad news.
Both of them send you their love.
Both of them would want you to know that among their closest, dearest, most admired friendships sat your parents. They were loved, they are remembered by the McIntosh's. Dad retold for me stories of Bob Kotz, one story of his frustration that his name was always said wrong, even before his getting his degree at Tenn. ( with his humor about that waiting another telling).
Your parents knew how to tell a good joke. Understood humor and our common humanity, knew how to shed seriousness a second and look around and get real. Nancy knew what mattered, her life in teaching was about making the world a better place.That is the bedrock of these 4 people, our parents. The thing I thought of her was her ability to fight for the profession of teaching in a time many were cowards and gave away the farm, I admired her clarity, wit and her insights. It's rare to find that in anyone. In her it looked easy.
She carried that with the greatest of grace.
I know you'll feel this loss all your days. I dread facing this time in my life. I'm so sorry that her illness cheated you out of more years, but I also know you must have the warmest memories. A mom like that will be there for you always. She's just inside your heart.

My mom sends her love and concern as well as her hopes that in all of you is instilled a piece of both of those parents, such good friends from times when they were setting out into their lives, having their kids, setting their courses. She is thinking of you sending healing thoughts and prayers and all of us want you to know how much is thought of your mom. We loved her dearly.

Sarah McIntosh Puglisi, daughter of Kenneth and Jean McIntosh

Made me pause to think how rapidly time has passed, she visited about 6 years ago. I am in shock that she's gone. It's so sad to me when a great teacher leaves the earth. Of all the losses I feel, the loss of teachers seems to me to be one of the greatest unsung sadnesses. I know we need celebrities for some important purposes that entertainment fills, but very rarely do I hear people say that these entertainers change their lives quite like I hear in listening to folks talk about their teachers. But the showbiz deaths receive great notice, well of course. Teachers however do change lives. And I meet almost no one that can't name the teachers that mattered for them. I like to listen and hear the stories of those unsung people. So Nancy Kotz is appearing here in my seasonal posting so I can share with you this wonderful teacher that gave a lifetime to kids. Some real pistols.

Nancy had a great sense of humor. Once remarking to me about NCLB, "Can you believe this shit?"
I've always appreciated that.


Somehow I started wanting after that news to distract myself so I started playing the game on Facebook -you sort of slide jewels around-since my kids are presently wii-ing it. It kind of enabled me to develop a pretty clear case of new obsessive behavior in just under two days.

Sylvia, my daughter, wrote two papers she shared with me that by mom's bragging rights I want to talk about, and clearly it's just a wandering post, so I want to put them here.
If I can put them here. I'm going to try it anyway...

Syl is taking a Shakespeare class and this was one of her papers on Coriolanus. I thought it was so interesting. And this was one earlier in her semester on Titus and Andronicus.
Read them....please.
She is majoring in CNS ( Her degree is Engineering and Applied Science with an emphasis in Computation and Neural System Focus/ and a Bachelors of Science in English from Cal Tech).
So I asked her for permission to put her papers because I thought they were both very cool.

You might be able to tell that we are kind of just coming to the end of the year. Because I've been out awhile with a leave for this back injury, with a set of epidurals to do on the 29th I'm dis-oriented seasonally. My clock surely is set by teaching. But I am getting that last stand at the momming thing- as my kids are growing and grown.

Oh, oh, we decorated two trees this year.

On this tree is every decoration given to me by students in 27 years and made by my kids.
And it is incredibly special to me each one is a story and each one brings forward a child that spent a year of their life with me.

We got a "real" tree this year. First time since Syl was three and allergies convinced me to go plastic. Jack hauled it in, well Luca helped, as a surprise. It's smelling a lot like Christmas.

Sophia decorated this one with her friends....

I'm going here with a slideshow..of that whole fun evening with our "real tree".

.

And for the music...humm....



That's the last day or so. I haven't got any presents figured out. But scarves, hats and shawls are very likely! So get ready.