stuckbetweenStations.

Don't stop believin: Solesbeast Style.

Sweet ones prepare for their First Nine Weeks Showcase: they pick their best effort in terms of creative projects done in class and present it to an assorted audience of parents, faculty, and students. Have the loveliest little girls who re-wrote this for their selection & am positive it’s the sweetest project I’ve ever gotten.

Live like a Solesbeast lyrics

Just a Dinosaur

That’s Miss Solesbees pride and joy

It‘s our mascot in the Solesbeast world

We never give up

Really doesn’t matter what

Like pushing through a biography

We always treat others well

Automatically feel swell

With a smile we can make the day

As we learn, and, learn, and learn, and learn

Students typing

9am

Optimism, I nearly lost you.

Found myself in a bit of a funk here recently. Was surrounded by nothing Monday to Friday following three pm. My evenings, despite my best efforts, seemed to go on forever. I took early bedtimes aplenty and ate dinner while the sun was still high in the sky. I chose these things, and it nearly killed my spirit. I am a girl who equates busy-ness with happiness, who found herself with nothing to do for a week’s worth of time and nearly lost her head as a result.

You have to pull yourself out of such things, you know. If it comes from your eyes—the version of the world you’ve chosen to construct, I mean, it’s up to you to change the vision and kill the negativity. I tell the children all the time that taking responsibility isn’t a bad thing—once it is no one else’s fault, you can finally figure out how to fix it yourself. I had to fix this myself.

After lots of thought & a list or two (I do love list-making), I decided that perhaps a part-time job wouldn’t be such a bad option. Would still give me time to do that which I enjoy doing weeknights, like the gym & cooking a delicious dinner, but would make bedtime a more reasonable time & introduce me to a new scene full of new folks with neat stories. Such is the plan. I have found a gig planning little kid birthday parties & a gig pet-sitting in giant empty houses near my school. Not sure how either will pan out just yet,  but am thankful for the opportunity & am considering both options evidence to my theory that we can fix things ourselves. If you want a different world, change it.

Leaving it up to others almost always leads to disappointment.

8am

Count it down & make it count.

The Setlist from an earlier show this month is below.

High Lonesome

Casanova, Baby!

Old White Lincoln

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The ‘59 Sound

We Came to Dance

Film Noir

Miles Davis and the Cool

The Patient Ferris Wheel

The Navesink Banks

Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?

Senor and the Queen

Great Expectations

Here’s Looking At You, Kid

The Backseat

9am

copycats:

1901 remixed by The Teenagers
originally by Phoenix
(posted by karenabad)

Pretty perfect addition to Friday night’s playlist. Will be sosweet to be back with Peter on that stage.

Via Copy Cats

3pm

October, I love you.

Perhaps it’s the nature of our city, but this month always brings pretty things my way & I am thankful to all ends for that. Ended September with Ms. Marthabeth in Asheville, where The Decemberists re-told Hazards of Love with eloquence only a brain like Colin Meloy can create.

October began this time around with the last night of The Producers at Workshop Theatre. Really fantastic night out followed with new friends aplenty & an endless amount of hijinx, too. Can’t ask for much more than that. Spent Sunday cleaning out CDs & gave into nostalgia via multiple WUSC-spawned mix CDs from now faraway friends who I miss most dearly.

Walking with Dinosaurs will most assuredly start the coming weekend right & then I am eager to DJ at Art Bar with Peter. Next weekend marks the release of Where the Wild Things Are & am heading to Atlanta near the 23rd to revel in a live performance from The Gaslight Anthem & quality time with sweet Katie. HalLoween is shortly after that, & then the month will be done. Sad.

Happy for the coming weeks. Looking forward to things keeps me from looking back on sad things from this time, last year.

11am

unexpected kindness:

We do Academic Plans every year as a means of helping the children who struggle with Standardized Tests get up to par before we scoot them off to high school next year. We divide them up & talk to parents to agree upon a todolist of sorts to help the student work to his or her potential throughout the school year.

I enjoy parents. I live for Open House. They are usually quite sweet to me & tend to enjoy that their child enjoys Language Arts. But in the past, Academic Plan season has been a pain-unreachable parents, lost forms, etc.

So today, I called my last one, sleepy-eyed and ready to roll through the motions: Explain plan, explain why child has plan, etc. And I did, in my grown-up voice. This particular student is pretty stellar, actually, and I paused in my diatribe to explain his overall awesomeness to his very patient mother.

She didn’t have any questions, and right as I was about to close it up & shut it down, she stopped to request if she could ask me a personal question. She simply wanted to know if I had ever had any other professional goals—did I ever want to be anything but a teacher.

I explained to her about the care bears. How I tried to teach them spelling at the ripe age of five and how it was really just a matter of time until my parents constructed a pseudoschoolhouse in our basement & my grannie became my first live student. I didn’t go on for long when she interrupted me.

She went on to wake me right up via the most kind-hearted and sincere wave of compliments to my character & heart that I’ve ever heard from a stranger. Said that all I was, was kindness. That she could hear the passion for my profession in every word I said, & that I truly conducted myself as though I needed no thanks for the good I did every day. That’s true—the children thank me by making me laugh, creating brilliant things, & learning to be comfy inside themselves.

So she thanked me. Explained that she really believed that the good I put out would be repaid to me daily for all my days & that I had many blessings on the way.

Perhaps she is a religious person. I am, too, in my own sort of way. I certainly believe in faith, if nothing else. What got me the most, though, was how outoftheblue this incident was—and how much it meant to me, right away, although it came from a stranger.

Suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it? Kindness is sweetest when it isn’t planned or possessed—when it isn’t tainted by some sort of overarching intention.

I hope she is right about me, too.

2pm

Content.

Have been seriously struggling with the idea, pounded into my head by my own perspectives of moving around a good bit in a military family as a child, that leaving equates to one being successful. If I am ever to be at my best, it surely can’t be in Columbia, South Carolina. Except I have this job that rarely feels like work, & a small, but extraordinary group of girls who make the neatest weekends, & a lovely apartment with a very comfy kitty and a kitchen to cook in, too. I live a bit from an ocean & a bit from a mountain. There are ducks in my backyard. The city sleeps from time to time, but does this fall season remarkably well. There’s beauty all over as the trees turn & outdoor festivals invade our downtown. Solid theatre, independent film, & arts scene, too.

So there’s that.

When I think of where I’d go, I can’t ever settle. When I come home from camp, I want New England. When I come home from anyoutofstatevacay, I want those city limits. I am inconsistently fond of anywhere, really. Had a sweet conversation with my mom the other day about what success means & how she sees this whole ridiculous movetobegreat concept. She quickly corrected me & went on to question how I could see myself as anything but awesome. Parents are supposed to say that.

The biggest anchor to Columbia is this school. & those kids, too. It is too fun to wreck for some shady big city dreams. That’s enough for me to know right now.

10am

Firefox, you are not as cool as you think.

Lack of updates mostly equates to my browser not supporting tumblr at all. Things are lovely. Picking right up and have been very busy with the children this year. Have began a blog for them: the things we do, what we talk about, etc. You may find that at misssolesbeastismyteacher.tumblr.com. I don’t suppose I’ll be around these parts much.

10am