Pieces of Me

I know it's been a while since I posted.  That's mainly because in order for one to blog about their lives, one must have a life-and I haven't had much of a life lately.  Lately, my existence has consisted mainly of waking up, taxi'ing everyone around, going to my 3 million jobs (not really, but it feels like it), and then coming home and doing the dinner/homework/bedtime routine.  Come evening, I just don't feel like talking to y'all.  

No offense.  

Anyway, a better writer would be disciplined and sharp enough to sit down and turn their mundane experience into interesting stories, but you all know that that's not me.   I'm happy to be a mediocre writer who's kind enough to have saved you the pain of reading about my boring life and who waited to document it until I had something worth sharing.  

Like the Dia De Los Muertos altar that I created in our home last weekend. 

Don't freak out- I'm not going all pagan on you guys.  I'm not even going to pretend that I know enough about Dia De Los Muertos to even have made an authentic altar.  I learned enough in my college course on Cultural Sensitivity to know that any true Mexican may look at this white girl's altar and become deeply offended- but to be honest, I spent that entire course biting my tongue and fighting the urge to tell people to LIGHTEN UP ALREADY.  

With that in mind, here's why I made a Day of the Dead Altar:  

1) because my friend Lisa had one in her house last year and it was really cool

2) because I like the idea of having a place in my house where family members who have passed on are remembered, even if it is only for a couple of weeks.

3) because I'm the boss and I can if I want to

Seriously though, the farther along I got in the process, the more important #2 became to me.  

For instance, here's a picture of Billie, my mom's mom, and her mom- who I called Mama Kay.  I never knew Billie because she died before I was born, but my Mama Kay lived until I was 8 or 9.  She was a Southern Belle who wore Coral colored lipstick everyday.  

 She had many husbands and a ton of secrets.  In fact, I should probably do some research on her.  It'd probably make a good novel.  

If you're wondering what that shot glass is doing there, many altars
include objects that were favored by the deceased.  They also feature food and drink to give to the "spirits" on their journey.  I figure I'm just killing two birds with one stone.  It was no secret that my grandmother liked to party- so there you go, Billie.  Cheers! 

Here's a picture of Mr. C's grandparents: 

Nuts, you can't see.  Look down towards the shadows and you'll see that there's a tool there from his grandfather, who was a do-it-yourself-fix-it-man.  

Do you have time for a short ghost story? 

One time Mr. C came in from the garage kind of spooked.  He said that he was thinking about his grandfather when, all of a sudden, this one tool that happened to belong to his grandpa rolled off the table and fell onto the floor.  Mr. C said he hadn't been touching the table or anything.  

I love that kind of story.  Gives me the best kind of chills. 

The other thing in the picture there is a cork screw that grows out of a dog's butt.  I didn't ask why that was one of the "favored" objects that Mr. C chose to include, and I don't really want to examine what it means that it's included.  The answer could be scarier than any ghost story. 

That's my grandfather- my mom's dad.  He helped Boeing engineer the fuel-injected jet plane, but ended up being buried on Potter's Field.  Long story that I really only know a bit of. 

I really should write a novel, I tell you. 

There's some more pics of Billie. 

And finally, 

some more pics of Mr. C's Hungarian relatives on the left.  On the right is my great- grandfather when he was a boy with his parents, who (I think) were direct immigrants from Wales.  

Neat-o.

Also, the picture is too small for you to see, but the lady sitting in the picture on the left is Matt's grandmother. If you look real hard, you can see that Princess G has the same wide cheek bones and face shape.  Except for the blond hair, the resemblance is a little astonishing.  For this reason, we like to tell her that she's a Hungarian Gypsy.  

She loves it.  

So that's it.  That's my post on my Dia de los Muertos altar.  You all may think I'm weird for even putting one up, and truth be told, it started out as mainly being another way to decorate the house for Halloween.  But since I've put it up, I keep finding myself drawn over to that corner.  I'll spend long moments staring at the pictures and making observations.  I'm noticing that I've got Billie's chin, my great-grandfather's nose, and my Mama Kay's face shape.  I'm looking at my grandfather's proud stance and wondering what aspects of his personality I've inherited.

Physical DNA aside, I love mulling over what I know about these people while at the same time, wishing, wishing, wishing that I knew their stories.  After all, these are the people who're responsible for my existence- as well as those of my children.  It seems fitting that I have a corner of my house set up for a few weeks to honor them.  

You all have a good night! 

Finally Fall:Edition Sneaky Peek Preview

Last weekend Mr. C dragged the Halloween box down from it's shelf in the garage and I wrote on Facebook that  we were having our "annual fight about how scary is too scary".  I thought it would be okay since I had written about this same thing last year in the Story of a Boy and His Ghoul post.

 It's one of my favorites.

Turned out,  Mr. C got a little bent out of shape over the whole thing.  He says it's not tactful to let the world know about marital conflicts, and maybe he's right.  Tact has never been my strongpoint.

I just feel like all couples have little fights over stupid stuff and if I can see the humor in the situation, I assumed others would too.  It really is a stupid little fight.

Anyway, he also pointed out that it's not really a fight because he's been giving in every year and listening to my "suggestions" (quotation marks are his).  I suppose this is true.  For the most part he has let me take his Halloween Night Horror vision for our house and whittle it down until it resembles something more along the lines of Casper the Friendly Ghost.

And in my defense, I think Mr. C forgets that there's a good reason I don't trust him with the decorations.  Like the fact that 3 years ago we had an old bloody baby head on a stick in our courtyard.  And a life size dummy with a bone sticking out of his arm.  And this guy:

He's still here, against my better judgement.

Anyway, I didn't sit down to take pot shots at Mr. C.  I sat down to write about our decorations this year.   It's a work in progress still, but here's a sneak peek.  

We've got wigs: 

We've got bones: 

We've got spiders, 

ghosts,

and snakes.

(A quick word about that snake.  Last week, before the Halloween decorations went up, Mr. C hung it there as part of a practical joke.  He was hoping I'd walk out the door, see the snake hanging there, and scream loud and long.  He thinks that kind of thing is hilarious.  I, however, walked right by that snake for 5 days before I even noticed it was there.  I can only wonder what the neighbors, friends, and Jehovah Witnesses that came to our door during that 5 day period thought.)  

To continue with the story....

we're hanging lights,

making props,

and in T minus 15 days, I'll be able to show you the final product.  Like I said, this is just a sneak preview. 

In the meantime, look what I caught Mr. C rigging up today:

He said he was just putting it up to mess with me, but I know him better than that.  He was hoping that this would go the way of the snake, and I'd fail to notice it.

Yeah right.

I will admit though, you've got to admire the man for holding onto his dream.

You all have a good night! 

Teacher Talk Tuesday: Dr. Titzer Would Not Approve This Message

Hi all.

So, it's Teacher Talk Tuesday, which means I have to work my brain and squint and try real hard to come up with something to say that makes me sound smart and knowledgeable.  This is something that's becoming harder and harder to do, as my brain gets mushier with every episode of Dora and every game of Candy Land.
Up until this afternoon, I thought I had this week covered: a couple of days ago J and I were playing a game of Pick Up Stix that turned into a game of discovering which letters we could make with straight lines.  I was all set to write a whole post on turning everyday things into teachable moments, but this afternoon I went to recreate the whole scenario and record it for you guys, only to have J decide to play dumb.
Is that too mean to say?  Is it okay that I'm saying that my son played dumb?  Cuz he did.  I can't think of another adjective.  I was all, "Let's make A's!" and he was like, "Okay." And then he'd let me run tape for 2 minutes while he messed around and made a house or something, and I peppered the silence with lame comments like "J, is that the top of your A?"  And he'd say, "No.  It's a roof."  And I'd say, "Can you make an A out of your roof?"  And he'd give me the silent treatment again.

Teachable Moment Lesson #1:  You get one shot at them, and after that there is no going back.

So I made another video with him later that was much more successful.  This one is about Phonemic Awareness.  Do you guys know what that is?  A lot of people confuse it with Phonics, but they are 2 separate concepts.  When I was teaching, I often wished that I could pull all my parents in and teach them the importance of phonemic awareness because it's such an important key to reading success. Studies have proven that a lack of phonemic awareness is a prominent characteristic of a struggling reader.   Most Kindergarten report cards have a whole section on it- when a child shows proficiency in this section, then that teacher knows that he/she is ready for 1st grade.

So what is phonemic awareness and how is it different from phonics?

I usually explain phonemic awareness as being the ability to play with language.  It's the ability to manipulate sounds that we hear in words.  Most kids naturally do that anyway- they make up  nonsense words, or they'll purposefully add or omit sounds in words.  Most of this is done under the pretext of being silly- but it's also a cognitive ability that their brain is developing.  They're listening to the sounds of our language independent of their meanings and learning to play with them.  That's also why songs like Raffi's Willaby Wallaby Woo or The Name Game song are so popular with kids.  We adults may hate them, but our kids are developing cognitively while they're listening and singing along.

Once a child has a good grasp on phonemic awareness- the sounds of language, then you can teach them phonics- the relationship of those sounds to written language.  The two work together- not independently, but phonemic awareness must be understood first.  That's why I joke that Dr. Titzer from Your Baby Can Read wouldn't approve this message.   From what I've seen, those babies are recognizing the letters as symbols (not as sounds) and understanding the word meanings (which technically, yes, is reading) BUT if you asked those babies, "What word would you make if you took away the 'h' sound in 'hat' and replaced it with the 'm' sound?", they wouldn't be able to tell you because a) they haven't learned how to talk (duh) and b) they've only learned to recognize the symbols, not the sounds associated with them.

Are you with me or am I boring the heck out of you with all this phonemic/phonic/symbols/cognitive stuff?  Here's the nitty gritty of what you need to know:

1.  phonemic awareness is a pre-reading skill
2.  it's the ability to manipulate sounds in our language
3.  it's really important
4.  Dr. Titzer is a lame-o.

Kidding on that last one.  I know next to nothing about Dr. Titzer.  And I'm assuming that he eventually teaches those Baby Geniuses phonics, since at some point in their little lives they're going to come across a word that they'll need to sound out- hard to do without phonemic awareness.  Or they learn it on their own- which a lot of kids just do naturally.  I'm guessing that kids master phonemic awareness somewhere between 3 and 8.  That's a pretty big gap, and if you're kid is going to public school, they'll need to have it mastered between 5 and 6.  So here's some things you can work on with them to help them along: word rhyming and rhythm, segmenting words, blending words, identifying beginning and ending sounds, and syllabication.

Below is the video I made of J showing me his current level of phonemic awareness.  He's got a ways to go, but I was impressed with what he showed me.  You'll notice that I don't correct him- that's because I was trying to keep the video short and because I know we have time to work on this stuff.  PA doesn't happen overnight- it's a long process.  There's lots of games you could play- like the sounds in the word game (to the tune of Wheels on the Bus, in case my warbling isn't clear).  Or, for those of you interested in learning more, there's a really great book called Phonemic Awareness: Playing With Sounds to Strengthen Beginning Reading Skills.  I'm pretty sure that every Kindergarten and Preschool teacher I know owns this book.  It's 125 pages filled with games and reproducibles.  Mine is falling apart, but any of you who know me in real life are welcome to it.

K- here's the vid of J in his Batman PJ's showing me his super hero reading skills:


Untitled from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.


See?  Any parent can do this stuff.  And when you do do it, call your kid out on saying "gun" instead of "sun".  I didn't catch that the first time I watched the vid.

Little stinker.

Anyway, hope this was helpful to those of you with little pre-readers running around.  I'm going to go have a glass of wine, watch "Glee", and get my brain back to mush mode.

That's its preferred state nowadays.

You all have a good night.

Not Sure What's Scarier, The Creepy Crawlies or My O.C.D

I've got a creepy story for you that's better than any Jason or Freddy freak out.

Not really.  But there is a certain gross out factor in what I'm about to tell you:

We have an ant problem.  Yesterday morning I went to pour a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, only to discover that a swarm of ants had invaded the box.

 I know.  Ew.

Even worse than that was the night before when I pulled out a Caramel Apple pie to serve to company, opened the box, and became aware of a tickling sensation slowly crawling up my hand.  When I looked down, I had no less than 20 ants on my fingers, hands, and arm.  Are you squealing and covering your mouth in horror?
Good.
Then you'll know exactly how I looked.  Except for the covering my mouth in horror bit.  If I could've taken my arm off and throw it into the sink, I would've.  Instead I just ran like a sissy girl to the faucet and thrust my entire arm under the water, all the way up to my shoulder.

Then I served my guests some old ice cream that we had in the freezer and said a prayer of gratitude that my guests were family and would have to at some point, come back to our home.

Anyway.  After throwing away an entire barely-used box of Honey Nut Cheerios, it was clear that I needed to clean out my pantry and spray the little suckers with some poison.  This was a project that I foolishly thought would take me about an hour at the most to do.

An hour later this is what my island looked like:

This is what my counter tops looked like:

This is what my dining table looked like:

This is what my Roo looked like, after getting into her sister's Cupcake Maker and spilling sprinkles all over the floor. 

Dang.  She's cute even when she's causing trouble. 

In the end, this is what my entire kitchen looked like:

But 4 hours later (we took a break and went to a birthday party, and I'm only telling you this because I don't want you to think that I'm the kind of person who'll spend 4 hours organizing a pantry.  2 hours yes, 4 hours no)... anyway, THIS is what my pantry looked like:

Ahhhhhhhhhh. 

Can I tell you a secret?  I really think I wrote this whole post just so I could show you a picture of my organized pantry.  

That's it.  I have no moral, no point, no punchline.  

Just a clean pantry. 

I keep going back and marveling at the neatness of it all.  It's a sickness.  

A sickness that I don't really want to be rid off.  Cuz if there's something wrong with loving my nice, clean, organized pantry.... 

then I don't want to be right.  

You all have a good night.  

P.S- I can't believe I just wrote a whole post about cleaning a pantry.  What's happening to me? 

Teacher Talk Tuesday: Asking The Big Question

When I was a kindergarten teacher, I did a thing every morning called "The Morning Message".  It was just a short little note that I wrote to the kids on an easel about what we were going to do that day.  A lot of teachers do this- it's a powerful tool that can be used to engage students in decoding, finding sight words, using context, and conventions of writing.

The first year I did it, I would call kids up one by one to "find" things on the morning message- certain sight words or sounds, periods, rhyming words, etc.  It sounded like this:

Me: Okay!  Can any of you find our new sight word that we learned yesterday up here on the Morning Message?

I'd look out at the small sea of faces to see about 12 faces earnestly looking at the easel.  A few kids would be staring off into space, there'd be a few girls would be playing with each other's hair, a couple boys would be rolling around on their backs and shooting imaginary artillery at the Word Wall, and since this was Kindergarten, I could always count on the obligatory nose picker or masturbator to be in the audience as well.

Me:  Charlie?   Do you see our new sight word?  Can you come up and circle it for me?

Charlie ambles up and circles the word.

Me:  Do you want to call on a friend to read the word you just circled?

Charlie: Uuuuuuuuummmmmmmm.  (He labors this decision like it's some kind of career choice, then finally choses a friend in the back row.  Meanwhile I'm secretly longing for  a wall to bang my head on, since I know that Charlie's friend is not going to have a clue about this particular word.)

Do you get the idea?  At some point in the year I silently renamed the Morning Message Morning Misery because it was just painful.   I knew the way I was using it was ineffective, yet I didn't want to give it up because I knew Morning Message carried some really good teaching potential.

What to do? What to do?

I honestly can't tell you how I figured this one out- if I learned it in my credential program, if it was advice from a colleague, if I figured it out myself (doubtful, since I'm not usually that clever)- but I did figure it out.  And what I learned remains to this day, the single most important piece of teaching advice that I could give someone:

The next year, I put up a Morning Message on my easel.  I would open the doors, my class would come in, and sit down on the rug.  Then I'd ask them this question:

Me:  Good morning guys!  Tell me, what do you notice about the morning message today?

20 hands would shoot up into the air.

Henry:  I see the letter A.

Me:  A?  Excellent.  Let me circle that letter there.  That is indeed an A!

Lucy:  I see the word "in" inside that big word there.

Me: Wow!  You spied a word inside a word!  Good work!

James:  You used a red marker for the date and a yellow marker for the words.

Me:  Yes, I did James.  Good observation.

See?  That made all the difference.   As soon as I wasn't looking for specifics anymore, the whole thing opened up and became much more powerful and interactive.  The students were engaged, and I could mentally assess where each child was along the curriculum and form ideas about where they needed to be pushed.  Plus, through their answers, my students were teaching each other.  Kids tend to listen better to other kids, especially if the other kid is receiving positive feedback from the teacher.  So if Suzy raised her hand and said "I see that you forgot to capitalize the beginning of the sentence.", I'd act real impressed that she was smart enough to catch that.  Next day I'd "forget" to capitalize a sentence, and half my class would be waving their hands around, just dying to inform me of my mistake.

Little boogers.

Anyway, I continued using this little trick of asking What do you notice? through the rest of my teaching career.  It's come in handy as a parent too, which is why I'm sharing it with you here tonight.

It's easy to tune kids out when their constantly demanding your attention.  Half the time when my kids say "Mom! Look!", I answer them with a spacey "Mmmhmm.  Yeah, I see."  And then I go back to whatever thought was occupying my brain at the moment.  But sometimes, just for kicks, I'll snap to and respond with "Oh yeah!  What do you notice about that?"  Their answers can surprise me.   A lot of the time what is most obvious to me is not at all what they see.  Or smell.  Or feel.  Or taste (which can be sometimes scary).

When you ask a kid "What do you notice?" what you're really asking is "How do you see the world?", which is why kids respond so well to it.  Most of the time, adults are telling kids what to think.  Asking them for their perspective makes them feel connected and important.  And who doesn't want to feel that?

Good night!
 

Finally Fall: Edition I Have No Idea What Hungarian Traditions Have To Do With Fall, But Just Go With Me On This

Hi all.

As I sit here and type this, there's a beautiful breeze blowing right on me through my open window.  Not just a cool breeze, but most definitely a COLD breeze.  And by cold, I mean that we've finally hit below 75 degrees at night, which here in the desert qualifies as mitten and scarf time (truly, that's only a slight exaggeration).  Anyway, all this makes me so happy because YAY!  Fall is finally here and the A/C is off!

Hallelujah and bring on the Pumpkin Spice Lattes!

Normally what I like to do on the first day of the weather change is open all my windows, put out the fall decorations, and then bake something yummy smelling, like pumpkin bread, while I sit on the couch drinking tea and watching Sleepy Hollow. ( If you're thinking I'm a dork, you're not only right BUT you've also seriously underestimated me when, in my previous entries, I wrote about how much I love October.)

So suck it.

I kid.

Anyway, turns out that this year it doesn't matter because my dang stove broke.  The timing in this is terrible.  Really, it's just these next three months that I really need my stove and the rest of the year I pretty much ignore it.  However, Murphy's Law and blah blah blah and none of this really is relevant except to explain to you that this Finally Fall Edition 1 was supposed to contain some kind of Fall Comfort Food and instead I'm doing a post on Hungarian Chicken Paprikash, because it can be cooked on a stovetop.  And because it was my mother in law's birthday and she's from the Old Country- and I wanted to attempt to cook her something outside of my comfort zone.

I'm one of those people who never really seem to learn from their past mistakes.

Anyway.

Hungarian Chicken Paprikash.  Here's the ingredients you will need:

That's 8 slices of bacon, 1/4 cup finely chopped onion, 3/4 all purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika, 1 1/2 cups of sour cream, 2 to 3 pounds of chicken, and for the drop noodles you'll need 2 1/3 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt, 1 slightly beaten egg, and 1 cup of flour.

I don't know why the milk made it into the shot.  I think I was confused.

Now, before we start I need a few words.  First, please don't expect much from this FF post.  It's been a month and I was rusty.  In addition, the photographs in this post are about as unappetizing as you can get.  I forgot that I wouldn't have as much light to work with this time of year as I had over the summer when I was doing FFF.  You can blame astronomy and my little point and shoot camera.

Second, just a quick word about my mother in law and her background.  She was born in a work camp in post-war Europe.  Hungary became a displaced nation after Hitler marched through, so her family saved what they could and came to the United States through South America (where they were able to obtain Visas).  They came to Los Angeles, worked and went to school during the day, took English classes at night, and made a life for themselves.  I love that I married into this story- doesn't it make me so much more interesting to tell people this, as opposed to relating my own mutt-style cultural heritage?

Mr. C says he remembers being young and going to his nagymama's (neh-mama is Hungarian for grandma) house and watching her and his great grandma  spend their entire day in the kitchen cooking and talking.  They made their own noodles and dried them in the back bedroom.  Meat would hang out in their workshop.  This is what they did all day long- cook and talk.  They also smoked like a couple of chimneys, but it was the 70's and yes, the life of a housewife was that glamorous.

Anyway, my whole point in telling you this is that cooking was not a chore- it was their day.  I'm kind of fascinated by it and that's why I took this on.  My mother in law had given me a little Hungarian cookbook, complete with the cutest little drawings of a Hungarian girl in native dress posing here and there next to the recipes.  So it was this recipe that I followed for Csirke Paprikas Galuskaval- or just plain Chicken Paprika with Noodles for those of you who can't get that tongue rolling thing down.

First step was to fry the 8 slabs of bacon.

Easy enough.
Then, you add in the 1/4 cup of chopped onion and fry that up too.

Still on the bucket list- learning to take a good picture of frying food.  This entire post is filled with blurry shots like these.

Okay, the next part I found a little um, difficult.  The recipe book said to "disjoint and cut chicken.  Slit the heart, and remove the blood vessesls.  Then, cut away and discard the tough lining from the gizzard.  Refrigerate the liver, and place heart, gizzards, and neck into saucepan."

Wow.  Now I was looking at the drawings of the little Hungarian girl in a whole new light.  For instance, I now know that in the upper left corner she's carrying a chicken in her bag.  I don't know what I thought was in there before.

And down there at the bottom she's chasing the chicken with the intent of ripping out it's heart, slitting it, and then cooking up it's innards in some bacon grease.

I would've never made it in the old country.

So, I just skipped that part like I never read it and chopped up my 3 pounds of boneless, skinless, chicken breast that I had bought at my neighborhood Costco.   

Then I put the flour, salt, and paprika into a bag,

along with the cut up chicken pieces.....

and shook it all up until the pieces are all covered (totally like Shake n' Bake).

 By this time I've removed the bacon and onions from the fry pan and set them aside.  (You did do that, didn't you?  I forgot to mention it, but you should know that you do have to do it. So go ahead.  Okay? Okay.)

Okay, so now fry up those chicken pieces in the bacon grease.

Then you cook up those pieces over medium-low heat until they're nice and tender- about 10 to 15 minutes.

You can cover the pot if you want.

While that's going, bring 2 qts. of water to a boil in a large pot.  This is when you start making the noodles.  Yes, you read that right- you are going to make the noodles. 

Crack the egg into a bowl and add 1 cup of water. 

Okay- this is where I got tired and started getting lazy about documenting the process.  You're going to have to fill in some blanks here.

Working with a third of a cup at a time, mix the flour into the egg.

That's what it looks like after the first third.  I must've been talking to my MIL or something during the rest of the process, because I have nary a picture of what the dough is supposed to look like before you move it to the cutting board.   I can only tell you that it's supposed to be thick, but only slightly thicker than the consistency of Elmer's school glue.  Can you picture that?

Okay, so Mary showed me how they did the next step Old Country Style.

Take the dough, glop it onto the cutting board, and stand over the pot of boiling water.  Then take a knife and start slicing the dough into the water, dipping the knife into the hot water each time to clean it off and heat it up for the next slice.

Sorry.  Action shots are not my thing.

Can you just try to imagine what I'm talking about?

Once you get all the dough into the water, it'll look like this:

Kinda like cooked brains.  The Hungarian Cookbook girl would've been all over this.

Cook those up for about 10 minutes, and then remove from the water with a slotted spoon.

In the meantime, go back to the chicken.  Add the bacon and onions back in, along with 1 cup of water, 1 1/2 cups of sour cream, and 2 tsp. of Paprika.

Stir it up.  It'll turn a nice, creamy, pink-ish color- much unlike the yellowish-gray that you see below.

Again, you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that in real-life, it looked a lot more appetizing than this.
Serve it over noodles and present it to the birthday girl:

Feel relieved when she likes it.  Or at least when she says that she likes it.

Then give her a carrot cake for dessert.

Sing to her.

And be glad that someone in your family has an interesting history to share with you and your children.

Have a good night!