I Just Make Most of This Up

Doesn’t Everybody Know about the Luz Ardiden?

July 15, 2011 By The Well Read Hostess 3 Comments

I’ve only blown my cover a few times this summer, but when I have, OH, the looks I get.

It usually happens when I’m minding my own business, reading updates on my phone, and I start to mutter, not realizing that I’m vocalizing.

“That’s crazy.”

“LOVE that guy.”

“Contador better just keep on pedaling…all the way home to Spain. Scrawny bastard.”

“OH MY GOD.”

“Well that’s it. Wiggins is down. Again.”

“There is no way Sanchez is going to get by Voeckler today. Not if he wants to get up Luz Ardiden tomorrow.”

Then I remember where I am and look up to see people who thought they knew me well staring, aghast.

It is a fact that I am not a cyclist. I know how to ride a bike, but I don’t do it very often. I do not like to go fast – not in cars, not even really on skis and I’m a half-decent skier, and absolutely not on a bicycle. I do not follow cycling.

Well. Except for three weeks in July, when I don’t so much follow cycling but rather give over half of my conscious existence to monitoring every moment of the Tour de France.

I lose interest in the average baseball game by about the bottom of the fourth inning, but I can watch every minute of a three and a half hour stage of a 21-stage race. Three times. Because that’s how many times a day each stage is aired on television. Plus I read live streaming highlights.

I cannot explain this except to say that I am riveted by any demonstration of a person (or group of people’s) passion for something. That anyone would love cycling so much that he would put himself through the monster insanity of this race is endlessly fascinating for me. Obviously.

And just in case you don’t know…the Luz Ardiden is a particularly challenging section of the race that features a grueling climb in the Pyrenees, today tackled in stage 12. This same section was made famous in 2003 when Lance Armstrong crashed climbing the mountain after snagging a handlebar on a little girl’s souvenir foodbag and then again had a mechanical problem later in the race, but still persevered to take the stage and later the entire race. Often the rider who makes it to the top of Luz Ardiden first (when it’s a feature on the Tour) goes on to appear on the podium in Paris.

p.s. Last year Andy Schleck was robbed when Alberto Contador sleazed out and attacked at the wrong time. He’ll get his revenge.

p.s.s. Want to be impressed? Watch team HTC bring Mark Cavendish in to win a sprint.

Filed Under: I Just Make Most of This Up, Keeping it Real, WRH Tagged With: Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck, Crazypants, Luz Ardiden, Mark Cavendish, Team HTC, Thomas Voeckler, Tour de France

Wonder Years

June 14, 2011 By The Well Read Hostess 10 Comments

I’ve been teaching for over 15 years. I’ve taught every level from fourth grade through Freshman Comp. at the University of Montana. Mostly, though, I’ve taught high school. More specifically, I’ve spent more years teaching ninth graders than any other.

Today I’m giving my last final exams as a classroom teacher.

I went back to school (again) to get my credentials to become a guidance counselor a few years ago and have been waiting for the chance to make a move.

Chance, arrived. Move, being made.

I am a very lucky girl. Not least because this year was a fantastic teaching year. I had great students. Fun, interesting, different, challenging, extraordinary students. They kept me on my toes and they made me laugh and mostly, they reminded me why I loved this job in the first place.

Next year I’ll swap my classroom for an office, and instead of meeting with large groups of kids, I’ll be meeting with them one on one. Instead of talking about writing and literature, we’ll be talking about college plans and course registrations and problems at home and trouble with friends. But it’s all kind of the same, helping young people grow into older people.

I feel strangely possessive about my students at the end of the year. As if they’re MY students and I’m sending them off into the great unknown. Of course, they’re only going two doors down to tenth grade English. This year I’m the one making the bigger leap. They, these wonderful kids, told me they think I”ll be great at my new job. High praise, that. I’ll take it.

What makes these kids so extraordinary is that they’ve figured out something that most adults I know haven’t. They’ve figured out that in order to be happy they need to find something they love. Each one of these 15 year olds has a passion for something, whether it be writing or tennis or singing or soccer or science or Harry Potter. We started the year talking about Joseph Campbell in the context of the Hero’s Journey; there’s no need to give them the “follow your bliss” spiel, they know it by heart. And I mean, by heart, because nobody ever told them, they just know that their happiness depends on finding something to care about.

And that’s the beauty of it, they aren’t too cool to care. Make no mistake, these are future homecoming queens and captains of the lacrosse team, but they are comfortable in their own skin and that’s a powerful thing. I wish I could bottle that and distribute it in high school cafeterias across the globe.

People say that adolescence is the worst time of a person’s life. I don’t know about that. It’s not easy, but can anything so full of promise be so bad?

Filed Under: Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't

Pigs at the Trough

June 1, 2011 By The Well Read Hostess 4 Comments

One year I made gender rolls.

Last year it was a cake to celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday.

Today, and with no small amount of help from The World’s Greatest Husband, the kids* got a cake to celebrate the last novel of the school year, The Lord of the Flies.

Poor Piggy. My neighbor, the art teacher, suggested making red velvet cakes to really capture the gore. I liked the juxtaposition of cute pink piggy and red cake.

The cake, if you’ll excuse the heavy-handedness of the pun, killed. I used THIS recipe. The buttercream is so good that I re-copied the recipe below. When a pack of ninth graders demand copies of a cake icing recipe? You know you’ve hit on a winner.

If only the novel were as simple as the biological response to eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

We study not only William Golding’s ideas about man’s internal struggles with good and evil, but Maslow’s heirarchy of needs, Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience, and Philip Zimbardo’s prison work from Stanford.

I feel almost bad about what I do to their innocence by the end of this unit.

Hence. The cake.

*Kids = students, not actual came-outta-me offspring. Although the offspring got their own mini piggy cake compliments of their dad, who is a saint and made it for them while I was off doing god knows what else. Probably licking pink icing off my arm.

Labor intensive yet totally worth it vanilla icing

* before you make this, have someone in your house or neighborhood sign an oath that he/she will remove any extra frosting from your house immediately after preparation. Otherwise you run a real risk of calling in sick to work and hiding in the basement in your pajamas with your face in the bowl. And that would just be embarrassing. For all of us.

6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a medium-size saucepan, whisk the flour into the milk until smooth. Place over medium heat and, stirring constantly, cook until the mixture becomes very thick and begins to bubble, 10-15 minutes. Cover with waxed paper placed directly on the surface and cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes. Wax paper!?? Who the hell has waxed paper unless you’ve been pretending to be crafty-mom and making those things with autumn leaves that you iron.

In a large bowl, on the medium high speed of an electric mixer, beat the butter for 3 minutes, until smooth and creamy. Gradually add the sugar, beating continuously for 3 minutes until fluffy. Use the minute you shaved off the mixing time in the cake recipe and add it here. More beating the frosting = more better frosting. Yes. I know that’s grammatically incorrect.

Add the vanilla and beat well.

Add the cooled milk mixture, and continue to beat on the medium high speed for 5 minutes, until very smooth and noticeably whiter in color. Cover and refrigerate for 15 minutes (no less and no longer—set a timer!). Use immediately. Those are the exact words from the Magnolia Bakery recipe. They sound serious. I’d do it.

Filed Under: Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, In the Kitchen, What I Know About Your Teenager That You Don't, WRH Tagged With: Buttercream icing, gender rolls, Lord of the Flies, Milgram, pig cake, Piggy, Red Velvet Cake, Stanford Prison experiment, teenagers, William Golding, Zimbardo