Downs and UPS

The package needed a signature, which was a nuisance, because we are rarely home during the week. There was no place on any of the reminder slips to designate a neighbor or another safe place, and the phone number provided was wholly automated. When the FINAL ATTEMPT at delivery was made when we were out on Friday evening, we shrugged it off, knowing that at some point in the upcoming three day weekend we would find our way down to the customer service.

And that opportunity did indeed come this morning when we pulled into the out of the way industrial park a little off the route to our favorite grocery store. We produced the required documentation and waited in the drafty shipping office listening to a local soul station, weighing ourselves on the industrial scale, and jumping every time the automatic door eerily opened and closed all by itself at random intervals.

The clerks returned from time to time to question us about the size, value, and shipper of our expected package, openly acknowledging that they couldn't find it. After speaking to two supervisors and leaving our number, we agreed to go to the grocery store and stop again on the way home. But when we got there, they balefully informed us that we would have to file a claim.

A couple of hours later we sat in our living room griping about our bad luck. Heidi was making her way through yet another automated phone menu when a roar outside the window attracted my attention. A brown truck rumbled by. "Maybe they accidentally sent it out for delivery again and that's why they couldn't find it," I suggested. "That could be it right now!" I laughed.

Just then a recorded voice came over the phone. The latest status of that package is that it was delivered at 3:36 today, it said.

I looked at my watch.

It was 3:37.

I trotted over to the front door, and...

there it was!

A Time for Every Season

Oscar weekend beach house?

Booked!

First movie (Hidden Figures) and dinner (Peter Chang's) with the regular Oscar crew?

Check!

Here's to seven more weeks of fun.

Until Spoken To

It seems like a lot of conversations I have these days involve venting: so many people have so much to get off their chests. Like most listeners I think, my first inclination is to problem-solve complaint-by-complaint, but often it seems that such an approach results in a litany of counter complaints and reasons why my suggestions could never work. Such a conversation can quickly become frustrating for both parties, and maybe even fodder for another venting session down the road.

Recently, in fact, I was on the receiving end of a third-degree complaint: somebody complaining about somebody who complained and then refused to take their advice. I nodded sympathetically and mm hmmed at appropriate times, but was otherwise silent. "What do you think I should have done?" my friend finally asked.

I shrugged. "I've learned it's best not to give advice unless you're asked for it," I answered.

Her lit up, and she nodded vigorously. "That seems very wise!" she told me.

See what I mean?

Jackpot!

3-3-3

Three days off-- we honor Dr. King on Monday.

Three days on-- two of them will be field trips!

Three days off-- inauguration gridlock has its benefits.

Warning: Hazard Ahead

Below freezing yesterday and 70 degrees in today: this is the type of dire fluctuation in temperature that my dad used to warn us was pneumonia weather. Of course today we might be likely to chalk it up to the far more menacing hazard of climate change.

And yet, as I walked coatless to my car in the balm of this January evening, the shouts of children chased after each other through twilit yards, and the prospect of peril seemed farther away than the misty moon rising so incandescently full.

Bissell While You Work

"They are not 'your' classrooms!" an administrator once reminded a roomful of us teachers harshly. "They belong to the school system and you use them at our discretion."

My stomach wrenched at her bluntness, and a tiny spark of the burning idealism that carries most of us into teaching was extinguished forever along with any illusion of ownership I may have had over my workspace. Oh, I shook it off-- that was years ago, and whether it's technically my room or not, practically speaking it is definitely where the magic happens.

Even so, the fact is that my classroom is used for night classes and on weekends by a church group who rents the facility. In theory, these groups respect the work space, but in practice that is not always true and it is routine for me on any given morning to reset the room for my own classes, moving tables and chairs to the places where my students expect them. In addition there are times when things are missing (tissues, markers, chalk, etc.) and times when things are left behind (empty cups and bottles, papers, books, umbrellas, and even a dirty diaper once).

So I was hardly surprised when I found an unusual object leaning against my wall on Monday morning. Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant would have recognized it immediately-- it was an electrostatic carpet sweeper-- aka a "Bissell." Having swept under many a table in my time, I was impressed by how new this particular model was. In fact, it was not A Bissell at all, but rather a product of the Fuller brush company, a genuine Stanley Sweeper.

Any irritation at this abandoned item soon turned to interest. I gave it a tentative push and was pleased with the its action as it rolled smoothly across the rug picking up even the smallest specks and crumbs in its path. The potential of possessing such a device was immediately clear to me as I imagined all the stray hole punches and pencil shavings I could dispense with quite easily. This sweeper was a keeper!

And indeed it has proved to be so-- not just for me, but for my students and colleagues as well. Paper scraps? Food crumbs? Caked on dirt from recess? No problem! The rugs in our rooms have been pristine for the last three days. The satisfaction at cleaning up such messes so easily has led to arguments over whose turn it is to clean up. In fact, I just ordered one to keep at home, and a couple of other teachers have done so as well.

They may not be our rooms, but by God, those carpets are clean!

Playing Catch Up

The students at our school are quite a diverse and international group, and as such many are very well-traveled. Why, just in the last week I have had students return from Peru and Ghana and another who informed us that he will be out next week due to a family commitment-- a Disney Cruise to the Bahamas.

I'm pretty old school about these excursions; I believe that there is much to be learned beyond the classroom, and frankly, in the grand scheme of things, sixth grade really isn't all that. Believe it or not, though, it's pretty impossible to keep up with the requirements of school when one is not present, and so I do what I can to minimize any loss of education and/or stress for students who miss a few days (or weeks) spending time with family.

Even so, it can be pretty traumatic to return to school after time away. Our traveler to Peru, a tough little guy, cried in every class on the day he came back. The guy who spent three weeks in Ghana had a different reaction. I walked over to his table as he frantically searched his notebook. "I can't seem to find the assignment you want," he told me.

"That would be because you weren't here when I gave it," I said.

He looked shocked.

"You're going to miss a few things if you're absent," I told him. "We can't wait for you!"