Imagined Life

Yesterday I had an appointment at home at 3, which forced me to dash out the door along with the students a little after the last bell of the day. At 3:30, when the serviceman was finished, I started dinner. Josh and a couple of his friends were coming over at 6, and I made a hearty vegetable and shrimp posole and baked a cranberry cake with caramel glaze and whipped cream. Next, I vacuumed and set the table, then laid a fire to start a little later. Soon it was time to go get Heidi from school, so I bundled Lucy into the car, and she bounced around the frozen fields outside our building for 20 minutes or so. On the way home, we got a text from our neighbor, and ended up inviting her over for dinner, too. It was a lovely evening, enjoyed, I think, by all, and as we loaded the last of the dessert plates into the dishwasher, I couldn't help but wonder what else in the world I could accomplish if I left school every day at my contract time.

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.