It Had to Happen Sometime

I confess that I have been tired lately, even after catching up on my sleep over spring break a couple of weeks ago, but nothing could have prepared me for the exchange I had this evening with the cashier at the grocery.

I had worked until a little after five and given my nephew a lift home after he had tutored, and I would have avoided the extra stop if I could have. As it was, I shopped pretty quickly, but when I made way to the check-out line, the go-go nature of the day and the fact that I was absolutely starving must have taken a toll.

I handed over my shopper's card without being asked, consented to plastic bags with a nod, and was busy punching in my pin number when the checker interrupted me, politely. "Senior citizen discount, ma'am?"

Heat Wave

After near record lows a couple weeks ago, today we posted a bona fide record high temperature.  91^o in April? Oh my!

People who know me know I do not really care for hot weather, but I have to say that this was the most pleasant ninety-plus degrees I have ever encountered. There was very little humidity and a light breeze that just made you want to throw out your arms and spin. With the windows and sun roof wide open I didn't even break a sweat.

At school, more than the extraordinary heat, the students seemed to sense an irrevocable turn in the season. "These are the longest shorts I have," I heard a young woman complain when she was sent to the office for a dress code violation. And this morning, when asked to come up with a theme for a basket to be raffled off at a PTA fundraiser in a couple of weeks the most popular idea was School's OUT!

...and that's what we're going with.

Mail Call

Believe it or not, the entire experience of writing a letter, addressing the envelope, placing a stamp on it, and personally putting it in the mail is a novel one for most of the sixth graders I teach. As the culmination of the Gratitude Challenge, and because the weather was a gorgeous 80 degrees here, today my students and I walked to the mailbox on the far corner of campus to physically post their thank-you notes.

After overcoming the exacting task of properly placing name, street, city, state and zip code on a tiny envelope, they joyfully ran down the sidewalks and across the fields to the intersection where a vintage mailbox stands bolted to the pavement. With wonder they pulled the worn metal handle to reveal the yawning maw of that blue beast and gleefully sacrificed their offerings to the postal gods. Then they skipped back to their school, eager to continue their lessons.

Neighborhood School

Imagine my delight this afternoon when I entered the main office to check my mail (and so forth) and I ran into my nephew, who is a senior in high school. Oh, how I love that guy!

"Are you here to see your mom?" I asked, because she works in the building, too.

"No, actually, " he replied, "I'm here to tutor some kids."

How cool is that?

Live from...

As our dog ages, Heidi seeks ways to keep her sharp both physically and mentally. Not only do we have a daily dog walker who takes her to the park for exercise, but one or the other of us takes her for a walk each evening, too. When she was younger, Heidi did agility classes with her, and lately she has been thinking that such an activity would be fun for both of them to revisit.

I support my girls all the way, and today while I was researching class opportunities in our area, I came across a place a little ways south of here that sounded great, were it not just that much too far. Clicking on the "About us" link, I gasped when I recognized the proprietor as a former contestant on the reality show, Greatest American Dog. To be honest, it's hard to say if it was her or her perfectly groomed Maltese, Andrew, who caught my eye first, but there they were, minor celebrities, just an hour away.

We are no strangers to reality TV, particularly the pet sub-genre. Cesar Milan is a demigod in our home, and the person we trust to clean-up and clip our dog was on the second season of Animal Planet's Groomer Has It; she didn't win the show, but she won the doodle segment. 'Nuf said.

Written in Stone

I dipped my toe back into the genealogy pool at the end of the week last week. That type of research can be so consuming that it's hard to do a little at a time. It's also tough to keep track of all the little threads and questions once you get back a few generations, but it was spring break, and after visiting the Chapman family home and cemetery, I decided to devote a couple of hours to the folks on my own family tree.

There must be many mysteries in every family; there are definitely several in mine. One is the story of my great-grandmother. Born to Irish immigrants in Brooklyn, her mother died when she was a young child. Her father remarried shortly afterwards, but we have no idea what she did for the next twenty years when she somehow met and married my great-grandfather, a man from Massachusetts, and moved to Indiana. Her father ended up working in the laundry of the New Jersey State Asylum, where he died and was buried. Her older sister never married, and at some point moved to Indiana, too.

Most of the information we have is pieced together from census records, so there was some discrepancy as to the year she was born-- it varied from 1860 to 1866. In order to refine my searches I wanted to know which it was. I knew there was a record of her burial on the Find a Grave website, but there was nothing other than her name and the cemetery. That site is free and run mostly by volunteers; they have a photo request form, and if anyone living nearby is willing, you can get a picture of the grave.

I was surprised to hear back in less than an hour from a nice lady in Indiana who promised she would go out this week and take the photos I requested. Yesterday, she posted them. In them, the spring sunshine seems a little harsh and the shadows the stones cast are dark. The markers themselves are plain blocks of rough granite standing in grass that has not yet greened up, but I was moved to see them.

And one small mystery was solved: no matter what they told the census takers in the later years of her life, my great-grandmother was born in 1861.

Unwritten Rules

Three of us meet regularly on Fridays, but this afternoon two of us were waiting in the other person's room. She was nowhere to be found. We weren't worried-- 20 year veterans of teaching, we know how, especially in the name of responsive education, a meeting with a student or parent or counselor or team or administrator can come together in no time, and you're lucky if you have the opportunity to alert your colleagues to the conflict.

The two of us sat and chatted. It was the end of our teaching day, a time when I am often drained, especially if there's not another high-adrenaline event on my agenda to keep me going. We speculated as to where our third might be and made a swipe at our planned topic of conversation. "How long do they say you have to wait in college if your professor doesn't show?" my colleague asked. "Ten minutes?"

We laughed and then agreed that the moment for that particular meeting had passed, and presuming we would all be together again next Friday, we left the room to take care of the many, many items below it on our infinite to-do lists.