Reaction To Isearches

 When I first took a lay off from my very stressfull, sometimes exasperating job, I watched a few episodes of my favorite tv show.  I took a couple shopping trips with my daughter. I did a few long overdue projects around the house that I had been wanting to finish. I just took some ME time.  Then reality hit me right in the face!  What am I going to do now? I'm not a Susie homemaker kind of woman, with the perfectly ironed apron, dinner on the table at five, everyones laundry done and folded and piled neatly in their drawers. I like to shop, but that takes money. I have some carpentry skills, but definitely not enough to do everything needed at the house. So, after a few discussions with my husband, some of them heated.  I decided that I was going to go back to school, which led to more heated discussions.  How are we going to pay for this? You're too old. What are you going to do after? I must have put up a good argument because it didn't take him long to see it my way. I'm quite accustomed to getting things my way. Then the work started, finding funding, picking the school, picking a subject that reflected some of what I already knew but gave me more. All of this brought me to the Isearch. Asking myself questions, coming up with an answer, changing that answer because I wasn't happy with the end result. Asking another question, just to have the answer take me back to the first question. The Isearch,and writing in general, is a good tool to make me think about me, not everybody else in my somewhat small circle of existance. ME! I have been thinking about me since this new adventure began, you just told me the name of it. Isearch

Isearch Brainstorm/Topic Ideas

Labradors
 -Training labs
 -Best food for labs
  -their constant want to eat
  -why they will eat the nastiest of nasty stuff only to upchuck it later
 -Labs with epilepsy
    -relation between human food and seizures
    -heridatory or not
    -what triggers seizures
    -how to deal with a seizure
    -how long is a too long seizure
    -do they remember
    -do they want to be alone when it happens
    -do they know it's going to happen
    -the best medicine for seizures and do they work
    -can they sense if a person has epilepsy
 -The need for a lab to be social
  -do they want other dogs around
  -do they like all people or just their person
Should just anybody own a labrador
 -time needed
 -value of your things, wooden spoons, tv remotes, furniture, walls, couches,etc.....
 -is patience the key

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Raising a teenager
 -My way or my mothers way
 -Friend or foe
  -how to keep them talking to you
 -Praise
  -is bribery a good tactic
  -are the words "good job" enough
 -Punishment
   -punish for what acts
    -individualism
    -swearing
    -dirty room
    -not doing chores
    -staying out too late
    -too much time on phone, computer, tv etc..
    -drugs
- Are they acting for attention or just being themselves
 -teaching right from wrong
  -starts way before the teenage years
   -do they understand right from wrong
   -will they use it in everyday life
   -will they associate it when dealing with others
-The need for family structure
  -is one parent enough
   -will they resent the other parent for not being involved
-What is going to make her a successfull adult
  -the family structure
  -right from wrong
  -individualism
  -school and grades
  -social skills
 
 

Unique

 I have long red hair and freckles. My eyes are blue some days and green on others, still haven't figured out if it depends on what I'm wearing or the mood I am in. I have six tattoos, mostly flowers and butterflies because I have never been into the demonic skulls or dragons. I am a levi's kind of gal, full jeans in the winter and cut offs in the summer with a t-shirt and sandals. The sandals only when society requires. I drive pick ups, full size pick ups.  I haven't had a car in seventeen years. I cherish my family, and my dogs (2- black and yellow labs) my cats (5-Keke, Minnie, Grace, Izzy, and Oogles). although there's days that I could throw them all out the door for a few hours  I like to play pool, I used to skip school just to go to the pool hall to learn from the elders that only played during the day, before the young kids invaded the arcade. I love to go out dancing, I will be the first one on the floor whether my husband follows or not.

Brainstorming and Isearch Topic Reaction Graf

This method could work for me. Just sit down and make a very detailed list of things that have interested me in the past, present and future. The problem is, that will be quite a lengthy list, and I need to pick one that might keep a reader intrigued until the end. I could write a whole lot of words about building a rock fireplace but, that doesn't mean that the poor soul who has to read it is interested. My only use for lists in my day to day, pre college, boring mom, housewife life was for groceries. Although, as I apply that fact to your brainstorming theory, I can relate.  I have never forgotten the milk or butter when I had a list. I have forgotten the list before though, and came home with the overwhelming feeling that I forgot something crucial to the dinner making process of the evening. Only to realize that the feeling I had earlier was correct because I was missing the key ingredient to the chicken dish, meaning the chicken.  I like the brainstorming idea, it will give me time to process the many ideas and things that I have wanted to accomplish over the years and in the future.  Who knows, maybe it will go on the fridge for a large version of an around the house bucket list.

Reaction To Advice To Writers

  Advice, I am sure that I am not the only person in this huge world that has ignored some pretty relevant advice, only later to wish that I had listened in the first place. Advice about my writing. I read the list of questions that was listed for the assignment, actually four times to be exact, trying to figure out in my own empty head where I was going to go with this paragraph. I do think about several of those questions, plus many of my own, everytime I sit down to do an assignment for Eng 101. "Have I beaten it to death?", "Should I just erase everything and start over?","Do I really want to write about this today?" These seem to come up frequently. My own questions are the tedious, picky questions. "Is the punctuation correct?", or "Jesus, I think thats a humdinger of a run on sentence!"  Then I get a flash of the video, the five finger rules. I really enjoyed that video, and as I've read, I'm not the only one of your students to tell you so. Also, somewhere in that aging, and ever shrinking memory bank of mine I recall you telling us to just write. Just write, sit down and let your fingers do the work, (probably not exact words) but it stuck. I don't believe that I have ignored any of your advice since this class started a short week ago, but if you ever think so, I am sure that you will let me know!

Inventory/Inventory

The contents of my living room walls listed in a clockwise manner
-Pale green star, approximately 18"
-3 old metal tractor seats
-a large round saw blade from an industrial wood co. with a beautiful loon scene painted by a good friend of mine
-a metal runner sled with the american flag colors, just enough paint missing to know that some child got some good use out of it for a couple years
-a seashell collage, done by my daughter and I, from all the shells we've collected on vacations.  In a wooden frame, topped with glass.
-4 antique wash boards
-a metal wash tub
-picture of my husbands parents
-a picture of my husbands mother
-a picture of my husband, myself, and my daughter camping, when she was eight
-a twisted tree root with about 1 foot of the tree left, a rock entangled in the roots and a face carved in the tree.  The roots made to look like hair of the old man
-1 moose antler with an intricate carving of a deer eating leaves from a tree in it
-top section of an Old Thompson whiskey crate with the nails still attached
-an ice fishing pack with green straps
-one snow shoe
-a painting of a moose in a barn board frame
-picture of my daughter in second grade
-picture frame containing three pictures, each myself, my mother, my daughter kissing a dolphin
-picture of my grandmother
-picture of my husband, mother, daughter, and myself patting a dolphin
-picture of my daughter in 10th grade
-mirror with a wooden frame, on the frame is a small metal canoe with an oar, and a metal moon in the corner
-a small aged wooden oar
-a wooden walking stick with an old mans face carved at the top
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  Where in the hell does she get all this junk? Yeah junk, it looks like she got half of this stuff at a scrap yard! She certainly doesn't shop at any store that I've ever been to.  Why would she want to put all of this crap on her walls? Tractor seats don't belong on the walls of a home, they belong on a tractor. That tree is just strange, I wonder if she carved that face herself? And why only one snow shoe?  If you're going to be weird enough to hang snow shoes on your wall, you should atleast have both of them! It looks like she loves her family though, and they do seem to like that dolphin. This lady needs to quit picking the dump, and stay away from the yard sales, and stop collecting other peoples trash.

Worst Teacher

  She just stands there, one hand on her hip, the other holding a half used pencil with the eraser almost completely used, pressed to her lips like she's trying to kiss it.  Her eyes looking upward over her oversized, dark rimmed glasses that really should only be warn by someones grandmother.  She is not an old lady, so why does she always dress like one? That tan suit, I am so friggen sick of that tan suit. Doesn't she have anymore clothes?  Maybe she has five of them exactly the same, wouldn't that be funny.  Well, atleast she wouldn't have to search every morning for something to match!  Jesus lady! Are you ever going to say something?  Do you think we should all just know this stuff?  I hate Math as it is but you just standing there is driving me crazy! Oops, she moved, maybe we can get started so this hour might pass by a little faster. Nope, there she goes again, is she really kissing that pencil?  Maybe she's thinking of her boyfriend...or a movie she watched last night. I just want to yell at her, Mrs. McDougal, wake up and stop making out with your pencil!!  You are supposed to be here to teach us seventh grade MATH!!!  Hello!!!

Hands

As I sit and ponder the different messages that my aging hands are giving me, it brings me back to a young girl, watching my grandmother, (on my fathers side) making her home made biscuits. Pushing and pulling the sticky dough with her small and wrinkled hands, all the time wondering why both of her pinky fingers are crooked, almost to the shape of fish hooks.  Now I know, as I have been watching my own pinkys curl over the past ten years. Waking every morning to the tightening feeling that only subsides after a few agonizing stretches and holding atleast two cups of steaming coffee. At that same young girl age, I can picture my other grandmothers hands. Her long thin fingers that were permanently stained blue from the years of dying the smelly cow hides at the tannery down the street.  Mind you, my fingers have never been blue, but I have her fingers.  The strong, thin fingers, with flaking dry skin, that comes from many years of working with moisture draining leather. I refused to work at the local tannery after watching her, but I did end up sitting in front of an industrial sewing machine for a lengthy nine years. Tugging and pulling at every variance of shoe the company decided to make. My hands have made a definite improvement from the "shoe shop days", I absolutely adore my perfectly manicured fingernails, although I spend money that I don't have, to make them this way. Just the perfect length, with a different eye catching and spirit lifting color every other week. But as I look, there's still the tattered skin around them. Skin reflecting the many years of hard work, and the bad habbit that I had as a teenager, of chewing my fingernails.  I managed to drop the habbit of chewing the nails, but somehow find it impossible to ignore the slightest imperfection in the skin around them.  Leading to ending an evening of  watching television on the couch, only to end with the realization that I have managed to make myself bleed. My hands have many stories to tell, too many to remember.  I can say that I will make it a point to study them again in ten years.  Maybe there will be stories of white sandy beaches, or a mountain stream, but I will always remember the ones about my grandmothers.

Necessity for Math

It's a good thing I am required to take Math because it has been 24 years!!! ha

So Excited

I am so excited to be starting college.  It has been 14 years since I have had to hit the books and I am ready!!