rustypants speaks

our school does 4 20-minute focus lessons daily in the areas of writing, math, science, and reading. teachers are given the focus for each week, then left to their own devices on how they’re going to teach and what materials they’re using.

this week’s focus for reading is synonyms - words that have similar meanings. i put together a couple pages on my SmartBoard (interactive projector that shows the entire class what’s on the computer) talking about synonyms, asking them for their definition, then using the definition found on dictionary.com. i then had them give examples of synonyms and we were having a grand old time.

i made sure they understood that it’s easy to say something like, “Mr. Rust is happy.” but that taking it to the next level, making it interesting for our readers, you need to drop the mundane and use synonyms. i gave an alternate word for “happy” then said, “hey! let’s get on to thesaurus.com and look at all the different words we could replace happy with!”

and i did.

and some of the words made the kids scratch their heads. others made them laugh, like when i said, “if i said, ‘Mr. Rust is chipper!’ instead of our boring sentence using ‘happy,’ wouldn’t that make this sentence more exciting?”

“what does ‘chipper’ mean, Mr. Rust?” was the response.

and being the intelligent teacher i am, i said, “we’re on dictionary.com - let’s check!” and the result was this:

well, this is all cool, right? we’re having a great, entertaining LEARNING experience! woo! mr. rust RULES!! OH yeah!!

so i’m explaining chipper, acting the part, etc. and one of the kids says, “what does ’sprightly’ mean?” and i begin to explain, but then, in my massive intelligence, i thought, “wait!! you’ve got dictionary.com right here!”

so i plug in “sprightly” and this is what i and the whole class sees on the SmartBoard:

and i hit the word “gay” and the class was like…

OMG!! you’re GAY?

haha. i quickly moved on and thought it was over. but then at lunch a student came over and said, “Mr. Rust, someone said you said you was gay.”

and i realized: teaching on the fly is fun but potentially costly.

but i’m still chipper and sprightly.

the days continue to be sunny and warm, temps still hitting the low 80’s and upper 70’s, and the evenings are getting a bit chilly. to wrap myself in a toasty pullover (Xavier!) is becoming commonplace as the sun sinks below the horizon. the trees have still not begun to change colors here in pensacola but i imagine this will commence soon.

the red tide alert was lifted this past week and lise and i joyously returned to the beach friday night to celebrate clear waters, dead-fish-less shores, steamed shrimp, and…

lise’s new job(s).

it’s been a rollercoaster of a ride these past weeks as we’ve dealt with some crippling blows to our adventure in southern living - the financial crisis has sapped me of mental strength, the job crisis has sapped lise’s. she’s been a real trooper, though, and doubled up her efforts to find employment.

and between thursday and friday, she was offered four positions. one of them was easy to turn down. another was accepted on thursday, then turned down on friday upon receiving the other two offers. she is now the volunteer coordinator at Learn to Read of Northwest Florida, an adult literacy program here in pensacola. she’s quite excited, as the director was very complimentary, friendly, and encouraging as she applied, interviewed, was highly recommended, then offered the position. it’s not a high-paying job, but the hours are good (9-5, M-Th) and the organization seems solid.

she’ll also start subbing at escambia county schools on fridays off and on to get into the system (and get some extra $$).
are we excited? definitely. are we relieved? yes and no. we’re far from being out of the woods of our crisis, but this is such a wonderful first step - lise’s been working her butt off to get work and it’s been so depressing and frustrating - this removes much of that and the obvious feelings of rejection that are felt during fruitless searching, applying, calling, interviewing, etc.

the next big thing on our hope / prayer list is: getting the house sold. we’ve dropped the price again and now we begin to lose money on it. we’re very sad that it’s come to this but honestly, a key part of our being able to make it down here will be unloading that house that we love and miss so much. we’ll be working again to save money over the next few years for a down payment on a home in florida, but having that drain on our finances sold will make things much easier.

we’re hitting the beach again tonight to continue our celebration and relax before lise rejoins the rat-race. thanks for your thoughts, prayers, and encouragement over the past few weeks (and months)!

• many thanks to the folks calling, emailing, texting to make sure lise and i were ok after the tornado ripped it’s way through pensacola on thursday. it got within 8 blocks or so of my school and we lost power from 10:15am through the end of the school day, but there was no damage and no one was hurt. definitely made for an interesting day, though!
• funny thing about the tornado: lise and i had NO IDEA that a tornado was going through until my dad sent me a text message saying he saw on the news (in CINCINNATI!) about it and wanted to make sure we were ok. even at the school, we didn’t know.
• many folks are asking how we’re doing since the news we received last wednesday and the answer is: we’re as ok as we can be. we’ve decided to stay the course down here and see where it leads us, but it won’t be without pain and (obviously) sacrifices we weren’t thinking we’d need to make. we’re ok.
• i finished reading Roots by Alex Haley a couple weeks ago. i remember watching the miniseries on TV waaay back in the 70’s when i was a wee lad and it must’ve made an impression on me - as i read the book i very easily visualized scenes and remembered in some cases what was coming next. it was a very good book, despite the apparent “controversies” surrounding Haley and the writing. recommended reading.
• florida has a Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award that is voted on and given each year. our librarian walked each class through this years books and i was so impressed that i took some of our classroom money and bought a couple copies to read aloud and share with the students - two standouts from the list include The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and A House of Tailors. both are excellent books with edward tulane being my favorite.
• we’ve kept with our decision to not watch any television and have been watching a lot of movies recently. we’ve also discovered Scrubs again for the first time. we’ve seen maybe one or two shows a season but always seemed to be busy the night it’s on - we rented season three and laughed our butts off. i love dr. cox.
• hollywood video is going out of business in several locations here in p-cola, and i stumbled on their liquidation sale at one store - all dvd’s were $1.99! now, there weren’t that many left, but i did end up with 12 movies, several of which are absolute favorites - the biggest of them being Cinema Paradiso. this movie won the best foreign film Oscar back in 1988 - lise and i saw it last year for the first time and we were totally floored with how incredible it was. what a sweet and touching movie! finding the director’s cut version for $1.99 made my week.
• red tide has hit the gulf coast in our area and it’s made it nearly impossible to go to the beach this week. we went last saturday and as we got out of the car, i said, “something doesn’t smell right” - dead fish floating all over and the water was a murky brackish green color. it’s spread up and down the coast and is still affecting the water. seafood friday is still on the schedule for tonight but i’m not sure how long we’ll be on the beach. :-(
• no bites on the house yet. may end up dropping the price yet again - at this point we’re losing more money than it’s worth, but dropping the price means we’ll lose even more. gosh, we just didn’t think it’d take this long!
• we’ve got a birkenstock store here in pensacola that’s bigger than any we’ve been in yet. it’s called comfort zone and one thing that makes it unique is that they have a LARGE “discount” section - we’ve NEVER seen this before from a birk dealer. i found a pair of waterproof birkenstock sandals, normally priced at around $180, for only $19.95. they’re fantastic! woo!! nothing like being flat broke and being able to say you bought a new pair of birkenstocks, yo.
• i’m heading out of school to hit maria’s seafood for some shrimp, then heading home to pick up the wife. be well and thanks for reading.

we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay (no really) we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay we’re going to be okay

lise and i love the beach. duh.

one thing we learned early on is this: no matter how much you want it to, the face of the beach never stays the same. we’ll be at a particular spot one night and find tons of cool seashells, then go back the next night, same spot, and everything’s gone.

the waves come and churn everything up, move everything around, slide things up and down the shoreline, and change the face of the beach hour by hour. if you’ve ever stood and watched a particular shell get tossed up on the beach by a wave, try and rush to grab it, only to have it disappear as fast as you saw it, you know that the beach changes in a matter of seconds, too.

yesterday we received news that, at the time, seemed catastrophic to our hopes of staying here in pensacola. the world came to a screeching halt yesterday afternoon. we’ve both been crying and upset, trying to figure out why this is happening and why things that seemed to be going along ridiculously well at first, now are not. how are we going to manage to work this out with everything seemingly hinged to a few things that are falling apart?
so after we got the depression & self-pity out of our systems last night we spent the morning re-working our gameplan and trying to see where we can go from here.

and this afternoon, i went to the beach to decompress. and i watched tiny shells come and go. and i watched the waves moving everything around. and i watched the face of the beach get changed and rearranged. and i learned (again) that life has a habit of doing this same thing to us. we want things to be accessible and familiar and easy to swallow, but this rarely happens. life shifts, ebbs, and flows and things get moved. we reach for something we see moving around in life, but it gets moved out of our reach, buried in the sand. and then something else comes along and we reach and grasp it with success.

we’re going to continue on our path down here in pensacola and rearrange our hopes and expectations. will it all work out? or will more waves come and scramble the face of our lives again? dunno.

life will continue to be a beach sometimes, this much we can depend on.

dolby and i went to the beach together last week and hung out. he’s a good companion - i let him off his leash and he never goes more than 15 yards from me, responds well even with distractions, enjoys the water, the sand, and pieces of flotsam.

we sat together and watched the sun go down after a particularly silly crazy-dog session of running, fetching, rolling around in the sand (”making sand-angels,” we say), walking into the water and sitting down, chasing plovers, etc.

and on this night, he did something funny.

unless he’s laying down, dolby’s an active dog. he rarely just “sits still” in an upright position without moving. i had been taking pictures of the sunset and the water as i sat and i turned to see what he was up to - he was sitting completely motionless, watching the sky.

now for those photography buffs among you, you know that when the sun is gone and the sky is clear, long exposures are a must. for those non-photography folk, this means that any movement at all typically ruins the shot and the moving object is blurred. i took about 15 shots of dolby from various positions and angles with a 1/2 exposure and an f-stop of 2.7 - the shot to the left is one of the best and it’s a pretty cool picture, if you want to know what i think.

dolby’s done quite well transitioning from a city dog to a seadog, but i’ll admit:

when he sits like this and stares at the sky, i can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking.

“i miss my backyard. i miss having the whole house to run around in. where are the girls who used to come over and scritch and scratch me and spoil me? how long are we going to be in that tiny apartment? is it going to snow down here? will i get to chase snowballs again? where the hell are all the squirrels?”

and i cry a little because i know i’m homesick.

i miss my family. i miss my friends. i miss my house. why are things happening like this? how long are we going to be stuck in this tiny apartment? where’s my comforting familiarity?

what a see-saw.

since our earliest days as a married couple (17 years ago!!) we’ve been members of sam’s club. back in those days our typical purchases were cases of ramen noodles and tubs of peanut butter (just the staples we could afford to survive). in recent years it’s grown to include just about everything they sell - good deals, generally!

at times, however, sam’s makes us laugh.

their christmas stuff? it was put out a couple weeks ago.

they sell all kinds of ridiculous stuff throughout the year that i cannot fathom the purchasers of such things.

but i digress.

since knowing we were moving to pensacola back in january or february of 2007, we’ve been more conscious than usual of lise’s skin cancer and our need to protect against it even moreso down here than in cincinnati. it’s always sunny down here (well, except for when the heavens are dumping a torrential downpour upon us).

sam’s club to the rescue!

back in march or april while twirling around the store looking at all the goods, i spotted something more ridiculous than usual. here we are in land-locked ohio, no beaches as far as the eye can see (unless you count the scary little one at East Fork Lake) and here, at sam’s club: a beach umbrella.

we’d seen them in some of the stores and shops down here on our vacations but they were always overpriced and rickety looking. this baby at sam’s club: metal, dude! big spike on the bottom! multi-colored fabric! water and oil resistant!

and the price? under $20.

well, who am i to argue? i plunked down my money, put the sucker in the garage and waited for the move. and now, six months later, this is what our umbrella looks like spiked in the sand on the gulf of mexico on a gorgeous sunday night at the end of september.

now if only they sold industrial strength drums of sunscreen, we’d be set.