A Figgy Story

In between watching the Olympics (such INSPIRATION!), I’m working on a new wiki (trying out my Sites wiki with Google), getting my computer off our home computer network (oh, joy!), plowing away at the home sewing (borrrring!), and attempting to keep cool in our late summer heat wave here in Bremerton (the cats are all wearing wet neck collars and sleeping by the fans).

My husband and I have also been trying to harvest a few figs.

Usually, the starlings get almost all of the figs, but this year, there have not been many starlings.  And not many ripe figs either.  My husband discovered the reason why when he went up a longer ladder, higher up into the fig tree branches.  This is a HUGE fig tree, and the leaves are very wide, and the branches are tremendously leafy.

He found two adolescent raccoons sleeping off their midnight fig feast with a daytime nap on one of the branches.

We managed to get one big bowl of figs.  They taste wonderful when they are just harvested IF they are harvested when they are really ripe, but they also don’t have a long shelf life once you pick them.  I picked out the most squishy ones to eat right away, and put those into the icebox. The rest went downstairs into the cool  basement to ripen a bit more down there.

When I went down to get the rest of the figs the next day to freeze them, Shasta, our black, male kitty was lying, proudly and possessively by the bowl.  He meyowed a “look at me and praise me” meyow, but I was too hot to fuss with him.  I took the bowl of figs upstairs, peeled them, put some lime juice over the pulp, and froze it.  I’ll make fig bread later on with it.

Then Shasta started meyowing.  Meyow, meyow, meyow!  On a hot afternoon in a hot house with no air conditioning, this was beyond irritating, and I couldn’t get him to stop. 

Meyow, meyow, meyow!  No matter what I did, meyow, meyow, meyow!  Shasta may be an all-black cat (almost), but he also is a huge part Siamese.  And Siamese (Siam is the old word for Thailand) cats have the MOST whiny, raucous, irritating meyow.

Finally, after I petted him, Shasta settled down and went outside to wait for Doug to come home from painting a house.

When Doug came home and went downstairs into his computer room, he nearly stepped on two fine, fat figs neatly laid out on his lovely, new, wood floor. 

The figs were very drippy.  They had cat teeth bite marks in them, deep cat teeth bite marks.  Shasta was very happy about this discovery, purring and rubbing and just so pleased that we had also discovered  HIS figs!

Doug decided then to look for more figs.  Just in case.  He found two more large ones, also covered with cat teeth bite marks.  Also very, very drippy.  And squishy.  Shasta pranced around, even more delighted that we were FINALLY appreciating HIS booty.

There is nothing more yucky looking than an over-ripe fig that is extra squishy.  And extra drippy.  With cat teeth bite marks on it.  On a hot, dusty afternoon. 

I was glad the rest of the figs were frozen.  I really, REALLY couldn’t face eating any more figs.  Not that day!  Maybe not for a few weeks, either!

http://www.kymmco.com/index.php?id=626

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WASHINGTON READING CORPS

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I have a new job, starting in September, as a reading tutor with Washington Reading Corps!

The job will last for ten-and-a-half months; I will be working 40 hours and five days a week.  I will be paid, not a lot, but I will be paid, and I will receive free training, paid health insurance, and some paid vacation and sick leave.  At the end of the program, I will also be given money for further college education. 

I’ll be working in a school not far from my home.  I will tutor children from Pre-K through third grade, in small groups and individually; I will, as well,  help to train volunteer reading tutors.  I won’t be transcribing medical reports for healthcare providers.  Yay!  Yes, in ten-and-a-half months, I will never, never, never have to hear a medical word if I don’t want to hear one!  I most certainly will not be typing any.  I am so happy about this!

I have lots of experience with children of different ages in the classroom:  When still in high school, I was hired as an aide in a newly-formed Head Start program one summer; the Head Start supervisor decided that I was wasted as kitchen help; I also did a lot of babysitting for my high school teachers at fifty cents an hour. 

When I got out of college, after helping in schools for some of my classes there, I taught preschool for two years, full-time. 

Then, I babysat on and off here and there for different people until I got out of business school when I taught in church children’s programs for several years in between doing school visits for my first book.  

Finally, I moved here to Bremerton, and children in the streets, neighbor children, discovered me, and I then did a fair amount of putting on Band-Aids, giving drinks and snacks and words of wisdom and dealing with the powers that be who should have been caring for those children properly but were not.  Along the way, I’ve learned how to do many arts and crafts activities with children. 

I want, after this Washington Reading Corps program is over, to go on to graduate school and take a Master’s in reading and literacy and thus pull together my B.A. in sociology and my fifth year of undergraduate credits in early childhood education together with my life experiences and business training.  I might consider a Master’s in special education; I’m sure it will be one or the other.

The one thing of which I am absolutely CERTAIN is that I do not want a Masters’s in writing for children and young adults!!! 

I feel a cold, creeping sensation down my backbone even thinking about getting a Master’s in English or a Master’s in writing!  I was told by an editor in children’s books that “it would ruin you.”  And she wasn’t laughing when she said it.  And she didn’t mean that I should quit my writing.

So, being a reading tutor and then pursuing a Master’s in reading and literacy does not mean that I will quit my writing. 

I am CERTAIN that I will continue to write for children and middlegraders–as I have done in the past.  I will also continue blogging and wiki building and web site building and songwriting and poetrymaking. 

I can’t seem to stop doing those things; they make me happy; it’s just that now I am free to spend more time on something else that has made me happy for most of my adult life:

Teaching children how to read stories.  Telling them stories.  Reading them stories.  Listening to stories with them.  And learning from them.

I couldn’t be happier than I am right now about these changes in my life. I couldn’t be happier!

http://www.wa.gov/esd/wsc/program/readingcorp.htm 

SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU!
http://www.booksense.com/ to locate your favorite independent bookseller!
http://www.powels.com/ for books old and new. Check out my kingdom: http://www.rindarealm.com/ and http://www.wellscribedwords.blogspot.com/.

I’m on Jacketflap: http://www.jacketflap.com/ and Helium: http://www.helium.com/

**COPYRIGHTEDMATERIAL: DON’T PLAGIARIZE! You may not profit from my copyrighted material online. This rindawriter blog is under full international copyright, 2004-2008, by Rinda M. Byers. In addition, this blog is subject to the terms of a Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org
You may share FULL-LENGTH blog postings only on your blog. Be kind. Be fair. For PARTIAL QUOTES from the rindawriter blog, please get permission from me first, via the blog e-mail. Subscribe in a reader