Challenged

I am a bit famous, in some circles, for creating materials and curriculum for teaching mathematics... and then either losing it or giving it away. I am constantly either trying to REcreate something, or, sheepishly, contacting my colleagues caretakers with short cryptic emails that begin, "Hey! Do you have a file or hard copy of the decimals/percentages unit I wrote last summer?" I have no good system for keeping track of my work life....yet. But I'm closer than ever with my new discovery (perhaps you've heard of it) called binders. Yes, binders.

Before binders, there were boxes. I brought home 6 boxes of work at the end of the school year, that I needed to organize so I wouldn't have to recreate things for my Chicago experience. The Thursday before I left, my living room looked like this:

 (Don't judge me.)

Boxes are bad for me because they hide so many sins. Duplicates, randoms, and weird objects make their way into the boxes. Further confounding me, is that I can't figure out a filing system for the boxes. I've tried file folders, but my descriptions on the tab that shows are never descriptive enough and I end up having to pull and look through every folder to find what I'm looking for. By the way, whatever I am looking for, is never in the box anyway.

By Friday night, my living room looked like this. In the binders, are several hundred plastic sleeves. The binders are by topic. Some are mathematical ideas that I think are key for the grade levels I specialize in. Some are pedagogy ideas that I think are crucial for teachers of mathematics who want to teach math in a sense-making, problem-centered way. Finally, I have one for the new Common Core Standards for Mathematics, one for professional readings I like teachers to do in the workshops (my crowning jewel! oh how I was sick of looking for and asking for and re-copying previously highlighted copies of, these readings!), and one for the tools and materials of the consulting group I work with.

In the one remaining box seen on the floor in front, I have duplicates of things that were leftovers. And in the red train case are my presenters materials, from the mundane (scissors, my favored chart pens, emergency dry erase markers, post it notes, and index cards) to the crucial (ibuprofen and safety pins, because nothing says "I have to stand up in front of 60 people today" like a migraine, a broken bra strap or a missing button).

Here is why it is so great for me to use plastic sleeves in binders: I don't have to care if they're organized, as long as they are in the proper themed binder. I can so easily flip through the sleeves that I don't have to care what order anything is in. If it's about The Number System/Place Value, it IS in that 2" space. Period. It takes 30 seconds to flip through and find what I'm looking for.

Also new for the last week I did in Chicago:  I took one empty binder and started populating it with sleeves from SEVEN other binders! A post-it note at the start of each section of sleeves told me which binders they originated from. That's why I was able to pack for 4 days of work and 3 days of play in a city 1800 miles from home in one carry on roller case and my tech backpack.  It's also why I was able to put all the materials back into their original binder in less than 6 minutes when I got home.

I started the Binders Are Delightful And Super Systematic (or BADASS) organizational technique with my classroom last year, and I can't wait to fine tune it now that I've had this break through with my math work.

I'm going to organize the shit out of this!

Ride

Ten to eleven miles a day, and he positively loves it! I love vacations!!!!!

Bound

I had to put my quilt aside to get ready for, and travel to, Chicago.

But now I have the lovely task of binding to get back to. I know there are people who find this to be a tedious chore, but I am not one of those people. I get to use a thimble and I love hand sewing the binding into place. I love being curled up in a chair sewing, with my family near by, instead of holed up in the bedroom, with the sewing machine, away from everybody. Or worse, holed up in the bedroom with the sewing machine, AND my boys, laying on the bed and playing XBox...AND asking me to stop sewing because it's too loud.

I love you. GET OUT.

While I Was Gone....

 My boy's room took a tween twist with the addition of this awesome electronic drum set. Please do not ask how much it cost. It embarrasses me. But, both of them play, and I hope will for many years, so someday I hope to share that it was a great bargain at pennies a day. ahem

 Erik did an awesome job taking care of and watering my gardens! It looked like this when I left for my Chicago trip. Really now!

Ohhhhhhhh pumpkins! I love them so. I didn't grow any last year, how I wept, but I've got 4 big plants from seed going this year, and I could just die. Look how sweet they are, I love them so!

SOMEBODY is digging in my cucumber patch. Probably the dog. I will cut her.

Squash! The zuchini and yellow squash are both thriving, but these summer squash are actually bearing fruit already. Yummy on the grill, just in time for July!

The greens confuse me. I need to figure out how these work. I checked the packages, and it says "harvest in 45 to 60 days" and I believe these were planted 40 days or so ago. I'm going to let it ride. Come on, no snake eyes!

The tomatoes have had the slowest starts, but I believe I can see real progress, finally.

I love coming home :)

Home Again

Home after 7 days in Chicago. Still love that city! Now I'm doing laundry, enjoying the clean house and bountiful garden I came home to (good job, honey!), and settling back into all things home.

Garden :: Grows!

 Beans, yellow squash, zucchini, pumpkins, strawberries....

 cucumbers....

greens....

Not pictured: tomatoes, spinach, kale...all growing just out of the line of sight from these photos.

Gardening for me is at once a leap of faith, confirmation of the physical laws of the universe, irrefutable botanical science, and yet a completely magical and mysterious process.

The fact that each of these things was a seed, mere potential, not four weeks ago? Plus the fact that these have grown by no less than 35% in the few days since I took these pictures, standing barefoot in my backyard?  This plus that equal awe, every single time. It never gets old.

On Father's Day we had dinner at my mom's house. Standing in her garden, troubleshooting tomato death, marveling at her beans and the way the hummingbird sage starts I propogated from the native  beauty in my front yard are now so huge they need to be transplanted...AGAIN...I could very nearly feel the thread that connects me to her through the roots of those plants, and then through her, connecting both of us to my grandmother.

One thing I'm pretty sure Grandma Dot never asked my mother to do, however, is hop into a 50 gallon garbage bin and jump up and down on it (holding onto the eave of the garage for balance) to make room for a final bag of garbage. That crazy is so patently Mother that I couldn't help but remember the time she had dad's gray bomber truck loaded sky high with pruned branches from, among other things, a dozen rose bushes ambling around her property. When she ask me and my brother to hop in the back to "pack it in", my brother raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head ever so slightly. Thank you, no he seemed to be saying. 

He's been in every kind of pickle imaginable because of that woman, so I didn't question it....my turn, I thought to myself.  I climbed on the edge of the truck bed using the wheel hubs as a makeshift step ladder and scooted toward the cab. With one hand on the top of the truck, and my left foot planted on the edge of the bed, I toed my right foot around until I found my footing and I lept onto the top of the branches. It was no less than a 40 inch vertical leap, and I can't remember exactly what I was thinking when I fell through the tower of branches, cracking and snapping my way as I plunged hip deep into the thorny wood that scratched and gouged first my ankles, then my knees, and finally my thighs...but I'm pretty sure it was something like GODDIZZLE.

My brother shook his head and gave me a (not unkind) I told you so look before my mom started nagging at me that I need to do more I hadn't packed it in  enough and there's plenty of room just start jumping. So I did what I can only hope my own kids do one day...I started jumping.

Crafty :: Quilt

 I'm finishing up the binding on the quilt I'm making. It's sewn in long strips first, alternating squares and rectangles. I'm following the process from Randy's Quilt Along Series, in which I made this quilt, originally. I needed a much bigger blanket, so I followed the same process but made much larger squares and rectangles. The original is 3.5 x 3.5 inch squares with 3.5 x 7.5 inch rectangles. This one is 4.5 x 4.5 inch squares with 4.5 x 10.5 inch rectangles.

Squares and rectangles alternate along in each row, then the rows are placed, replaced, and placed yet again, until it's fairly pleasing and random to the eye. Harder than you might think. Just saying. And because I managed to sew rectangle to rectangle at least three times, I kept the seam ripper quite handy. In this case, it worked out because it helped me make a last minute decision that makes my quilt pattern even more random. Good job, screwin' up.

Once I had the rows in place, and I was quite certain how I wanted them, I used a small piece of painters tape and marked each row, 1 to 20. Which was WAY MORE AWESOME than what I normally do (keep a stack, in order, which never works and I always get turned around and forget which way I was working from).

This system, so you know, is super fantastic. I thought so that first night, when I quickly pinned and sewed the first three rows together....one...two...three. Bob's your uncle!

I even thought so the next morning, when I woke and pinned and sewed number four to number one  and number seven to number 3. So....four...one...two...three...seven? It's a great system. It works if you work it. But, if you are like me, keep that seam ripper nearby. It's my number one must-have tool when sewing. If you think I'm kidding? Needle and thread are numbers 2 and 3, respectively.