Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

Ah, Monday. You found me.  Holly got the first week of school cold. Poor bean is home sick today.  I graded a pile of essays yesterday. While I want them handwritten, why did every single kid go with pencil on white paper? Hard going. I'm going to request pen.  Most were not awful. Some were. We have work to do today.  Some of the kids who need to hear what I'm going to talk about are on a two-day field trip. Figures, eh? I have work, errands, house cleaning on my agenda. I bought one of those long-handled Swiffer 360 dusters. I'm going to battle the cobwebs. I won't win the war, but I might make things a little less festooned with grey swaths of dust and filament.  I like that phrase. Remind me to use it in a poem.  Have a good day, friends. The world is scary, and our leaders don't seem to mind that they are chaos engineers.  God help us all.  C

Temps are much warmer today (56), but it's pouring rain. Again. And yes, we probably do need it, but gee whiz. I wanted to go to the farmers' market. We'll see if this weather pushes off. If not, so be it.  I've been immersed in a fun series on BritBox called Monarch of the Glen . It's funny and sweet, and, for those of us of a certain age, it sort of has Newhart vibes. At any rate, it's a pleasant diversion, of which we all have a real need, I think. Among its engaging cast is an actor that I know from Shakespearean plays, chiefly Much Ado About Nothing . Richard Briers plays the "old laird" MacDonald, and he's spot-on: funny, curmudgeonly, endearing. There are seven seasons, so I'll be set for a bit.  Today, though, I have a stack of essays to grade. Likely some will be fine, others will be iffy, and I know there are a couple that are going to be heavy lifting (metaphorically speaking). My Brit Lit crew is not the most energetic or enthusias...

Saturday, and it was a long "short" week. Mostly, school stuff was fine. Home stuff was generally fine (though the dust around here is ridiculous-- that'll be dealt with as soon as I can). Already, I spent the morning doing minor but necessary chores: who has three bottles of juice well past expiry in the back of their fridge? ugh. I cleaned and organized the fridge-top freezer, too. There are far too many ice packs in there, leftovers from when I was packing Holly's lunch last year. I think some will migrate to her house. Not much to toss there-- found an ancient frozen burrito that got the pitch, though. And I have ideas about stewing down a couple of chicken carcasses-- maybe not soup, but chicken and biscuits for Sunday dinner. And I can freeze some chicken broth from the process as well. That's always a nice thing to pull out of the freezer to make rice or gravy. And I did some dishes by hand (some things just can't go in the dishwasher), diced more tomat...

Twenty-five years ago, our world changed. Moreso here in the United States, but globally as well. The terrorists targeted two symbols of American "strength"-- financial and military-- and struck at the heart of what the nation seemed to hold nearest and dearest. Some would say that they hit at symbols of hubris; and in some ways, that makes sense. Western civilization has always trended toward patterns of domination, and other cultures and the earth itself has paid the price, over and over again. That corrective, if we want to call it that for sake of argument, worked to bring people together, to unite in ways that hadn't been experienced in ages. But it also served as a means of division; this new-found cultural unity, if it was that at all, left out whole segments of society, and anti-Muslim hate has continued to flourish and even be applauded by people in the highest elected places of our society. But yet, a nation that supported the terrorists is now a "most favo...

After a wet and chilly day yesterday, it's kind of odd (and welcome) to wake up to 65 degrees-- it warmed up overnight. These are the days when you just are not sure what to wear to work.  Disappointing evening of Boston sports, eh? ugh. Still, the Sox are not dead yet, and the football season just started. Hope is a hard commodity to come by, but hey, what else do we have? School is trundling along-- a lot of kids out sick, field trips galore over the next couple of weeks, and I am grateful I do my planbook in pencil. We'll manage. It's just a bit upending. Kind of daily.  And so it goes, eh?  Holly has a book order for us to fill out! I miss the days of coming home with the flimsy paper form from Scholastic. So what did I do? Went online to the site to order books, and let's just say, I shopped. The prices are crazy good, and there was a deal for an extra book for free if you spent 35.00. So, I did. I ordered a lot of level one readers. She's ready to read, and fr...

Wednesday.  It's going to be a long, long day-- I will be staying at work til 3 (staff meeting), then home to race around and see if there's any practical anything I can get done. Patriots start the season tonight-- why a Wednesday? Who knows?-- at 8:20. I suspect I'll maybe manage the first half. Rude. It's a work night. Don't the programmers know that? Sigh.  OK, enough whining. That webinar last night was atrocious--promised a lot, delivered very little, and was a full hour infomercial about their training program. Damn. I will not be wasting any further time on that nonsense tonight or Thursday.  Holly's first day went well, other than her tripping over the thresh-hold into the school. Whups. She's fine, had a super experience, and today will go easier, I believe. It's awesome Meg was home to oversee day one and two. Tomorrow, Tim will have to solo shot the morning, and I'll pick her up. We'll get this routine down soon enough.  So, you might...