Émilie

This recipe (which, btw, I owe entirely to Monica’s brilliance) has made me quite famous in quite a few households, so I’m posting it here in case you’d like to attempt the magic on your own:

Almost Vegan Cookies*

from the kitchen of Monica and Emily

1/3 cup crunchy peanut butter

2 Tbsp. oil

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup flour

½ tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

1 cup oats

½ bag chocolate chips

Cream together wet ingredients (peanut butter, oil, sugar, milk, vanilla) on medium speed until smooth. Add dry ingredients and combine. Bake on greased cookie sheets at 425˚ for 6 minutes for perfect, melt-in-your-mouth cookies. (Tbsp. sized balls work best.)

*To make this recipe truly vegan, substitute soy milk for regular milk, and use dark chocolate chips or a substitute.

I have only skimmed the surface of this fantastic (so I hear–I’m on page 8 ) book of feminism, and I have already been distracted by some fun discussion of word etymology and the power of words. I’d like to share:

Words hurt, soothe, inspire, demean, demand, incite, pacify, teach, romance, pervert, unite, divide. ~inga muscio, p.8

How will you use your words today?

Even as much as I’d like to be the perfect teacher like my aunt Mary C, I recognize that sometimes I am using words to demean and demand more so than teach and inspire, but I think that we could all stand to be more conscious about our choice of words, tone, and body language. At least if you incite/divide/hurt/etc., do it purposefully and with full knowledge. Don’t forget that words that you may mean to soothe may have a different power on the listener. I challenge you to be more aware of your receivers.

Think about it.

May I lift my glass and give three cheers to two old friends from Greensboro who drove up (from South Charlotte) to join me for dinner!! I hadn’t seen Leslie-Ann in two years! I’m very lucky to have Gary living in town, and also that he was kind enough to share LA this time…

We (mostly I) talked for several hours about our jobs, our lives, and a few things we remembered from high school. In some ways, I felt oddly like an adult entertaining friends the same way my parents used to: madly rushing around to make the living room look presentable, then serving wine and talking loudly about boring adult stuff. On the other hand, we were eating pepperoni pizza and chocolate chip cookies…

It’s strange (and now I believe glorious) to be straddling the line between adult and youth, but LA, Gary and I did a great job tonight of enjoying the best of both worlds.

I love you two!!

I got to sleep in 3 whole hours…so it is now a nice fat 8:00 am. I say “fat” because the expression in French meaning “to sleep in” is faire la grasse matinée, which translates literally to “to make/have a fat morning.” I like to think that that means you are making the morning “fat” by making it longer, but it makes me giggle to think that it could also mean that the person sleeping in is the “fat” part… you lazy cow! How glorious.

The sleeping in this morning is of course grâce à (thanks to) less than 1/2 an inch of snow and now some very scary drip-droppy rain. So as my yankee colleagues laugh their asses off at us, I’m going to go back to bed and make some more fat morning.

Sadly, the Union Jack was flying here instead of the royal standard, so the Queen was out to lunch at one of her other residences.

Nevertheless, it was a remarkable experience!

The following entry is pieced together from an email I sent on December 24th at 2:00 PM:

It was another cold, gray British day today, but I have a good coat and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves regardless. Today we visited Windsor Castle. It wasn’t as lovely as some of the French residences I’d seen, but seeing as how the Queen still lives in it on the weekends, I could definitely tell it felt more like a home. (A ridiculously lavish and ceremonial home, but a home nonetheless.)

We were lucky that there weren’t any state visitors in the country, so we were able to view the state apartments (where foreign nobles/royals/important people still sleep!). We also got to walk up the red-carpeted entryway where these same important people would enter. It was really wild just to be there.

Windsor is also home to the world’s most famous doll house complete with miniatures that I can scarcely describe. The house has working electricity, plumbing, and miniature works of art recreated by the artists themselves in some cases!

We also got to see the changing of the guard, and the band that led in the new guard was playing Christmas carols, so the crowd sang along, and it was delightfully corny!

It was a delightful trip, but we came home exhausted, so we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in front of the telly and working on Robin’s new jigsaw puzzle.

So now my first conscious day in London is coming to a close (I slept for almost the entirety of yesterday minus an AMAZING meal in SOHO at a great vegetarian restaurant), and aside from being exhausted, I’m having a marvelous time.

This morning we took a tour of the Tower of London, and our tour guide was hilarious. He told a lot of specific stories about historical people that really made it possible to imagine yourself there hundreds of years ago. He took every possible opportunity to make fun of Americans, but it was enjoyable. It was so entertaining that I almost forgot about how dreadfully numb my toes were!

Inside the tower we got to see the crown jewels… and damn. That was just crazy! The tour guide told the women to look down at their left hands…. then at the jewels… then back at their hands. One of the scepters held a 530 carat diamond! (No pressure, Michael. )

We really haven’t seen anything that I would classify as beautiful, but I am loving how old everything is! We are tracing the footsteps of history! Robin told us that even one of the tube lines we rode was first used in 1906! I’d never been interested in the history of British royalty, but seeing the places where they’d lived, married, and beheaded one another (yeah, welcome to London) made it much more interesting.

We ate lunch in a classic English pub. The “chips” (=fries) were delicious. Then we popped over to briefly walk around a modern art museum, but we didn’t care for it much, so we left early to get our daily groceries and return home to make dinner in our nice, warm flat. It’s great to be out of the cold!

More soon! Cheerio, loves!

Two entries in my travel journal typed here for your viewing pleasure:

7:05 PM, CLT airport, at gate D3

No problems so far except that my poor bladder almost burst. Why are there no bathrooms until after you check-in and pass through security?? I had to pee from the time Michael dropped me off, and the sight of those long lines almost made me cry. Fortunately no one/thing poked me in the abdomen, so I made it.

7:55 AM, London time, on plane

Not at all a comfortable flight. I remember loving the trip to France… This time, however, the first let down came when I had not brought my own head phones, so the in flight movie wouldn’t even play unless I purchased and plugged in the $5 US Airways ones. I didn’t, so it was a long, uncomfortable flight. I swear this is the smallest possible seat, even for little ol’ me! I slept very little and spent most of the flight looking over the shoulder of a man 3 rows ahead of me to watch his silent screen.

I’m tired and dehydrated.

Never in my life have I been this furious. I frightened myself on the way home I was having such malicious thoughts towards my AP. God help him if he comes within 30 feet of me tomorrow.

I managed to have a GREAT day today. I have been working my butt off to get our team (3rd/4th/5th grade) organized seeing as how our team leader resigned and has not been replaced. I was so delighted to see everything come together and to see the kids so engaged in the presentations by several VIF teachers about their home countries. Furthermore, I came up with a brilliant suggestion for a persistent problem with the 5th grade behavior, and Mr. C (who has previously treated me like a whining incompetent greenhorn) was really impressed and excited to work with me on the implementation next semester. I spent over an hour putting together math packets for my students to work on over the break to satisfy my furious parents… something which the other math teacher is not doing. I spent an hour with Mr. C and was feeling very proud of myself and my students, and for once felt like a professional who’s part of a team.

Then at 3:00 (25 minutes from the end of the day), Mr. T came by to chew me out for not having prepared a presentation about France. He then further DEMANDED that I complete one for tomorrow and that I find a way to reorganize the schedule for my entire team so that every student can see it.

Not only do I not have time to jump through his bullshit hoops, but I am FURIOUS that he and the principal continue to look down their noses at me as if I’m cutting corners and being lazy. I FUCKING ORGANIZED THE WHOLE GODDAMN DAY AND COMPOSED THE LETTER TO THE PARENTS WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM MY TEAM YET SOMEHOW I JUST SAT ON MY ASS AND WAS NOT A TEAM PLAYER.

On top of all this, my mentor finds a way to comply. She’s doing all of the planning for it, but that’s not the point. She shouldn’t have to do this bullshit work that I refuse to do for good reason.

I learned later that I was not the only teacher whom Mr. T had lambasted today, so I don’t know who peed in his fucking cornflakes, but I’d like to fucking punch his teeth out.

I kicked ass yesterday! I had one of those (regretfully common) days where I felt like everything at my job prevented me from doing my job: teaching. However, I was running around the school like a chicken with my head cut off getting lots of clerical teachery stuff done. Despite the fact that I am “not allowed” to be the team leader for 3rd/4th/5th grade, we still don’t have one, and I seem to be falling into that role if for no other reason than to reduce the chaos which reigns on our hallway. I am still devoid of confidence in my teaching abilities, but at least I’m a good leader.

Actually, I did a clever thing in my 3rd grade math class yesterday, too. I hadn’t even done a lesson plan, but I guess I was already on a roll. Unfortunately it’s too visual to explain here, so I can’t brag about it. The EC teacher (Exceptional Children) did at least say that it was so neat and creative that I should patent the idea. It’s kind of her job to get excited over people’s small successes, but I still appreciate the compliment from a colleague.

Thanks to MyGreatPartner, Michael, I am now able to embrace my nerdiness and share tidbits of my life with you.  Hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I will!  Thanks, love!