Jumping for Joy

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….and raising a little cash and awareness for the Heart and Stroke Assoc.

Today was our Jump Rope for Heart event. This is my 14th year organizing this school wide jump-a-thon. Two weeks ago we had our kick off assembly and last week the pledge envelopes went home. The day almost runs itself.

Our office assistant and her husband set up their sound equipment and provided great music for the kids to jump to. Everyone gets involved from kindergarten to grade 5, teachers, assistants, student teachers and parent volunteers.

It turned out to be a great day. It was pretty warm but there was a nice breeze and the rain held off until later in the afternoon. The donations should start rolling in next week. As of 4:00 this afternoon about $2000. came back to school in the pledge envelopes. I have no idea how much money is being raised on-line but every year more and more families are using the on-line option to make their donations.

That’s one more thing I can cross off my to do list before the end of the school year. Tomorrow is the school Fun Fair and next Tuesday I’m taking the girls’ soccer team to the West Conference Finals. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Cheers!

Still Waiting to be Fired

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..my pottery that is

At my pottery class tonight I trimmed the bowl that I made two weeks ago. I did the trimming on the wheel. It was fun shaving off the excess clay and making the footing for my bowl. It probably doesn’t look much different.

The new project that I worked on was a tall vase. I rolled out a slab and rolled it around the a tube and then attached a bottom and decorated it with stamps. Now it sits and waits to be fired along with all my other projects.

My berry bowl and it’s saucer wait for their first firing and my plate and jar have been fired once and are now glazed and wait for the final firing. I’m most anxious to see how the glazed pieces will look.

Cheers!

Planning for the Summer

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..opening the cottage and buying tickets for flights to Europe

It all seems so surreal. We haven’t done either of the above yet. It’s almost the end of May and my focus has been on school and it continues to be my focus.

On Friday we will be hosting our Jump Rope for Heart activity and then I’ll be collecting and counting the donations and filling in the paperwork in the week to follow. Next Tuesday the girls’ soccer team will be playing at the Esther Shiner Stadium for the West Conference Finals. One more practice tomorrow morning.

Also next week we have two more sessions for Girls on the Run and then on Sunday June 9 we head up to Vaughn Mills for the actual 5k race. On Friday, next week, we have a report card writing day which is city wide. Hopefully we won’t have the usual problems when more than 11 000 teachers try to get on the system at the same time. Two of us are the report card administrators at my school we are in charge of making sure that there are no glitches in the system at the school level. Unfortunately there are always glitches but they are usually easily fixable.

The following week I have to print all the report cards for the staff. Not a difficult task but somewhat time consuming because again every school in the board prints at the same time and everything comes through cyberspace. The following day I have my physical. That reminds me, I have to check what time my appointment is. I can’t remember if I managed a time after school or if I have to take time off.

On the 13th my Forest of Reading student book club is having their big celebration day. Plans are underway and so far we’ve prepared a book making activity and one of my colleagues has confirmed that we have an artist coming in to do a drama workshop with the students. A pizza lunch has yet to be organized and prizes have to be obtained.

Tonight I spoke with my oldest daughter and we’ve set a potential date to open the cottage. It looks like it may be the Father’s Day weekend. I have to contact my friend D and see if she wants to go up the same weekend.

The week following, the school will be preparing for the spring concert. I promised my friend L, who is the music teacher, that I would help her with the organization. There is also a possibility that somewhere in the middle of all of this that the girls’ soccer team could advance to the city finals but I guess I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch.

In the last week of school the grade 5 students have their farewell assembly and a special activity day. This will be the first year since I started at Rosethorn that I won’t be directly involved with these activities. That means, however, that I will probably be in charge of an activity for the school wide fun day instead.

Somewhere I have to find time to pack up a wall of library books before we leave for summer vacation. During the summer, construction workers will be coming in to remove the wall between the library and the computer lab.

My husband has applied for his new passport and he’s been in touch with family overseas. He’s going to look into booking tickets for our flights in the next week or two and then we’ll sit down and make plans for our accommodations and planning our itinerary. We’re hoping to meet up with our son and his girlfriend when they go to Dublin for a conference. We’d like him to meet the Irish cousins and hopefully we can plan a short trip to the west coast with him.

I know people who plan months in advance for a trip like this. I’m a little nervous that we’ve left it so late but with my husband’s health issues we can’t plan too far in advance. Even at this stage we’re still waiting for one more appointment before we can make definite plans.

In the end it will all work out. If Europe doesn’t pan out, I still have the cottage and my little paradise in the sun and I will see my son in the fall.

My Missing Husband

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….I imagined the worst

The school day had barely begun. I was in the library getting ready for my first class when AM paged me from the office. My neighbour was on the phone and had our dog, Frances, in her house. K was nowhere to be found. I had the call transferred to my office and spoke directly to N. Apparently she found Frances sitting on the front lawn and she was quite upset.

My neighbour on the north side of my house, L, got into her car and drove around the neighbourhood looking for my husband. While I was talking to N (my neighbour on the south side of my house) L returned and hadn’t found my husband. I described K’s normal walking/running route to N and how she could get Frances into our house. I got off the phone and waited for her to call me back. I waited and waited and waited.

It seemed like forever but in reality it was only 15 minutes. My colleagues encouraged me to drive home to find out what was happening. When I got in the car and started on the short trip home (15minutes) I started to think the worst. What if he’d fallen down the rocky edge by the lake? Maybe he’d suffered a heart attack and was lying on a path less travelled. I didn’t know what to expect when I got home.

Half way home my phone rang. It was my husband. He was fine, just a little shaken up for having lost Frances. He let her off the leash while he ran along the lake and normally she runs along side him and occasionally checks out a path here and there but always pops back up and joins him.

For some reason, today Frances lost track of K and when she didn’t see him she ran home. K thought that she had passed him at some point so he turned around and ran back to where the path ended. He found some other dog walkers and they tried to help him find Frances. When he couldn’t find her he was beside himself with worry. He finally decided to run home.

As he got closer to the house he could hear her barking. He found my two neighbours outside the house and Frances was already inside. Needless to say K was very relieved. The problem was that at this moment in time I didn’t know that he was okay.

Did he call me right away to let me know he was home? No! He went back to the park to let others know that the dog was safe and sound at home. When he got back home the second time he called the school but I had already left. He told me later, very apologetically, that it had never occurred to him that I would be worried about him. Hmmmm! What can I say? I love him and I’m relieved that he’s okay.

My Two Cents

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….on The Great Gatsby…..the movie

Last Friday, the ladies from my book club and I attended the screening of the latest version of The Great Gatsby. I have to tell you that when I read the book in high school I couldn’t relate to the novel and I didn’t like it. After reading it a second time for our book club, I did discover that I liked it a little bit more but I still couldn’t get my head around the excesses of the era. The lists of meaningless names, the extravagant lifestyle, the excessive drinking and the hordes of uninvited selfish party goers confused me and left me cold.

That said and after hearing some negative reviews I didn’t have high hopes for the movie. In the first half hour, which highlighted the outrageous parties at Gatsby’s house and where we were introduced to the main characters, I thought my worst fears were coming to fruition. I had heard that the background music didn’t fit with the 1920s era and sure enough during the party scenes our senses were assaulted with hip hop music. I don’t know if the director did this to appeal to a younger crowd but it didn’t work for me and I like hip hop.

Not everything was bad about this movie, In fact I enjoyed most of it. Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire, tells us the story through his written journal entries after he is encouraged by his doctor to write down his experiences of that fateful summer when he lived next door to Gatsby. We see how a naive young man is sucked into the lifestyle of high society, ambition and excessive alcohol consumption while remaining loyal to Gatsby and in the end being Gatsby’s only friend.

I also enjoyed the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Jay Gatsby and Carey Mulligan who played Daisy. Luhrmann’s Gatsby becomes increasingly more real as the characters become more developed in the last half of the movie. This is definitely not the Gatsby we studied in our high school English class. It is rare when I like a movie better than the book. I gave the book a 3 out of 5.

Movie Rating: 4 out of 5

Thank you Maia

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..I‘ve been nominated for yet another award

This is the first time I’ve seen this award. Many thanks to Maia Stefana Oprea.

THE RULES ARE:

1. Display the award logo on your blog.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you.

3. State 7 things about yourself

4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.

5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award requirements.

7 Things about myself :

1. I used to be a make-up artist and colour analyst.

2. I was held up at the age of 16 when I worked in my parent’s milk store.

3. I met my husband at university when he came up to visit his best friend who just happened to be my neighbour.

4. I’ve taught at 8 different schools as a full time teacher and at numerous more when I supply taught for three years.

5. My favourite late night snack is cereal with milk or yogurt.

6. I’m an expert on fixing and maintaining oil lamps.

7. I like most foods but I don’t like tripe.

15 Blogs I’m Nominating for the Shine-on Award.

1. Five and Spice

2. Hiking Photography

3. Canadian Art Junkie

4. Jeanne’s Blog…..a nola girl at heart

5. Rarasaur

6. Art Expectations

7. Cast Light

8. My Art Blog

9. Taking a Deep Breath

10. My Guilty Pleasures

11. Living it up in Canada

12. Mama’s Gotta Bake

13. Nade in the Kitchen

14. Claygrl’s Maniacal Musings

15. Simple Sustenance

I hope you check out some or all of these nominations. Thanks again Maia. Love your artwork!

Birds of Prey and Our First Farmers’ Market of the Season

Posted on May 25, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…..a very spontaneous day

My husband and I rarely plan our weekends in advance. This morning when we woke up we decided to get an early start for our daily walk/run to the park. It was sunny but quite cool this morning so we layered up and put on cotton gloves. When we got about half a kilometre from the house we realized that we forgot to bring the poop bags so my husband headed back to the house and I tried to continue the walk with Frances. She would have none of it. She kept pulling back on the leash so I finally gave in and started walking back until we met up with K.

When we finally got to the rugby pitch there were people on the field, setting up for a game so we decided not to do our run and changed our route. Frances is great off leash when we run around the pitch because she just runs back and forth between the two of us. When we’re on the path she’s better on the leash which makes it more difficult for running so we both walked today.

Just before the pitch we came across this beautiful flowering tree in the middle of this very green patch of land. I loved the contrast of the mauve blossoms with the bright spring greens.

The route was a little longer and different from the one we normally take when we head out to the point. Today we had an unexpected surprise because a Spring Bird Festival was taking place along the route. There were dozens of bird watchers and numerous displays under canopies. One of the displays featured raptor birds prominently perched on the arms of their handlers. They were absolutely beautiful.

Once we were far away from the Bird Festival we let Frances off the leash so that she could go for a swim in the lake. After retrieving her tennis ball out of the lake several times she ran and ran and ran. She must have checked out every last little path along the route and went back into the water at different points for more swims.

On the way home our noses were assaulted by a very bad odour coming from Frances. We realized that somewhere on the walk she must have rolled in something disgusting. Once we got to the house K took her immediately to the backyard while I went inside and prepared buckets of warm water with doggy shampoo. She let us rub her down with the sudsy water and then stood perfectly still while we rinsed her with warm clear water. She was cooperative but you could tell she wasn’t happy.Our walk covered 6k.

Today was also the first day for the Junction Farmers’ Market. We were debating whether to ride our bikes or drive the car. After our walk K made us a wonderful breakfast of bacon and eggs and by the time we finished eating we didn’t have a lot of time left before the market was scheduled to close. Consequently we drove but we parked a fair distance from the market and we managed to add another kilometre to our walking distance.

The market was small but the vendors were very friendly and we picked up some fresh baby greens, honey, radishes and more plants for the garden. We’ve already lost one tomato plant. It was dug up and destroyed. We’re thinking it was a racoon. We’re replacing it with a zebra tomato plant and we’ve bought a couple of Jerusalem artichoke plants. A couple of vendors suggested spraying the plants with pepper. We’ll have to give it a try.

Later in the afternoon I went to Curry’s Art Store to buy a Gelli plate to try a new type of mono printing. I had checked out two different art stores when we were in the Junction this morning but neither store had heard of them. I’m looking forward to trying this technique and sharing my results with you.

Cheers!

Op Art and Collage Landscapes

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….art produced in my grade 4/5 class

I don’t often post photos of my 4/5 class. They take longer to finish projects and some of their assignments involve many stages. The op art pieces were somewhat time consuming and the assignment is a good one to leave for a supply teacher because it uses only black and coloured markers, a pencil and a ruler. These were done on large pieces of paper and could be done on sheets of paper half the size.

For instructions on how to make these colourful pieces check out Artisan des Arts.

The watercolour landscapes using collage teaches children about foreground, background and the horizon line. The students were instructed to cut out magazine pictures and place them on the paper that they had painted ahead of time with watercolours. They simply had to paint in a foreground colour (land, beach, etc.) and then another for their background ( usually the sky). The largest magazine details where placed at the bottom edge of the paper and then smaller pieces were glued down further back giving the illusion of distance and depth.

Namaste

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Mama Cormier

…. thank you Maureen Rae for your wonderful restorative yoga class

It was a calm yet productive day today. No early morning soccer practice, no meetings and no Girls on the Run. I had time this morning to work on my art lesson, clean up the stockroom, process some books, help students put some finishing touches on their art projects and take down some art work and return it to students and make room for new work.

It was treat day in the staffroom at first recess. Val makes great chocolate chip cookies and banana bread. I literally broke off a small piece of each just so I could have a taste. Sometimes that’s all I need and I’m satisfied.

The students in my art class were unusually attentive and engaged. I introduced my Picasso lesson to the entire class and then those students that were finished all their other projects started on their Picasso style portraits. The rest of them worked very hard to finish their stitching projects and/or the op art project they started last week. It’s amazing how much work they can produce when they’re focused and not socializing with their peers.

In the afternoon a shipment came in with all the skipping ropes and literature for our Jump Rope for Heart campaign. In past years I’ve always had my homeroom students help me organize and deliver the packages that get sent home. At the end of the day I sorted through all the boxes and bundled up the literature for each class and left it on the table in the staffroom for teachers to pick up and distribute to their students.

When I plan to go to yoga I always stay late at school on Wednesdays. After I organized the Jump Rope for Heart packages I spent some time organizing the library and my art supplies. When I finally left for yoga the skies opened wide and I got caught in a huge downpour on my way to the car. Of course today is the day that I parked in the last spot on the lot and I was soaked to the skin by the time I got to my car. My friend and colleague who goes to yoga with me left a minute after me and also got drenched.

We both go to Maureen Rae’s Yoga Studio on Dundas St. in west Toronto. I’ve been going to Maureen’s studio for about four years but V introduced me to restorative yoga two years ago. It’s so relaxing and every session focuses on different parts of your body. Maureen has a very soothing voice and talks you through and demonstrates every move. You are always encouraged to do what you can and to never push yourself beyond your comfort level.

: My attempt at a warrior’s pose.

Since I’ve lost over 30 pounds yoga has become even more enjoyable. Some of the moves, that I found difficult in the past because I couldn’t get my arms around my knees or I couldn’t bend because my stomach got in the way, are no longer a problem.

All in all, today was a great day. I stayed on track with my eating and I got back to yoga.

Cheers!

A Day of Soccer, Girls on the Run and School Council Meeting

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Mama Cormier

….this one’s for you Michele

It was after 9:00 pm when I got home tonight.

It started to pour last night and the lightning kept flashing through my bedroom window. The forecast for our soccer tournament looked grim. The only reason for cancelling a game would be the onset of lightning.

Luckily the rain, thunder or lightning never did appear and we were able to play all four games. The girls were amazing and won every game. We’re moving on to the West Conference finals in June.

At the end of the tournament the skies darkened and I was sure that Girls on the Run would be rained out. Again the rain stayed away and the girls were able to get out and run their laps in preparation for their 5k run. Being out in the sun all day and walking back and forth between the two soccer fields, making numerous trips from the fields to the office and other rooms of the school and doing recess duty and bus duty at the end of the day, left me exhausted. I didn’t run tonight.

After Girls on the Run I ended up staying at school because we had a school council meeting and I am the teacher representative. Michele ordered dinner in for both of us….chicken and salad. Perfect. The meeting started at 7:00 and ended at 8:30. It was pretty uneventful but people sure had a lot to say. Even when the meeting was over discussions continued in the hallway and a couple of parents came down to the library and had numerous questions for me about the upcoming renovation. With a little encouragement from our fearless leader we finally made our way to the parking lot.

I thought I could come and home and relax but M insisted that I had to write something for my blog tonight. This one’s for you Michele.

Cheers!