Progress is Being Made...

Collection of Works

.... finally!  Thanks to some help from Mom and 2 amazing first grade teachers at my son's elementary school, I have printed, collated and bound copies of the book his class has worked so hard on!  If you ask me it turned out to be pretty awesome!  I was able to work with the entire class divided into 4 separate groups.  Each group came up with an outline/idea and then worked together to make a short story (book) or a collection of poems.

The best part was getting to watch the kids revel in the ability to use their imagination in writing.  At this age, the curriculum taught to children when it comes to writing reminds me of a technical writing class one might take in college.  Of course they are learning the basics like punctuation, using capital letters and parts of speech (ie nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) which is very important.  I am not discounting how important this is, I promise. Plus it's been super cute listening to my seven year old tell me I used a lot of good adjectives when giving him a compliment this year!  (Have I mention recently how much I think my kid rocks??)

However, to teach these very important beginning principles, the curriculum uses writing nonfiction as it's base.  In some ways that's very good.  It helps kids to be more organized in their thoughts when they are writing, it teaches basic outlining skills, and it helps keep a wandering mind (like mine and my son's) more focused on the task at hand.  However, nowadays, schools are getting more and more away from creativity.  Less music programs, less art programs, less crayons and markers in the regular classroom, less imagination.

Where would this world be without people's imaginations?  Without imagination we would never have the wonderful inventions that we can't live without!  (My ipod for example)  Anyway, I feel very honored that my son's teacher was open and excited to offer the kids the opportunity to be creative!  So, I had 20 first graders that worked extremely hard on imagining, creating, collaborating, compromising, editing, and most importantly writing 4 unique works that are part of their "book"!  I am so proud of each and every one of them.  But I am even more grateful to our teacher who believes that children should be allowed to be creative.  That teaching creativity is as important as teaching the basics!

Okay, I will get off my bandwagon now.  ;-)  What the take-away from all this is that I am getting things done.  The books were one of my major items looming over my head as the end of school-year came around.  So it feels good to be so productive!  Also, I well-deserved thank you to all the kids and teaching staff that made this project possible in the first place.  (Let's also not forget Mom for helping get this thing all together by collating and binding!)  YAY! for progress!!

Remember that time when...

I said I had a random stroke of genius?  It was probably earlier this week, although it's been a long week so maybe it was last week??  Okay, when I went to find the link for the post I was surprised to see it was actually only Tuesday of this past week.  Time really does fly sometimes...

Anyway, the little stroke of genius I was talking about is turning into a fun idea for a full-length story which will eventually get written (once I finish my current full-length).  But, in the meantime I have written a small section of it that I will tidy up (edit) and post here as a writing sample.  So, be on the lookout for a new page in the next week or so called "See Me Write."  Then you can be introduced to Summer.  She's an artist with a guardian she never completely knew that's a stone cold hunk of a man.  And that's all I'm telling you for now.  You'll have to wait and see when it gets posted...  ;-)

The Night I Met The Bloggess!

I should start this post by reminding people that I am married.  Have been for almost 13 long years.  Keeping that in mind, let's talk about first dates (If you are wondering what this has to do with meeting The Bloggess, stick with me, I'm getting to it, I promise).  As a woman, I was always one of the tom-boy kinda girls, so while jeans and a tee are my usual dress code, for a first date I'd at least make sure I was feeling cute sexy attractive whatever and I'd take that age-old wisdom to "always wear clean underwear" that your mom grandmom great-grandmom was always touting on about to another level.  I'd wear some cute under-garments.  Irregardless of the fact that no one other than me was gonna be seeing them.  It was some weird confidence thing.

So yesterday, I was SUPER excited to go to a semi-local bookstore for a book signing of Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess)'s book Let's Prentend This Never Happened (mentioned in an earlier post), so I did what any superfan (with issues) might do.  I showered, shaved my legs/armpits, and put on my favorite cute underthings.  Now no one other than you and I know this (and even you didn't know at the time but I digress...).

When I was all ready to go, my Mom, who is adorable, got all prettied up with her hair and make-up [while I had wet hair all twisted up in a clip and not a stitch of make-up on my face] so I could tell she was excited about our outing too!

Well, when I mentioned how nice she looked and she replied that I looked nice too.... I mentioned in the disjointed way that I usually do, that I had taken her (or some past female relative's) advice and made sure to put on some cute underwear.

She looked at me incredulously and said, "CLEAN, Jeni.  It's wear CLEAN underwear," in that way that parents do when talking to young kids who may have misheard what they just said.

"Yeah, yeah," I replied.  "You say clean, I say CUTE.  You know for confidence...."

After an eyeroll that I'm sure she will deny ever happened,  I added some lip gloss and my favorite awesome (and comfy) wedge heeled sandals.  But silly me, I was wearing the regular length jeans which is fine with (my standard) flip flops, but with heels look crazy since I'm slightly tall.  Not actually tall.  Seriously.  Just SLIGHTLY tall.

When I consulted dear ol' Mom whether I could just pull off the short-pants looking jeans with the heels ( After all I was wearing my cute underthings for confidence, so short-pant jeans couldn't be that bad right???) she gave me THE look.  You know the look I'm talking about.  The one only a mother can give that clearly says, "You are bat-shit crazy." without actually saying out loud that you are bat-shit crazy.

So, I did a little mental physics and geometry to see if I could change my jeans without removing said awesome shoes only to realize I sucked at BOTH physics and geometry (see my World of Goo scores as further evidence!)!!

So Much To Do, So Little Time.

Ahhhh!!!  School is almost out for my kids!!!  Now, if you read that as a terrified wail; you were right!  I love having my kids home during the summer, but the end of the school year is always a busy time for me.  One kid will be graduating preschool in 2 weeks.  The other will be getting all finished with first grade.  And why am I terrified that school is almost done?  Because I have to finish a project that the first graders have been working on since January by next week and I've been sick.  I have to get the preschooler's graduation gift for the teachers together (and I have no idea where I filed the e-mail about all that!).  And I am trying to finish the rough draft of The Wind's Solace, my first full-length novel.  (Ideally before the kids are home all day running crazy through my house with demands of play-dates and pool time!!)

And today when I was sitting in car line waiting to pick up the preschooler, I had one of those lightening strikes of genius that I just had to get down on paper.  But being the absentminded writer that I am, I was without my ipad journal notepad sticky notes receipt collection from my wallet ANYTHING to write on save for a few mostly clean napkins from my most recent run to Starbucks!  So with my precious 10 minutes of quiet, I jotted down all I could on the backs of 3 napkins with hopes that my failing memory would retain what I didn't have time to get down on "paper."

Books, books and more books...

Besides being a writer I am a huge reader.  So many people ask what do you read/ what have you read lately/ what new can you recommend?  Well, I was thinking it might be cool to list just some of the books I've read (are currently reading) once a month or so.  I have a kindle account full of titles that I've loved, enjoyed or completely hated. I can't walk into a bookstore without buying no less than 3 books (to my hubby's displeasure).  And I'll honestly admit to today stalking the UPS man who delivered a book I was eagerly awaiting!  There is also a small chance I danced around like a fool exclaiming, "It's here! It's here!  It's finally here!!"

I think it's a good thing I'm married, because days like today when I make a complete ass out of myself to the UPS guy, I think to myself "there's nothing cute about this moment in your life, Jeni."  But whatever.  It's a great book that arrived this evening written by an amazing woman.  So currently I'm three chapters into Asperkids!  

I'll also admit that the next book in line is Charlaine Harris' Deadlocked.  Gotta get my Sookie and Eric fill before the summer starts.  And I'm eagerly awaiting the newest Janet Evanovich book, Wicked Business, that will be out mid-June.  I also still must pick up a copy of Jeneration X by Jen Lancaster (she always knows how to get me laughing!).

But recently, I've had the delighted pleasure of reading Jenny Lawson's Let's Pretend This Never Happened (and if you check out her site, print yourself a cootie catcher and have fun reclaiming your youth for a while!), Colleen Helme's Carrots, The Siren by Tiffany Reisz, the Fifty Shades trilogy by E.L. James (and really who hasn't read them yet??), and also Dale Alderman's Big White Panties.  And that is all off the top of my head without opening my Kindle app to see the countless romances and shorts I've read in the last month.  :-)

I am a voracious reader.  So, I'll try to remember to post some of my recent reads once in a while if you remember to shoot me an e-mail/tweet/or comment when you read something you love so I can read it too!   (Here's my shameless pitch to ask you to check me out on twitter @JeniABurns or shoot me a message here!  Thanks!)

Oh, and for those of you who are interested, I am making some great progress on the writing front as well.  So maybe soon I can be stalking the UPS guy again when my book arrives!  ;-)  A girl can dream right?