Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

We have a few days of weather forecasts that include 40 degrees and sunshine in the offing! I am going to try to get the last of my outside lights up and operational after I get in from work. Wish me luck: if the ground is frozen solid, then the snowflake stakes will not be happening. I will also try to get the last strand of fairy lights up in the backyard; I'm thinking the highbush cranberry will do. I can reach that one. Lights bring me a little wiggle of joy.  I'm also debating whether it'll be pizza night tomorrow. I'm particularly tired. I don't really want to cook. We'll see.  Saturday and Sunday are scheduled with things to do. Not a ton, but still...things. And grading papers. Those should not take a ton of time, though. I've seen the drafts for most of them more than once.  I'm hopeful of finding a time to go see Wicked: For Good with Meg, but once again, our schedules kind of suck. I will talk to her about it. I really want to see it.  I'm...

Negotiating the holiday meal for next Thursday with Meg was a breeze this year. I always make so much food-- far too much-- and I'm trying to avoid the overdoing it thing. We've decided on turkey (cuz it is), regular mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots, corn, butternut squash, bread stuffing. I will save the other "usual" sides for leftover-refreshers. Dessert? Well, one of our student groups does a pie sale, so I ordered a cheesecake and a pumpkin pie. I'll make an apple one, too. I will likely buy a bottle of Beaujolais, but we'll see. I hear it's not been a good year for it. There may be rolls, but likely purchased ones. And yes, cranberry sauce in a can. Two cans, probably. No judgment-- we like our Ocean Spray products. (G's grandfather was one of the original co-op members when Ocean Spray began; he had a cranberry bog in Carver, MA. O, and remind me to tell you what he's told me about growing up with the descendants of the Mayflower...his ...

Well, how about that? I had all of my students in both classes today-- probably for the first time in over a month. I won't get too used to it, as it's cold/flu/ick season, and there's another college tour field trip on Thursday that's taking a few of my juniors again. But we did stuff today! And I don't have to repeat myself! Huzzah! The juniors are working on a quick dip into APA documentation/citation with a very short lit review due on Friday. I am not going to spend inordinate amounts of time on this; I honestly do not care what their topics of inquiry are, because we are just working on the formatting and citing stuff. It's enough to get their feet wet and to demonstrate the difference from MLA, which is the primary method used in school. Which makes no sense at all to me, really, since it's only English that needs MLA-- but I digress. I'm just happy they can see that there's different methods out there, and each is particularly useful for diff...

Well, it was a very busy/sort of chaotic Monday, but we all landed on our feet (I think). That said, how about a quiet(ish) Tuesday? One thing I've been seeing over and over again in the AP Lit Facebook group is a real penchant for three pieces of literature, specifically. Frankenstein , Hamlet , and "The Yellow Wallpaper." I'm puzzled. Since I'm new at the AP thing, why those three things? And why do people spend a gazillion days/weeks on things that should take up maybe a week? Either I'm really going to suck at this, or maybe I'll be fine because what I've been doing for almost four decades seems to work. We'll see.  I'm not knocking any of those works of literature, anyhow. They are all good to read/discuss. But there's a real magnetic pull (or so it seems) to these. For my two cents' worth, I will not read Hamlet with high school kids. They don't have the life experience to bring to the text, so it becomes entirely academic-- w...

Last week had three "Mondays." The start/stop nature of the week was exhausting. Add to it several field trips and so on, and yeah... we lost momentum. This week should be less weird, though there is an advisory meeting (Mon.), and class meetings (Thurs.). I'm sure there will be something or other stuffed in there, too, but I hope to have most of my students most of the time this week! I spent a delightful, exciting, and mentally exhausting weekend. Who knew that, after four relatively short sessions, I'd have a poem draft that spans eight pages (so far)? Wow. I kind of want to play hooky and work on it. But I won't. I'll let it simmer for a bit. I have been writing every day since November 1, so I will keep that up, too.  But there's more stuff I need to get done. I have book reviews idling on my desk. I have holiday stuff to figure out. And I should be working on more poetry submissions, though that's not that critical. I still have yet to plunge int...

It's cozy in my house this morning; G got up early as he always does, got the pellet stove going, and when I got up at 5:30, I got a chicken carcass simmering with some celery-- soup with dumplings tonight! The ice came through and through again last night, and we have predictions for on and off snow today. This feels like the kind of November we had years ago. I'll watch Mass on the livestream, and then my class starts shortly after-- tight schedule, so being home and watching it while the soup is cooking  makes sense, with the added "fun" of slick roads... thank goodness for the livestream.  I've been buying flour. Every time it goes on sale, I get another bag of flour. I think I need to stop for a while-- I have 7 five-pound bags. Must be my squirrel instinct has gone into overdrive. I have not been baking as much (my sourdough died), but winter is upon us, and I have bananas in the freezer. I am thinking about muffins, too. And maybe G will make some cookies.....