A week of Fridays~

I keep thinking it's Friday. It started yesterday--Tuesday. It's most likely wishful thinking, or a sign that I'm trying to do too much all at once. Or . . . I'm not even going to go there. I need a vacation, is all.

The school year is winding down. Of the five days left, one is a Science Fair and another is a field day. The last day is the annual year-end volleyball tournament.

For the most part the kids' required work is done. They know this. I tell them that everything they do from now on will be graded for effort and conduct. This keeps them in check while I'm working through stacks of papers to be corrected and recording grades for year end report cards that must be done before the end of school.

I had my homeroom class last period yesterday, Tuesday. They are a fantastic bunch of 11 year-olds, all twenty-eight of them. Smart, funny, and for the most part, most of the time, well behaved. They're also enthusiastic, energetic, and quite social. AKA "chatty."

Last period they worked with partners on their Science Fair projects. They love this, and are working hard to prove their hypotheses. But they are enthusiastic, energetic, and quite . . . chatty."

So even though they are working "independently," they still need me to answer questions, nod with approval, make suggestions. They need me to say:

"Yes, you can get a book from the library."
"Why don't you look on the computer and see what you can find?"
"P-h-o-t-o-s-y-n-t-h-e-s-i-s."
"Joe, I'm not seeing any effort from you right now."
"Of course you can add more than five vocabulary words to your list."
"Yes, spelling counts!"
"Girls, that conversation sounds off-topic to me."
"Great! I can tell you're working hard."
"I'll listen to your story about your cat later. Right now you need to get back to work."

And so it goes. It's the nature of the job. I start grading, and stop for an interruption, start and stop, start and stop. I get frazzled.

On this particular Tuesday, I said, "Okay, my friends, I want you to use the last five minutes of class to do a Friday pick-up. I want you to make the room sparkle. Make it look like no class has even worked here today. We don't want to come in Monday and have to face this mess."

They stood still, unreadable expressions on their faces.

"Come on, get going. Four minutes to clean up! Move it."

"Mrs. D. It's Tuesday, not Friday," someone said.

My turn to stand still with an unreadable expression. Shit, I thought, only Tuesday?

"Yikes!" I said hitting my forehead with my palm. "I guess I'm off by a few days."

We all laughed. They cleaned up and left for the buses, and I slumped at my desk to finish the stack of papers. It felt just like a Friday! So did today.

For Alice~ She's home!!!!!!!

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Sometimes it's all about knowing that loved ones and friends stand behind you, knowing that support is there on the down days, the worry days, the days when you feel off-center, out of sync, bedraggled emotionally, and in pain, but knowing all the while that you're not alone. You're not alone... Alice is an online friend--she lives in Hawaii-- who belongs to the writer's workshop that I do. We've only "met" online, but those who have online friendships know that they can be just as strong as those in-person relationships. Alice was hit by a car while walking, and is in the rehab phase of things. She's working to regain mobility after a broken pelvis, a broken arm, and a broken nose. It's scary to realize how, in the blink of an eye, life can lurch and our plans for a time are displaced by survival and healing. We...

This retirement thing~

This retirement thing . . . it seems like it should be so easy, so effortless, so thrilling, to stop the daily grind. It is thrilling; at least I think it will be come September when I'm not following the school buses to work. But it's not easy. I had a plan book on my desk for 35 years, one I filled in weekly, scheduling new lessons at 45-minute intervals, meetings, parent conferences, and field trips. I knew what needed to be done and when. I got up at the same time everyday (5:45 a.m.), ate lunch at the same time (12:06 p.m.) and watched the kids pack their bags for home everyday at 2:15 p.m. I'm not sorry to give up that regimentation. But three weeks into the summer, I find myself making lists of things I need to do, and there is so much to do that I can't imagine how I managed while I was working eight hours on top of it all. There are the household chores, gardening, exercise (aren't retirees supposed to get fitter?), freelance writing, book reviewing, readin...

Quantico~

Quantico Marine Corps Base is home of the Officer Candidate School my husband attended back when the Viet Nam War still raged. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ With an eight-hour drive ahead of us, if all goes perfectly, we'll be in Virginia at 1500 today. On Thursday, my husband will join hundreds of former Marines for the 41st reunion of those who graduated from Officer Candidate School at Quantico Marine Corp Base. Most haven't communicated, let alone seen each other, since 1967. Email has been flying for nearly a year as the committee worked to make the reunion possible. And now with the event schedule in hand, we're off. Only it's not called a schedule. It's a sit rep. Actually, Sit Rep it says on the top sheet. "A what?" "A situation report," Bruce says. The three-day agenda is printed in military time. That's as bad as the metric system. So I draw myself a normal clock, and jot the military hours beside the numbers on the normal person's clock. I wi...

~Upstream and Down~

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A week of Fridays~

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