Thursday, July 18, 2013

52 New Things -- Week 28 -- Publish!!

Did you know you can publish anything on Amazon? You can. Well, unless it's a terrorist manifesto. They don't like that. But anything else you've written they will happily turn into a book for you.

It's kind of a lot of work, though. And you're pretty much on your own. I mean, when I was writing the book and wasn't sure where to put a comma or how to spell something, I just thought, "No biggie . . . an editor will fix that." Nope. When you self-publish, you're on your own. (Well, for a few hundred, Amazon will take care of that for you . . . or design a cover for a few more hundred . . . they'll do about anything for a big chunk of money.)

But when you're only going to make $2 per copy and you add up how many friends you have who want to read this book, you realize dropping a few hundred here and a few hundred there would make this a losing venture real fast . . . so you do it yourself.

I still think it's better than the old way of doing it though -- I was afraid I'd have to pay someone thousands of dollars and then have boxes upon boxes of books in my garage, collecting dust. Mailing individual books to a hundred people? That does not sound like a fun venture. I'm glad Amazon does the print-on-demand thing and all the shipping for me.

Another perk about the print-on-demand system? If you see a mistake, you can tell me, I can change it, and the next book that gets printed is error-free. So yeah, if you see a whoopsie in there somewhere, let me know!

I thought I'd get to set a release date . . . maybe come up with a marketing plan of some sort . . . but all the sudden, there it was, live and ready to order! So my week has kind of been a mess . . . I had to write seven papers and send a portfolio by four today to finish up my ELL endorsement, so that's kind of a mess and not exactly my best work . . . I'm leaving for a week of camp on Friday, so my guest bedroom is a mess, covered in everything I want to pack . . . I'm three weeks behind on my blog and trying to catch up on that while doing a hundred other things . . . I'm trying to put together a flier for some book signings I'm going to be doing, which I hope will be less of a mess, since other people will have a hand in it . . . and I'm generally ignoring the poor man I searched through all fifty states for. Luckily he still loves me . . . primarily because he hopes I'm going to make us rich with my $2/book profits! (I did cook for him several times this week and leave leftovers individually packed in the fridge so he won't starve while I'm gone, so I'm trying, friends.)

I had to laugh Tuesday night when the book became available on Amazon . . . I posted it on Facebook, and all of you lovely people blew up my comments and likes and made me feel so loved. And then I made dinner. And emptied the dishwasher. And reloaded the dishwasher. And cleaned the kitchen. So yeah, that "oh my gosh -- I just published a book and people are buying it!" glow lasted for approximately seven minutes before reality sucked me back. :)

Anyway . . . thanks friends, for making me feel loved. It was an amazing time of my life, and I'm excited for you to read about it. Some parts are depressing, since I was pretty bummed for a while, but mostly it's pretty humorous. I'd hop in the car and do in all again . . . minus the dating . . . because this time, the hubs would be in the passenger seat . . . sound asleep and snoring. We live a pretty exciting life. :)

(Just in case you missed it, you can click here to order!)

52 New Things -- Week 27 -- Marching Band Competition




What a hottie, right? Actually, the wool uniform WAS very hot . . .
Here's what marching band looked like in my high school: At half-time of the football game, we'd line up down by the goal posts and march onto the field to a drum cadence. Once we got to the middle of the field, we would face the audience and play a song. Then, to the drum cadence again, we'd form a pinwheel and march a while, then turn around and reverse the pinwheel. It was a pretty big deal. Then we'd march ourselves into a new formation, AC-T (for Albert City-Truesdale, our school name), and play the school song. Once it was over, we'd march ourselves right off the field, again to the drum cadence.

Did you catch the subtle omission there? We never marched and played our instruments at the same time.

I remember seeing a commercial on TV, about the same time as I was marching in our not-so-great marching band, for a marching band competition. It looked pretty cool, but everything looks cool in commercials, right?

Well, fifteen years later, I finally went to a marching drum competition in Colorado Springs that some of my youth group kids were in.

Wow. Those kids were amazing!

And Friday night, I saw it taken to the next level. Wow again. I'm just gonna put a video clip here and let you take a little looksie for yourself:

This is the team that won Friday night at a show earlier in the summer.

Let me just point out a couple of things:
1) Not only do they march and play at the same time, but in some cases, they are RUNNING and playing at the same time.
2) Besides marching and running and playing all at once, but they are also dodging flags and fake guns and helicopter blades and praying one of those flag boys doesn't lose control and smack 'em in the head. Yikes!

So, long story short: impressed.
(And also a little bit bummed, because one of my old youth group kids was supposed to be marching with that group but had bronchitis and had to sit out.)  :( 

But I got to spend time with old Ascension friends who drove all the way from Colorado Springs to see their son (not) march, so that was fun.

Some other observations:

Most interesting prop? The giant blue ball in a mesh bag that a boy dragged all over the field. I think it was supposed to be the earth? That doesn't explain the dragging . . . or what appeared to be a giant UPC symbol on the bottom of it. (Y'all know by "most interesting" I'm politely saying "weirdo," right?) But great job, kids!

Cutest costumes? The little 50's girls that I unfortunately did not get a great picture of. Let's just say that a lot of those flag kids were running around in eeek-inducing outfits, but this gang got lucky.

Most unwelcome visitor of the evening? Fish flies! Ugh! I hate those things! They hatch in the Mississippi River (this competition was in Dubuque) and then swarm around lights . . . and . . . well . . . at a stadium, you've got a lot of wattage . . . so by the end of the competition, everyone in the crowd was getting dive-bombed. I hope they didn't swoop down onto the field and that none of the kids competing had clogged horns afterwards. Yuck.

But overall? Pretty wowza.

Kinda makes me feel bad I didn't practice the baritone more . . .





52 New Things -- Week 26 -- Migrant Summer School

I pretty much gave up on the idea of a relaxing summer vacation weeks ago. I took a class all of June, the last class I needed to get endorsed to teach English language learners. (They used to call it ESL -- English as a Second Language -- but then they realized lots of kids were showing up in American schools knowing more than just one language, so the title didn't really fit.)

Before I can wrap the whole thing up, I have to do a thirty-hour practicum. It's kind of like a very brief student teaching experience. I thought I might be up a creek, trying to find summer school in July, but I found a school about twenty miles down the road from our new town that has a summer school program for children of migrant families. Monsanto hires lots of laborers for the summer months to detassle and do other field work, so an influx of Mexican-Americans from Texas arrive in this mostly white Iowa town every summer. The kids are required to go to this summer program so they're not sitting around the camps unsupervised.


I'm matched up with the reading teacher for 7th and 8th graders, and they're awesome. We're reading a book called The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It's about a freshman boy who decides to go to an all-white school twenty miles away from his reservation in hopes of getting a better education and having a better life. After talking about stereotypes of Native Americans, we asked the kids if there were any stereotypes they felt people had about them as children of migrant laborers.

Wow.

They had a lot to say about that. Here's a little of what they shared:

1. We are not illegal. We were born in Texas, Missouri, and Louisiana. We're as American as you.

2. We can speak English. We speak Spanish at home sometimes because our grandparents speak Spanish, and sometimes we speak Spanish when we don't want people to know what we're saying, but we can understand everything you say about us.

3. We're not poor. We come to Iowa in the summer because the jobs pay better than the jobs in Texas, but our parents work in Texas, too. We come up here because we're smart about money, not because we're desperate.

4. We listen to the same music you do. Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5 . . . whatever's on the radio.

5. We eat foods other than tacos and burritos. We like pizza and "American" food. But Taco Bell is awful and nothing like what our mom makes.

6. No one in our family owns a sombrero.

7. We don't do drugs and we don't help people cross the border illegally.

8. We don't have ten families living in one house. We do often live on the same block, though. Why would you want to drive three hours to see your grandma? We love our families, so we live close together. We don't just get together on holidays or once or twice a year -- it's more like, hey, it's Thursday and we're grilling, so come on over.

In other words, no one likes to be sterotyped . . . and if you'd just get to know us, you'd realize we're a lot like you. :)



Wednesday, July 3, 2013

52 New Things -- Week 25 -- Kids, Kids, Kids

For not being a parent yet, this past week was certainly all about children. They're so darn cute (most of the time). Here are some highlights:

My dad and his two youngest grandsons. Freaking adorable.
Des Moines Zoo -- I'm not a huge fan of zoos (I just want to unlock all the cages and let the animals run free, but that would cause mass chaos, etc., etc.), but I had the chance to meet up with my fam for a couple of hours at the zoo. There was an "Australia" section with wild wallabies hoppin' all over the place, right there with no fences between us! Craziness. All three of my nephews loved it. I was shocked by how much energy and money you lose when you take your children to the zoo. I mean, there was the entrance fee to get in, but then you had to pay more to feed the parakeets, more to ride the train, more to feed the fish, more to ride the camel, more to feed the goats . . . geez Louise, it's like you've gotta win the lottery before you can take your family on vacation. And do these kids understand how great it is to just sit on a nice bench underneath a shade tree once in a while? Nope. Go, go, go. I was exhausted after two hours. Thank goodness they're all someone else's children or they might have gotten eaten by a rhinoceros or fallen into the sea lion tank under my tutelage.

Baseball -- Our friend's son was playing in the championship game of the little league tournament Wednesday night. I don't think there was such a thing as a tournament game when I was in little league. They got trophies at the end and everything. It was a big deal. I just felt so bad for every kid that got out, though. I kept wincing, and I know everyone around me thought I was a dork, but I just wanted them all to have fun and enjoy being together without the pressure of having to win. I wanted to kick one old guy, he made me so mad. A little boy struck out, and the guy (I'm guessing it was his grandpa) yelled, "You can't just stand there watching it!" as he walked back to the dugout. I know the kid heard it, because he looked right at the man, and -- here comes the bad part -- the old man looked disgusted and just shook his head at the boy. The poor kid's head dropped to his chest as he shrank down onto the bench. I thought grandparents were supposed to be all about the unconditional love? Come on, spectators . . . kids have lots of years left to feel horrible about themselves. Can't we just let them have fun for a little bit longer?

I married into a pretty cool clan. ;)
The Sound of Music -- We headed up to Willmar, MN, for the weekend to see Kevin's brother's family. His two neices were in the local community theater production of The Sound of Music. Emma, going into fourth grade, helped with props, and Caitlynn, going into second grade, played Gretl, the youngest of the Von Trapp children. We had fun with the whole family on Saturday, hitting the local pool and playing bags in the front yard after dinner. Sunday was the big show and both girls did an awesome job . . . but in reason #432 as to why I should maybe not be a parent, when Caitlynn sang "the sun has gone to bed and so must I" . . . I started to cry. Seriously. Freaking mess, sitting there dabbing the tears so no one would see. If I'm that proud of a little girl I've officially been the aunt of for only one year, what the heck would I be like if I were a mother? I'd be bawl-babying over every little thing. But then again, I suppose you parents see a lot of not-so-adorable stuff that balances out the uber-adorable, huh? Maybe I could handle it.

So to wrap this up, my big a-ha of the week: parenting looks hard. You go, guys. I'm wiped out after just a few days with the chillins, so I don't know how the heck you do it. Carry on. I'm cheering for you.