What? Things are happening? In my life?
Sort of.
First, my collage birthday party: laura b's carrot cake + paper & glue = good launch for 7 x 8
Me v in blue shirt, clapping:
At this party I announced I was looking for a job,
and John S. (not pictured) invited me to come check out a classroom of special-ed preschool kids at the school where he works--they're looking for an aide until the end of the school year, and based on my work with adults with dementia, I'd be a good fit, he thought.
I just now got home from an afternoon with the kids, and it was... full of stories. I'm not supposed to tell stories about the kids, of course, but I can say one of them leaned close to me and whispered, "What are you doing here?"
Which struck me as a pretty darn brilliant question.
Also I can say that small children move more in two hours than I have moved in two months, and I want this job if only so I will start moving again.
Meanwhile, the editor did a bang-up job on my ms, returning it with lots of good ideas for making it better.
So there's a week or two's worth of work there.
I do think the final book is going to be fun.
Speaking of fun, I'm taking a 4-week community ed class with bink:
"Funny Up: Adding Humor to Your Writing".
I am wary. Humor and I have a mutually suspicious relationship:
I think it's manipulative, and it thinks I'm trying to analyze & explain it out of existence.
Both are correct.
For the second class tonite, we're supposed to think of a favorite funny thing and why it's funny, what the mechanics of its humor are.
I immediately thought of Gene Wilder's attack of hysterics in the Producers. [links to vid in NTY]
I'm surprised how little I've thought about humor.
The teacher talked on the first night about what it is (like, basically, it's surprise--the breaking of a norm: like chess, it has simple rules and infinite variations). I could tell that she was giving us the party line, but I'd never even heard it.
Anyway, I love that scene because it's actually very kind, at root--Zero Mostel only smiles to get Gene Wilder to shut up, but you know what? It works. For both of them.
Sort of.
First, my collage birthday party: laura b's carrot cake + paper & glue = good launch for 7 x 8
Me v in blue shirt, clapping:
At this party I announced I was looking for a job,
and John S. (not pictured) invited me to come check out a classroom of special-ed preschool kids at the school where he works--they're looking for an aide until the end of the school year, and based on my work with adults with dementia, I'd be a good fit, he thought.
I just now got home from an afternoon with the kids, and it was... full of stories. I'm not supposed to tell stories about the kids, of course, but I can say one of them leaned close to me and whispered, "What are you doing here?"
Which struck me as a pretty darn brilliant question.
Also I can say that small children move more in two hours than I have moved in two months, and I want this job if only so I will start moving again.
Meanwhile, the editor did a bang-up job on my ms, returning it with lots of good ideas for making it better.
So there's a week or two's worth of work there.
I do think the final book is going to be fun.
Speaking of fun, I'm taking a 4-week community ed class with bink:
"Funny Up: Adding Humor to Your Writing".
I am wary. Humor and I have a mutually suspicious relationship:
I think it's manipulative, and it thinks I'm trying to analyze & explain it out of existence.
Both are correct.
For the second class tonite, we're supposed to think of a favorite funny thing and why it's funny, what the mechanics of its humor are.
I immediately thought of Gene Wilder's attack of hysterics in the Producers. [links to vid in NTY]
I'm surprised how little I've thought about humor.
The teacher talked on the first night about what it is (like, basically, it's surprise--the breaking of a norm: like chess, it has simple rules and infinite variations). I could tell that she was giving us the party line, but I'd never even heard it.
Anyway, I love that scene because it's actually very kind, at root--Zero Mostel only smiles to get Gene Wilder to shut up, but you know what? It works. For both of them.
Hope you get to work with the kids. I find humor is helpful in coping. Maybe you find it manipulative because it is a way asserting control - over circumstances if you are using it to cope.
ReplyDeleteI liked my afternoon with the kids, but the teacher said afterward they want someone with experience with kids.
ReplyDelete(Though she'd agreed to have me come visit knowing I didn't have experience: I wonder if she thought I was too old to handle their physical activity. Or maybe she just didn't like how I was with them? Who knows.)
Yes, I don't like feeling manipulated by a certain kind of humor---like a certain kind of stand-up comic who seems to NEED to MAKE you laugh.
[Not sure about all this--must think more on it.]
But like you, I TOTALLY find humor helpful in coping--
maybe especially the kind that points out absurdity.