Pie. Does anything else matter?

Posted on November 26, 2013 by chloebennett

So, my grandfather has a lot of health issues.  It sounds a lot worse than it is, really, but he has lymphoma (the less-bad kind and in remission) and he recently had triple-bypass surgery, during which he had a minor stroke.  He is doing a lot better (they helped him walk down the hall today!) and is going to be just fine.

BUT this means we are not having our normal, huge family Thanksgiving.  It’s absolutely the best call, with all the craziness going on, but it’s a very strange feeling, knowing we won’t be gathering up and making all that food, spending the day with family, and hanging out.  Thanksgiving has always been one of those times when I could sit back, relax, and reflect on my family.  It’s a massive family, with umpteen relatives in the metroplex, and when I was little, we always got to see just about everyone on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  My mom’s family usually gathered at someone’s house and my dad’s family gathered at his mom’s house; some years everyone from both sides of the family gathered at our house!  It was crazy and chaotic and delicious and amazing.

We had every kind of food imaginable, but my favorite Thanksgiving food (like my mother’s before me) has always been and will always be pumpkin pie.  Yes, I make the cranberry sauce, but I don’t actually like cranberry sauce.  Yes, I love my aunt’s creamed peas with bacon and onions, but my devotion to pumpkin pie is unswerving.  My mom would make what seemed like an unending line of pumpkin pies (but was probably actually three pumpkin pies) and we would eat them for weeks.  We’d have them for breakfast.  We’d have them after lunch.  We’d have a slice for a snack.  We’d have another after dinner.  And one just before bed, in case someone else got the last piece at breakfast.  Those pies were perfect and they kept Thanksgiving going long after the last dish was washed at the actual meal.

I’d like to say there’s a deeper meaning to those pies.  I’d like to say they always reminded me of the fickleness of fate or something deep and brooding and serious, but honestly, they just remind me of Thanksgiving.  They remind me of my family, hanging out and being weirdos together and of my mom’s gift to me of the love of pie.  And that’s why I’m baking one today.  Because when the world is too busy, too crazy, and too pie-less, you make your own damn pie.

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Big Life Stuff

Posted on November 25, 2013 by chloebennett

Well, now that that tedious first-post business is out of the way, let’s chat about life, shall we?

I am frightened of a lot of things.  Heights, loneliness, snakes, spiders…  The list goes on.  But right up there, at the very top of the list, is change.  I am deathly terrified of change.  Change is scary!  It leads to terrifying things, like growing up!  And yet, here I am, making what we call Big Life Changes.  Yes, I realize that we just had a discussion about the fact that I am not moving away from my hometown and all that; but we also just had a discussion about the fact that this is still a journey.  Remember?  Good.  Because this is the part of the journey that scares me.

Big Life Change #1: Having a Big Girl Job.

So, I have this job.  It is the perfect job.  I cannot even tell you how much I love this job.  When I was a tiny little Fox, there was an amazing woman named Miss B who taught at my elementary school.  (Her name, of course, was not really Miss B.  But it was nigh unpronounceable for little mouths and Miss B was more fun to say.)  She taught Science Lab, which meant she let us make pizzas and little foil boats and had bunnies in her classroom and taught us the stories of constellations and all the things that make science the best thing ever.  Of course, on the list of things I wanted to be (right after astronaut and ballerina) was Miss B.  I’d get to do that fun stuff ALL DAY.  Can you even imagine?!  Well, I can.  Very vividly.  Fast forward many years, and join me in the spring of this year, student teaching at that self-same school, where my second grade teacher is now the principal and I am building a pond in the hallway to teach ecosystems and rolling out toilet paper to show how far apart the planets are.  I’m still a science geek, loving every second of the fun and shenanigans of science.  And it gets noticed.  Fast forward again to the summer, sitting nervously in a conference room with teachers I’ve known my whole life (and some I only met months ago), interviewing for my dream job.  Of course, I won’t get it.  Nobody gets their dream job as their first job.  Duh.  Except, I do.

And this is where I am now.  The new Miss B, making goo and s’mores, anemometers and bricks, fossils and crab habitats.  Doing all the things that make science fun, all day, every day.  It’s perfect and crazy.  And a lot more work than I expected…  But that’s part of having the dream job.  Yes, you work all the time.  But you love it.  All the time.

Big Life Change #2:  Getting an apartment.

AH!  I’ve had a bad experience in the past with roommates (Not you, Amy, if you’re reading this!  You were perfect and any time you want to live with me, I will have you!), so I’m wary of getting a roommate.  (Read: adamantly refusing to get one.  Period.)  Therefore, I am going to be living on my own.  For a family girl, this is a really intimidating prospect.  I rely on my family a great deal, to help me enforce good habits, to break bad ones, to remind me of things I know to be true, and to help me unwind when times are hard.  Coming home to an empty house each day will be…  Interesting.  And while I know that I can live on my own and that I’m a strong, independent woman…  What if I can’t and I’m not?  As they say, only one way to find out…

Anywho, that’s my Big Life Stuff.  It’s scary and exciting and all part of the journey.

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Once Upon A Time…

Posted on November 25, 2013 by chloebennett

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in the same town as her whole (very large) extended family.  She was a great dreamer and dreamed of one day leaving her town far behind her to have grand adventures in exotic lands.  She grew quickly and wildly and became a young woman who had more than dreams: she had plans.  She traveled far and wide, to England, to Portland, to Costa Rica, to Chicago, far and wide and on her own.  She was fearless and free!  She even planned to move far from her family and the town where everyone knew her name, to a small town called Walsingham where she could settle and have a beautiful life.  But our hero had a small problem.  She had finally realized how important living with the people she’d known all her life, people who had become her family, was to her.  She had a job she loved, even though it was only part-time, guiding the growth of faith in young people she’d babysat when they were children.  Then, she had an interview for her dream job, the job that (when she was a child herself) had made her want to be a teacher.  It was a long shot, but it was a dream come true.  And then, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, she got that dream job.  She knew then and there she couldn’t leave her hometown.  But what about her adventures?  What about her journey?  Would she give it all up?

I know you’ll be shocked (SHOCKED, I tell you!) to discover that I am that girl.  That I wanted adventures and an incredible journey.  That I am, of course, going to stay in my hometown til I’m old and grey and they have to drag me from my lab (I teach Science Lab) kicking and screaming.  But what you may not be shocked to discover (because you are wiser than I) is that this is not the end of my journey.  This is just the beginning!  My journey will be different than I could ever have imagined.  More exciting, more challenging, and more beautiful than I ever could have dreamt.  And I am going to love every moment.

I’ve started this site as a way to celebrate it, to document it, and to keep it.  It wasn’t my idea, though.  I owe this stroke of brilliance (ha!) to a wonderful woman I met near the beginning of this new part of my journey named Candice.  She told me that, when she had free time to herself during her first year of school, she started a blog to fill her time.  At first, I thought, “Who wants to hear from me?!” but then I realized…  Who cares who wants to hear from me?  I want to remember this time.  And this is a good way to do it and to share it with anyone who (for some inexplicable reason) does want to hear from me.

Oh, and if you were wondering about the “Fox” bit of the site name…  My family name is Fox, passed from my great grandmother to my grandmother, to my mother and aunt, to my cousins and I.  We are the Fox women!

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