Matrilineal

I called my mom in Minnesota yesterday to see how she was faring in the sub-zero temperatures brought in by the Polar Vortex. At 5 PM CST, it was -20 degrees, and Mom was just finishing up on a call from my sister and niece. "Annabelle's disappointed it's not -70," she laughed. "Even with the wind chill it's only -35."

"You're such a Minnesotan!" I marveled when she told me she had gone out the day before to get her nails done. "What did you wear?"

"Layers," she reported, "and my coat is really good. I pull the collar up around my ears."

"Wait!" I said. "You didn't wear a hat?"

"I can't! It messes up my hair," she told me.

I thought of my mom this morning when it was 9 degrees here, and I did put on a hat to take the dog out. As I stood all toasty and warm on the hill at the back of our complex, a neighbor drove by on her way to work. Pausing in the parking lot, she rolled down the window. "I know it must be cold if you're wearing hat!" she said.

Chillin

The sun was brilliant and almost warm as it cut through the 20 degree air at nine o'clock this morning.  My step was light, and, well-prepared against the elements in cashmere scarf, mittens, and sun glasses, I admired the icy blue of the cloudless sky and the icy clouds of my breath as I walked toward school. No Polar Vortex here, yet, just a cold day in January, the kind that makes me happy to be alive and outside.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Just Doing My Part

With slushy snow expected later this afternoon and plummeting temperatures overnight, our district called an audible and scheduled an early release for today. Students and most staff left the building an hour and 20 minutes ago leaving me in the quiet of my classroom to look over a few things for the lessons tomorrow and later this week, send a couple of emails, and work on finalizing the Quarter 2 grades that are due at midnight. I've let it be known that I don't expect to be here tomorrow, but my friend Mary said the best way to insure that the weather cooperates is to be ready to go; Leaving things undone with the presumption of a snow day always backfires, so here I am.

Full Court Press

Co-teaching definitely has its benefits, especially when there 131 of anything to grade and comment on. Such was the case this weekend when the big assignment for the quarter came due right before grades were due. In the end, I probably graded a few more than half, with my colleagues and student teacher filling in the rest.

Go team!

Smells Like Home

True confession: we do love our friend Sarah's dog Beckett, who happens to be 1-year-old today. She is also our dog walker, and so Lucy and Beckett are fast friends as well. He started spending time at our house back when he was only a 10 week old 2 pound bundle of fluff with icy blue eyes, and he would be still be welcome here anytime, too, if it weren't for his unpleasant habit of marking things that smell a little less or a little too whatever to his liking. The shag rug in our living room is an inviting indoor lawn to him, and it is more than aggravating to watch him every second only to have him piss on something the minute your attention wanders.

But today is his birthday, and Sarah is working all weekend at the dive shop where she is an instructor, so it seemed a little harsh to leave him home alone. After a long walk on the National Mall, we brought him back here. "Maybe he's outgrown it?" I suggested hopefully, but 30 seconds later he was peeing all over a basket of tennis balls that many, many dogs had drooled on.

As I cleaned up the mess, Heidi researched our dilemma. "They say to soak a bandana in his urine and then put it around his neck," she reported. "That way, everything will already smell like him to him." I clapped my hands and laughed, delighted by the elegance of the solution, and fished the paper towel I had just used to clean the basket out of the trash. After wrapping it around his collar, we sat back to watch. Was it only our imagination that he relaxed and stopped frantically sniffing? In moments he was engaging Lucy in play, and the need to make this place smell like his place seemed to vanish.

A little while later we went out to run errands, and at the top of the list was a birthday gift for the Becketty Boy. "How about this bandana?" I asked Heidi.

Winter White

I do love a winter walk, and one of our favorite places to go is about 30 minutes from home. It's a national wildlife refuge with a wooded path that winds down and around a wetland before looping back. The place is known for its eagles, but right around this time of year there are often hundreds of Tundra Swans raising a ruckus on the Great Marsh. We were a little early today; only a half dozen or so swans dozed among all the ducks on the bay.

One year we were also ahead of the flock, but as we made our way up the last 50 yards to the parking lot, the sky was suddenly filled with white wings and an incredible racket of honking and flapping. The hullabaloo continued overhead even after we reached our car and headed home under a cloud of swans.

Members Only

It started with a student request. She wanted to start an anime club, but needed a room and an adult to supervise. Would I do it? she asked. Most of my afternoons are already filled with meetings and other commitments, but I have a hard time not supporting kids who want to create something on their own. Such initiative seems like the most authentic application of the lessons we are trying to teach. Even so, it was reluctance that I agreed, and only in the event that they could find no one else to take on the responsibility. Plus, I don't even like Anime that much.

And so it was that on Friday afternoons from 2:30 to 3:30 I found myself at the epicenter of 15-20 tweens eating chips, texting their friends, and watching Yuri on Ice or My Hero Academia or the like, and SCREAMING!

"Guys! Guys! Guys!" I tried to shout over them, putting the video on pause. "It's cool that you love this so much! It's not cool for you to scream!"

In response, they screamed more quietly. And at 3:30 this afternoon as the Anime Club literally screamed out my door, several of my colleagues stopped by.

"What a crew!" said the first. "Bless your heart!"

"Look at you!" said the next. "Kids that never say a word in class are screaming and laughing in here!"

"Are they driving you crazy?" asked the third.

I smiled weakly, and the throbbing in my head ebbed with the kinder, gentler company. "It's their club," I said, "I just give them the space and my adult presence." Then we laughed.

It used to be that Friday afternoon was a quiet time for me to either look ahead to the coming week, or quietly reflect on the week that has just passed. Now it's just a good time to recover from the Anime Club.

That Rascal

It's the final push for the end of the quarter, and I had one student ask if he could miss PE and electives to stay and finish his essay outline. Usually I would have encouraged him to come back after school, especially since he hadn't really used his class time productively, but he had a wrestle-off to see if he could win a spot in the meet next week. So I sent him to his teachers with a pass and a request. He was back before too long, shaking his head in mild dismay.

"What did they say?" I asked.

"What's a scoundrel?" he replied.

"Why?" I asked in return.

It turns out that his tech ed teacher dismissed him without prejudice, but his Spanish teacher was another story.

"She yelled at me!" he reported. "She said I probably didn't do my work, and she called me a scoundrel!"

"She called you that in English?" I questioned him.

"No! In Spanish!" he said.

"What word is that?" I asked.

"Sinvergüenza," he told me. "I looked it up on the way back, and it means--

"Scoundrel," we said together.

"Yeah!" he said. "What does it mean?"

"It means someone who is kind of mischievous and gets into trouble sometimes for breaking the rules."

"Oh," he shrugged. "I guess that is me."

A Civilized Hour

"Wouldn't it be nice if we went to work at this time every day?" Heidi asked rhetorically as I shuttled her to school a little before 9 yesterday morning. Our district had called a 2 hour delay because of the extreme cold. I was off anyway for my annual physical, but since I was up I offered to give her a ride. "The sun is shining," she noted. "I feel rested," she continued, "ready for the day."

I thought of that conversation this morning as we dragged ourselves out of bed at the usual 5:30 alarm. Heidi had been up most of the night coughing, and neither of us had gotten much sleep: another two hours would have been welcome.

"Heart conditions and sleep deprivation are correlated," my doctor told me yesterday. "Now that you're over 55..."

One Year Over the Speed Limit

I really didn't feel any different after my last birthday; I personally like to think I'm aging both gradually and gracefully. But after my annual physical today, I'm beginning to wonder about that, especially considering the number of times I heard the phrase, Now that you're over 55...

Auntie Up

We haven’t seen Josh since he returned from his world travels. Understandably, he’s been working extra hours to catch up on the time he missed while in Africa. Even so, we have been exchanging texts with him, looking for a mutually convenient time to get together and catch up. Tonight he initiated the contact:

hey hey guys im free on thursday! still down for dinner?

Yep, we answered, how about 5?

yeah! is it ok if i bring my girlfriend?

Of course, we said, but it was a bit of a surprise, considering we didn’t know he was seeing anyone. He must like her, though, if he’s ready for her to meet the aunties!

But Who's Counting?

I had a four day weekend last week because of the snow; this week a combination of the MLK holiday and my annual physical provide another short work week, and the following week there is a teacher work day and a CLT retreat resulting in one more 3-day teaching week.

Who knows how I'll feel when February dawns that Friday promising a couple of full weeks ahead? (Unless, of course, it snows again before Presidents Day and our family Oscar holiday.) In any event, I'm confident that those 6 weeks to spring break after that will fly by in a productive blur, as will the nine weeks left in the year when we return.

This is the point in the school year when the teeter totter tips toward seventh grade for my students. The second quarter is ending, and soon they will select their courses for next year. Fortunately, they don't realize it, but I sure do.

They Say So Much

"Do you like sad songs?" a student asked me yesterday.

"Yes," I answered without hesitation.

"Then you should hear Train food," he told me. "It. is. sad." He looked me directly in the eyes, and I believed him.

I handed him one of the post-it notes I was carrying around as I helped students clarify the claims for their essays and find evidence to put in the outline. "Write it down and I'll listen to it," I said.

"It might have bad language in it," he warned me.

"I've heard cussing before," I assured him taking the pink square of paper and tucking it in my pocket.

I wondered what this child who pushed everyone away and had already lived such a hard life could find so sad.

When I checked out the song I found that it was by a young rap artist named XXXTentacion who was killed in a robbery attempt early last summer at the age of 20. Train food is a track on his posthumously released album and tells the story of a young man kidnapped by death and left on the train tracks to die. It has haunting background sounds and ends abruptly with what is presumably the death of the narrator. It's almost too sad to be sad, but it is pretty eerie, especially given the artists early death.

More importantly, I could see why my student found it so moving, and I'll be glad to have something to talk with him about. Who knows? Maybe we'll even find a connection.

Make Sure to Stretch

I'm hosting a student teacher from now until April. Fortunately, she seems like a person who can roll with whatever comes her way, which is good, because middle school and its denizens demand flexibility. This week was a perfect example:

Her university orientation was scheduled for Monday to prepare her to start in my classroom on Tuesday, but both days were canceled because of the snow. Wednesday we were back on time, but it was a scheduled early release, but she started anyway and went through the professional learning with me and my CLT. Yesterday was a full day, but today there was a 2 hour delay because of light snow overnight. 

"I think I've seen every possible schedule in the last 3 days!" she laughed this afternoon. "And it's been awesome!"

News that Matters

Today was the first day of my new intervention period group, comprised of eight kids who struggle not at all with disruptive behavior, but rather with organization and efficient use of class time. We began with a review of a few tools they might use to know what was coming up in their classes so that they might be prepared, a concept which seemed completely foreign to all of them.

"This is the weekly newsletter," I said pointing to the screen, "Both your parents and you get it every week."

This was news to all but one. He scratched his head thoughtfully. "I think my mom prints it out and gives it to me," he conceded.

His friend chuckled. "You actually read a newsletter?" he asked incredulously.

I moved on. "Take a few minutes to look over it on your iPad," I directed, "and then I'll ask you to share with everybody anything important or interesting that you notice."

A little later I did just that.

Crickets.

"Really?" I asked. "Nobody sees anything that might be good for us to know about?"

The silence stretched on.

Finally I broke it myself. "What about this science test?" I pointed. "Or this social studies project? Or this essay in English? Did you know about those?"

Everyone shook their heads, but they did not seem dismayed.

"Doesn't that worry you?" I said. "These are for tomorrow."

"Nope!" answered one guy cheerfully.

I looked at him in surprise. His tone was open, and not disrespectful in the least. I didn't get it.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it's going snow tonight!" he told me.

Speed Teaching

After 2 snow days, today was a planned early release day for professional learning, so the kids went home at 11:54. In my opinion, it was just the way to ease us back into the swing of things. And, it may be counterintuitive, but 24 minute classes might actually be as productive as the 43 minute sessions we usually have. With such an abbreviated time, students and staff alike are focused on getting the lesson and activities done, and no one has any time to lose interest. Plus, the way the sixth grade schedule is set up, I see everyone between 8 and 10, and then my teaching day is over and the meeting, planning, grading, professional learning begins.

Works for me!

Unprecedented

After the snow day yesterday, we expected our school system to call a 2 hour delay and call it early for today. With melting snow during the day and sub-freezing temperatures through the night, the roads were sure to be treacherous in the early morning hours when everyone is getting to school. Sure enough, the word came down right around three yesterday afternoon: there was definitely a delay, but with the caveat that they would look at conditions in the morning.

How shocked was I, then, when my friend Mary texted at 9 o'clock last night to report that we were closed again today. As it turned out, we were the only system in the immediate metro area to cancel-- everyone else went with the delay.

Oh, I'm not complaining, but?

THAT

never happens!

Like a Good Neighbor

Heidi had an appointment to meet a friend at the gym, so I cleaned off the car and shoveled it out before 9 this morning. As the day wore on, I looked out at our quiet parking lot several times with some concern, taking mental inventory of the still-buried cars and their owners.

The Audi belonged to a young woman who lived alone upstairs with her long-haired Dachshund, Charlotte. The red Rav 4 was the family's who lived below her, a single Mom and her 7-year-old son. The blue and white Hyundais were the cars of a woman a little older than us and her disabled husband. The pair of Priuses with the handicapped hang tags belonged to our neighbor down the way with the bum knee and his wife who was recovering from a hip replacement.

Just then there was a knock on the door; another neighbor came by to borrow one of our shovels. Of course! we said, putting on our coats, too, and heading out to join her. A little less than an hour later, everyone was dug out.

Breathing Room

We woke this morning to several inches of fluffy snow and the promise that it would continue through nightfall, and even though it was many more hours until it was official, we knew that there would be no school tomorrow.

Knowing that I wouldn't have to rise in darkness for the first of five busy days at work gave me an extra burst of energy to get things done today. The car was cleaned off before nine; the Christmas tree was restored to a simple (if very dry) fir, and all the holiday decorations were finally organized, packed, and stowed away until next year. The house was vacuumed and the laundry washed and folded. I even split some of the dry firewood into kindling to keep our hearth warm and crackling.

Now, dinner is on the stove, and I'm ready to relax for the evening, knowing that I'll have time to work on grades and paperwork for school at my leisure tomorrow.

Well-Provisioned

We had planned to go to Wegmans today long before the weather forecast included a few inches of snow. We stuck to our schedule, but we were joined at the grocery store by about a bazillion other shoppers.

It could have been ugly, but everyone seemed to be in pretty good humor. It might have helped that there was plenty of bread and milk and eggs and toilet paper (and wine and beer), but there were a few shortages. Jostling for produce shoulder to shoulder with my fellow shoppers, I snagged the last bulb of fennel, as well as the final bunch of cilantro

Judging from the limited quantities of a few other non-essential items, I'd guess that people are going to be eating pretty well if they're snowed in.

Don't Stop There

My students were taking a standardized reading test when one of them raised his hand and waved furiously. For valid results, they were supposed to read the short passages and answer the related vocabulary questions completely independently.

I walked over to him. "What is it?" I whispered.

He gestured at the screen; glancing over, I didn't see a problem.

"I'm not allowed to help you," I reminded him.

His eyes widened, and mindful of the directions to keep a quiet testing environment, he wordlessly stabbed his finger at the passage, then ran it back and forth along the screen, pantomiming a desperate need for assistance.

I looked more closely at the passage. Ask your teacher for guidance... it began. I looked at the student. He smirked in self-satisfaction; after all, he was only following the directions.

I shook my head and laughed.

...in selecting possible research paper topics, it continued. Afterall, this may be your first attempt at writing a research paper. It helps to bounce ideas around with an expert... 

"Keep reading," I advised him.

Goodwill Hunting

Yesterday our team started the day with a quick "Hot Chocolate Social". It turns out you can serve 150 cups of hot chocolate to sixth graders for about a quarter each in a minimum of time with not much trouble. After fifteen minutes spent sipping a warm beverage and socializing with their friends, our usually unruly pack of tweens was almost tame heading into the school day. Sure, there were a few naysayers, This hot chocolate is too sweet! insisted one, and a couple were suspicious, Why are they doing this for us? What do they want? another student whispered urgently to her friend, but in general, the group just relaxed and enjoyed the cocoa in a rather well-behaved way. Anecdotally, I feel like I benefited all day: the goodwill seemed tangible.

The same could not be said for today. The mid-year "Safety Assembly" where administrators admonish students for all the rules that are not being followed and all the expectations that are not being met was held first thing in the theater. Tens of powerpoint slides full of DON'Ts in tiny writing filled the screen above the stage as we all sat through a droning review of the rules. Even I, a rule-follower and an adult in the building who would greatly benefit if more students followed more rules, was ready to pull my hood up over my head. Nobody likes to be scolded.

And maybe it's a coincidence, but man! Those kids were right back to their old ways. 

Swing and a Miss

"I really like this pen," one of my students told me, grabbing it off my desk without permission. "Can I have it?"

I was hardly surprised by his impulsivity and boundary-bending, and I decided to use the situation as leverage. "Do you solemnly swear to use this pen for good?" I asked playfully. "Use it to complete your assignments thoughtfully and neatly and work hard for the rest of the class period? So help you--"

"I do!" he told me seriously.

"Then you may have it." I bestowed the pen upon him with a cheerful flourish and a smile. "Get to work! I'll check in with you in a few minutes."

As he headed back to his seat purposefully it almost seemed like the pen might do the trick, but when I touched base with him, he was off-task with nothing written.

"Hey!" I said. "You promised you were going to get some writing done!"

He looked at me, confused. "I was lying!" he explained.

I frowned, discouraged.

"I thought you knew!" he said, and handed me the pen.

Counterclaim

I moved a student's seat closer to where I was working with another student so that the first student might be less distracted. The first guy did not appreciate my support.

"I didn't do anything!" he declared indignantly.

"I promise if that were true, I would have left you where you were," I told him. "I'm too busy to bother with false accusations."

He insisted he had been doing exactly as he was expected, and to save both of us some time I outlined why I had moved him. "1, you weren't doing the assignment," I started.

"I was getting ready to," he said.

"2, you were talking to people around you, preventing them from doing their work."

"They were talking to me!" he claimed.

"3, you are argumentative. You don't listen to me when I redirect you, instead you argue with everything I say, even when you know I'm right."

He paused. He knew he shouldn't say a word, and I could see the struggle on his face. In the end it was too much for him, though. "No I don't!" he insisted.

I raised an eyebrow.

He got to work.
Briefly.

Unpredictable

The day did not go as I pictured it.

I never imagined that on the first morning back from break one of the first people I would see was that oppositional student walking down the hallway with a quart of Mountain Dew in his hand, just itching for someone to tell him it wasn't allowed in school. And I certainly didn't anticipate that my cross-century VCR-Smart Board hook-up would fail, so that my homeroom and I would be unable to watch the morning announcements. And I never saw it coming when the boy who used to refuse to take off his coat but had been quite cooperative before the winter holidays would return to his former stance: Yeah, I'm just going to have to say no to following that rule, he told me.

"Wow!" I confessed out loud to my homeroom, "This year is something else already!"

But, 18 days off does have some restorative power, and each of those snafus was resolved with patience and a little outside grace. And not all the surprises today were bad. When asked to pick one little word to capture what he wanted more of in his life, a student known for his negativity chose "kindness" because there just isn't enough of it in middle school. And he ended his paragraph with, I can be nicer and so can everyone else.

HBD Bob

The meal gets a little less time-honored over the last 30+ years: first I substituted green beans for the peas; next the mashed potatoes became just a little lighter; now, the biscuits are sweet potato; the chicken is free-range and mostly white meat, and there is even a vegan version for Heidi. Even so, tonight on what would have been my dad's 84th birthday, we will sit down to chicken with white gravy and biscuits, and I will think of him, as I have all day.

Hold Outs

Tomorrow is 12th Night, the Epiphany, and the day when many pack up and put away their holiday decorations for another year. And when the sun came out unexpectedly this afternoon after a considerable stretch of gray skies and rain, it became clear that the days are indeed growing longer, even in just the two weeks since the solstice. Holiday clearance tables have given way to streamlined aisles, bins for organization, and Valentines Day candy. It's impossible to find parking at the gym, and school is back in session on Monday.

Christmas is over.

But not at our house!

Of course, we'll return to work as scheduled, and already our meals are a little lighter, and saving is the new spending. All the cookies are gone, but taking down the tree can wait a few more days, and the candles that light each window at dusk will stay until spring. So will the lighted sign that simply reads JOY, because some things transcend the season.

Get off the Couch

I've been taking it easy since my scooter mishap a week ago. It turns out I bruised a little bit more than just my ego. My hand is getting better, but I also banged my chest on the handle as I went down, and that injury has been painful and slower to heal. Ibuprofen, the heating pad, breathing exercises, but most of all, rest, are the recommended remedies for my condition, and I have been using them all.

There may have also been some collateral damage to my self-image. "Are you going to scooter again?" Annabelle asked after the accident. "Of course!" I answered without hesitation, but I've definitely lost a little of my sense of invincibility: I feel more fragile, and life's dangers have been brought into sharp focus. Gone is my unwavering love for scootering, invalidating at least a half-dozen blog entries, and everything seems a little more scary now.

You are pushing 60! I think sometimes, as I inhale 1-2-3-4, Why would you do anything so risky? hold 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Stay on the couch and read! exhale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Do some writing! Take some Advil!

And it was on the couch with the heating pad on high that I was lying as we watched the finale of Survivor Season 37 the other night. The show actually had its traditional live wrap-up episode a few weeks ago, but we were busy with the holidays and missed it. Gone are the days when discovering the winner of this granddaddy of reality shows was a huge media event, and it wasn't even hard to shield ourselves from spoilers. So, we slogged through the three hour conclusion with a minimum of fast-forwarding, although I confess to always finding that ultimate tribal council tiresome and even boring.

This is the part of the show where the final three survivors are questioned by the jury, which consists of the last seven contestants voted out. The finalists have to answer for their game play and explain how they outwitted, outplayed, and outlasted their competitors, but to me it's just too much talking. It seems doubtful that anything they say can really influence the votes at that point, especially since they are still playing the game.

More interesting for me is the reunion segment at the end, where everyone is interviewed in hindsight, after the winner has been announced. The former survivors are often nearly unrecognizable, having had several months to recover from the 39 day ordeal and always so carefully dressed and groomed for TV. To be sure, the spotlight is still on them, but with the game so far behind them, their comments ring more true and insightful. They talk not just about their strategy, but also about how the experience changed their lives: what they wanted, what they got.

It was in this context that Mike White reminded me of something I know, but sometimes forget. A successful actor and writer, White seemed neither surprised nor dismayed by coming in second in the million dollar competition. When Jeff Probst asked him about his desire to play the game, he said, "As a writer you don't want just spend your whole life observing life. You want to just live it... and for me, I don't want to spend all my creativity on my work; I want to spend it on living, even if it means embarrassing myself in front of millions of viewers. It means you have to take a chance and live the adventure-- get off your computer."

He's right of course, and his advice holds true, not just for writers, but for aging scooterers, too. 

Tall Order

We started our first-of-the-year movie marathon with a short sprint of 2 movies in 2 days. Yesterday it was Vice and today we saw The Favourite. The acting was terrific, but both were ultimately unsatisfying to me.

Each bio-pic was an interesting meditation on power, exploring in particular strategies that women have historically had to resort to in order to gain power. As such, Amy Adams, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone portray characters who are ruthless and manipulative, understandable, but unlikable. Although they approach power acquisition differently than an equally ambitious male counterpart might, all three women still define power in the traditional, zero-sum way, where to have power you have to take it from someone else and hold on to it.

It's fair to argue that all three characters were simply making the best of a bad situation, but I guess that's where the movies fell short for me. I prefer my heroes to fight injustice by reimagining the corrupt status quo.

You Are What You Eat

Every year on New Year's Day we have the traditional southern supper of ham, black-eyed peas, and greens. Those dishes are considered talismans for the year ahead; the ham because a pig in his pen can't look backward and neither should you; the black-eyed peas for luck and the greens for money. In addition, we always have pan-fried chicken, corn, and rice, and every year or so we make up new meanings for those foods as well, so that they, too, might be charms to carry us successfully through the next year.

Yesterday's symbolism was especially satisfying to me: chicken for health, because it's lean, corn for sunshine and clear skies, because of its bright color, and rice because it represents our collective identity, many grains combine to make one dish.

Yes, our meal perfectly captures my fondest wish as I look ahead to the new year: luck, prosperity, health, and sunshine, in the company of family and friends.

Morning Meditation

It was 60 degrees and soggy when I took Lucy out at 7:30 this morning. The neighborhood was deserted; last night's revelries had seen to that, and so we wandered alone, tLucy reacquainting herself with her home turf, and I considering the weather, warm and wet, with which we start this new year.

Then it was back to the house for breakfast and coffee and a bit more quiet contemplation before the rest of our little world woke up.