Warm Fuzzies

It rained most of the day yesterday and all through the night. My lungs sighed in relief. Their is a carport covered with a tin roof. The rain on the roof is very soothing. I loved hearing it through the night. This morning when I drove to work and on the way home the mountains glistened with freshly fallen snow. It was beautiful. All that rain was snow a couple thousand feet higher. All the trees have turned red and yellow. Winter is on the way.

Sometimes when I set up a writing lesson I model for the students a writing piece. So I was writing it as they read along. Then we edit it together. I deliberately make a lot of the same error so that hopefully with practice students can identify those errors in their own writing. We spent some time editing it then we had a discussion about what we did and how it made the writing better. One of my students raised his hand when we were done and said "You make me feel like I am a writer!" I said, "I am glad because you are a writer, you are all writers." Writing for kids is hard for many reasons, but one is that it is personal. It's your thoughts and ideas on paper. My students need to understand I value their thoughts and ideas before we ever sit down and edit one of their own pieces of writing. So having my student state that gave me the warm fuzzies! Doing this really improved a lot of their work in writing.

As we edited my piece it reminded me of why I love a good story. A good story evokes emotion from us. My story which was a very simple story pulled out of the recesses of my subconscious brought back memories of an old friend. There is so much I wish I could share with her if she was here. It also brought back memories of "talking books" with my childhood friend. We still share a love of reading and it doesn't get better than being able to share and discuss a really good tale with a friend. I'll have to give her a call and check if she's read anything great lately.

Speaking of a good story. On my way to and from school I usually listen to a audio book. I like something light but lively. If I'm on a long trip I prefer something action packed. It passes the time and feels more constructive than just sitting in the car. Recently my brother introduced me to an app that makes it easy to download podcasts. Sometimes I will listen to those and expand my intellectual horizons with them, or with some simply be entertained. What is great about podcasts is there is  sometimes a brief commercial at the very beginning or very end but that is it. It reminds me of "old" radio. Radio before there was a twenty  minute commercial break between every  1-2 songs.  Lately though it seems like every podcast is related to politics. I am sticking with fiction for now.

It was a quiet rainy weekend, I hope it is a quiet week. G'nite