My Favorite Day

I bet y'all thought today must be my birthday! You know it isn't Christmas, nor is it (American) Thanksgiving. No gifts will be exchanged, no parties planned, no cakes made (thank goodness!).

No, it's just my favorite day in the world, the one day of the year I get an extra hour to work on stuff. I've said about a million times before (on this very blog) that I wish I had a Timeturner (and if you don't know what that is, you need to read the Harry Potter books--or at least the third one). This is the one day when time is turned back for me.

Sure, it's only one hour. But that hour is one of the most precious things I have to use, and I have so much I can do with that one hour:

1. Read more to my kids.

2. Give them their piano lessons this week (unlike last week).

3. Go to zumba.

4. Write my day's installment of my NaNo novel.

5. Assess the 101 essays (okay, this will likely take two hours--but I can get half of it done).

6. Revise 3-4 pages of my Thomas novel.

7. Make and enjoy a gourmet, made-from-scratch dinner or cheesecake.

8. Cut out a dress or blouse to sew.

9. Finish reading The City of Ember.

10. Go through my daughter's clothing (or son's clothing, or my own clothing).

I have a much longer list of possibilities, but these are the most likely. What will you do with this blessed extra hour? Sleep? Whine? Watch the boob tube? Don't do that! Make the hour count for something!

Now I'm all done bossing. I don't want to waste anymore time, for that extra hour is awaiting me, needing all my energy and drive. Make your own hour count! I know I will!

Looking Forward

I am still grading. I will likely be grading until December, so blogging will be scattered.

But I'm not unhappy.

In fact, at this very moment, my blood is pumping with excitement, and I love the world more than I have in several months. Because it is now less than one month until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I comes out, and you can bet I won't be grading on November 19th! I just spent the last ten minutes watching all 9 TV trailers on Youtube, and I feel like I could fly!

Hurray! Hurray for Harry Potter! I cannot wait!

Hangin' with Harry

I am DONE grading! (Except for a few late papers and some wads of journals, of course). I spent the last three nights staying up late and getting up early, and now my kids and I are chilling in front of the big screen, watching all the Harry Potter movies up to #6.

Okay, so I'm also blogging. But I've been dying to blog all this time... and I had to force myself to keep marking with my little blue pen, keep circling verbs, keep marking works cited pages.

Not. Fun.

I'm considering shifting my grading in ENG 102 next semester to the method I use in ENG 101. I approach it from a publishing perspective. Instead of assigning the student a grade, I assess whether the paper is at an A-/B+ level. If it isn't, I give it back with comments, and the student has to revise it. Three chances to get it there, and if they don't they're out. You see, I hate D's and F's. I don't like assigning a grade to something that really doesn't deserve to go on. I want my students to learn to revise, to correct, to see what kinds of mistakes they make and learn not to make them...

Why I'm blogging about that now, I have no idea. Perhaps I'm just too much in a rut.

No more writing. No more reading. I'm going back to the boob tube, watching my favorite series of films ever (for all their imperfections).

I can't wait for #7, parts one and two!

Not Laughing

I believe, deep down, I have no sense of humor. 

Or at least, if I do have a sense of humor, it's vacuous and superficial, willing to laugh at a comedian, but not willing to dig deeply into what makes something funny, or to care about anything that brings a smile to my face. 

Don't get me wrong. By my very nature, I am overtly cheerful. I resemble Pollyanna more than any other person I know, despite my tendency to seek and tell truth. I'm a glass-half-full kind of person, living a life with little angst (and what angst I do have I put here). But my characteristics don't lead to a corresponding taste in literature. Certainly, I don't gravitate to the violent, or the sex-crazed star-crossed lovers sort of thing, but I also don't gravitate towards humor.

I'm reading through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince again (how many times has it been?), and I am struck by how little I value the humor of it the umpteenth time through. What do I love? The emotional impact. The seriousness of certain situations. Even in the film, the scene that left me coldest was the one in the Weasely twins' shop... and in the whole set of books, my favorite scenes are the serious ones... especially the dementor attack in Book #5. 

It isn't just Harry. It's every book I've ever read. I am drawn to the pathos, the weeping. I saw Gladiator three times in the theater--I even saw Titanic five times, and though the romance between Rose and Jack left me completely cold, I found the other "real" characters mesmerizing: the old couple snuggling together on their bed; the mother reading to her children below deck, knowing they would all die because she wasn't allowed to leave; the carpenter staring at the clock on the mantle, aware that it was all his fault the ship was sinking. The same events that make it certain my husband will never watch a film again are what drives me to see it. 

Maybe those films provide me with what I don't have in my real life. I have laughter. I have romance. I have all sorts of joy. I don't want real tragedy in my life, so I just enjoy it vicariously through film and books. I live through Harry, grateful that I don't have to live a life like his, yet fascinated by the trauma all the same. My writing does the same thing: it creates extraordinary events for me to involve myself in, fantasies that I would never want in real life but that are compelling for me (and hopefully, someday, for readers). 

What's missing in your life? What do you read/write for?

Doing Homework

My children are on summer break. They still have nearly two months of it, too (even though my classes start nearly a month before their school begins). Yet right now, as I compose this entry, what are they doing? Homework.

You probably figured that out from the title. 

And what am I doing? Homework. I wrote on my list of things to do today "Write Blog," so here I am, writing it. Next I put away the clothes I washed and folded yesterday, and after that it's dishes. And then dinner. 

Sounds like drudgery. And it sort of is, but it does come with rewards. Tonight, after I finish dinner and tidy up the house, I pick up a babysitter and traipse off to the movies with the hubby. 

Guess what I'm going to see (again). Yes, I saw it last week, but I can't get enough Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (or any of the previous ones, either). And now that the hubby's reminded himself of everything from movie #5, he wants to go to #6 (and I obliged, because I'm just that magnificently wonderful a wife). 

And when I come back, the dishes will be done, the kids in bed, the house clean, the clothes put away, my blog written... nothing more to do but bask in the memories from a darkened movie theatre. 

Bliss. Heaven. Perhaps even a bit of the spiritual. My kind of evening.

Well worth the homework... and a load of dishes. What will you reward yourself with, once your homework is done?

Which Character are You?

I finally saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince yesterday... and I couldn't get to sleep last night (or sleep past 6 this morning) from thinking about it. If you haven't seen it, though, don't worry. I'm adept at not spoiling the plot of movies. You won't find any clues in here about what goes on in the film.

I've always identified myself with Hermoine--book smart and loyal--yet I discovered while watching the film that I find links to many of the HP characters, even Dumbledore (perhaps it's the professor in me). The only character I consistently don't identify with is Ron Weasley. 

But this is not new. I find myself identifying with other characters in other books, too, in various ways. That is the magic of literature, a power writing has to create a fictive world which ties strongly to the real one we are living within, despite huge differences between worlds. I can feel, for a few hours, as if I am Harry Potter, undervalued, lonely, yet capable of great things. I can feel like Emma Bovary, unsatisfied with my world as it is, wondering how to make it better (even if I wouldn't make the choices she did in Flaubert's novel). It seems many readers identified themselves with Emma, and some claimed Flaubert wrote the novel based on them, yet when asked who Emma was, he said, "C'est moi." ("It is I.")

I may most identify with the main character of Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword, for she seems utterly ordinary, yet finds herself drawn, inexplicably, to a world far different than her known world... and others see the potential in her long before she realizes it herself (rather like Harry Potter). I also identify with Spider Man (yes, yes, I said it!), mainly because my talents are hidden to most people--both by chance and by my own design.

With whom do you identify? What characters are most like you? Feel free to choose any book or film you like, or several characters from several books or films, but tell me what characters resemble you. Perhaps we have a few characters in common.