Five comments I left on other people’s blogs

I feel quite sheepish posting this, especially since I have not commented anywhere in 48 hours. But I have been hording copies of comments in an email draft – I was having so much trouble commenting, now it’s better – and I thought it might be fun to just post some (with links to the posts where I commented, of course) because they are little snap shots of me that I can’t really get onto the blog otherwise. So here we go.

On the post NaBloPoMo: Monday, funny day: 3 laughs at No Small Feet:

I could not exist without my Tile. I use it constantly. I used to have to keep an extra on my bedside table in case I lost both my wallet AND my phone. Twice I’ve lost my wallet (and keys, I keep them attached to each other so I can never leave the house accidentally without my wallet) in weird and super frustrating ways (both before I had a Tile). Once, I was in college, and I looked for it for a full day before I threw myself on my futon bed in frustration and thought I heard my key jingle. I finally found my keys and wallet – they had fallen between the bed and the wall, and gotten pushed under the futon mattress. So when I looked on my bed I didn’t see them and when I looked UNDER my bed I didn’t see them – they were hidden in the netherworld between! Another time I was trying to see a friend (a blogging friend actually!) and I looked for hours for my wallet and keys before I found them. They had fallen into a little pocket in the towel, between the seat and the backrest,  that I had to hang over my nice office chair so the cat wouldn’t rip it to shreds.

I lose so many things. I have said that when I die I want to be sat in a room where they show me where all the things I lost and never found ended up. Just old school projector style, thrown up on a white wall so I can just have that closure.

On the post The students are skeptical at Light & Momentary:

I find this fascinating, and not at all surprising. I see it at my school too, with other teachers, who get so frustrated as we try to move away from detentions and other punitive consequences. But how will they learn, if we don’t punish them for doing it? Except it’s always the same kids in detention, so clearly they don’t learn? People just feel better when they think there has been a consequence, even if we know the consequence isn’t effective. It’s like they can’t stand the thought that they got away with it.

I wanted very much for the “natural consequences” parenting efforts to help guide my own parenting, but I found that my kids did not seem to learn much from their mistakes, despite my refusal to jump in and save them.

Me: Remember how cold you were when we didn’t bring a jacket last time? Kid: Blank stare.

Me: Remember how you forgot your lunch and you were so hungry last month? Kid: Blank stare.

How are they supposed to learn when they don’t remember even doing it? Drove me crazy. I find the same in my classroom. I try so hard to help them reflect on how things went last time so they can make changes this time, and they seem literally unable to make those connections. It can feel like I’m hitting my head against a wall.

My kids are too old, and I’m not on social media enough, to have come in contact with Dr. Becky directly, but I’ve read a lot about her and have a friend who follows her teachings very closely (and has struggled mightily to convince her mother that her Dr. Becky-inspired-parenting-practices are appropriate). I do think there is a confusion where gentle is understood as boundary-less and that isn’t accurate. There probably are a fair amount of “gentle parents” who are not providing the boundaries kids need, but there are plenty of “authoritarian parents” who do the same.

On the post 5 Random Quotes on Runner’s Fly:

I like “Follow your routine, not your mood.” I think my predisposition to do this is one of my better qualities. Having said that, I do try to honor how I’m feeling in some ways. Like if I have a strength class on the docket, but am more in the mood for the elliptical (with blog writing/reading/commenting) I will let myself switch that up and tack on CG’s dead bug workout or an Arms and Shoulders burner afterward. Sometimes I even push back a workout. But I ALWAYS workout five times a week, so I can only push back one day! You already know my favorite sayings, as I just posted about them!

On 12: Five random things I thought about recently at the in between is mine:

Um, that slide/climbing wall thing is so crazy cool. Can you imagine having a childhood like that? No house or apartment I ever lived in as a kid (and I lived in a few) had anything hidden passage ways, but my closet in one house had a weird little raised storage space in it, probably for putting boxes and stuff, and my mom let me make it into a little fort, which I loved. But it wasn’t a hidden slide into a pile of pillows.

Actually, I just remember, that house did have another weird thing, wow I haven’t thought of this in ages… At the bottom of the stairs there was a door, and for years it just opened into… nothing. Like it was the outside ground, the room had walls around it but had never been finished. My parents did eventually put a floor in there, and made it a room, but it connected to a storage space that didn’t have a wall, so there were shelves on one side, but the other side was the ground of the hill the house was built on. That space always freaked me out. I did not love it. It’s crazy… I haven’t thought of that space in literal decades. Thanks for prompting me to remember!

On the post Come See Me In the Good Light at Bibliomama:

I once did an exercise where you look down a long list of values to identify your five or six core values and “humor” was one of them and I remember thinking, can humor even be a value? But then I asked my husband to do it, and without even seeing the list he identified humor as his most important value. I asked him about it, and he said that he wanted to approach pretty much everything in life with humor, that is just how he wanted to interact with the world. And being with him for over 17 years, I now know what he means by that, and I’m so grateful that I ended up with someone who claims humor as his core value. Anyway, what you said about humor made me think about that.
Now I want to watch that special, but also I don’t want to because I don’t want to ugly cry. Which reminds me of the time I flew to see my friend when my second kid was just six months old and on the plane I had to pick between Maleficent and The Fault in Our Stars. And I had read the Fault in Our Stars and I knew I’d ugly cry if I watched the movie, and I didn’t want to do that on a plane with people stuck around me would be forced to watch me, so I picked Maleficent, but then someone in front of me, whose screen I could see between the seats PICKED The Fault in Our Stars and I ended up seeing enough of it, through the seats, that I ugly cried anyway, and I was like, oh great! Now everyone things I’m ugly crying at Maleficent! Still makes me laugh to this day…