On a rainy holiday after all the puzzles are done, if the movies are sold out, and the oven is still broken, there seems to be only one thing left to do: clean out the attic.
Or, rather, begin to. There's a lot of junk up there that was once treasured possessions, but somehow I felt it was very easy today to part with many things, especially if they haven't been used in years. So I thanked an entire carload of crap for its service and sent it on its way to spark joy in someone else.
It was a mystery.
A student claimed to have written 500 words, and Google word count confirmed it, but there just wasn't enough on the page for it to make sense. "Come over here," I invited the young writer, a squirrely and mischievous sixth grade boy whose angelic appearance belied his naughty behaviour.
He beamed at me and happily complied.
"Share your document with me, and let's take a look at it," I told him.
Soon I was looking at the loaves and fishes of personal narratives: three short paragraphs that were somehow comprised of exactly 500 words, which happened to be the minimum for the assignment. "Well," I said, "your narrative is not really complete."
"But it has 500 words," he insisted.
"I know," I agreed, "but that's the minimum. If you can't write a whole story with that many words, your narrative will have to be longer."
He slumped in his chair. "I can't think of anything else," he sighed.
"Well, let's work on it together," I offered. "Tell me about this car trip-- what were you doing? What did it look like out the window?"
He gave me a few details, and I showed him how to expand and elaborate on his minimal description, and we took turns adding to his story, he on his iPad and I from my computer.
"Now let's look at the end," I said and scrolled to where the story abruptly stopped. I noticed that his document went on to the next page, which is not unusual for kids who are learning to type their drafts: they often inadvertently hit return when they are editing and revising. I clicked my cursor to the end and swept it up, intending to delete the extra white space. Imagine my surprise when 200 or so words of gibberish, typed in white, were revealed as I highlighted them.
"What's all that?" he asked innocently.
"I think you know that's how you got your 500 words" I answered. The bell rang then, and he rose to pack his books and rush out of the room, but we weren't finished yet. Let's just say there were tears in his eyes when I handed him the late pass 10 minutes later, and I'd like to believe his remorse was more than invisible words on the page.
"Next year I think we should go through the checklist with our own writing pieces to show the kids how to do it," I said to my friend and colleague, Mary, today. Then I paused. "I mean, if there is a next year."
She nodded. the two of us are on year 30, and the psychology of being able to retire but not being sure if we're ready to retire has been intense. Thank goodness I have someone trusted to work this through with.
"Is there going to be a next year?" she asked.
I shook my head. "Lately it seems increasingly unlikely."
She shrugged.
I laughed.
We continued our conversation about tomorrow.
Blue and Red for the Buffalo Bills
Blue for Kathy Hochul
Red for Dr. Oz
Blue for F*ck Biden flags
Faded red for Trump flags
Bright blue for the November sky
Red for the brake lights on the Beltway
Blue for the walls of our bedroom
Red for the welcome home pasta sauce
A former student stopped by the other day to say hello. As we chatted, she mentioned that her 9th grade sibling was still doing the daily writing they started during our hundred day writing challenge back in 2020. I was impressed, and I did a quick calculation. “They must be getting close to a thousand days,” I remarked.
“Really?” she said. “That is impressive.”
When she left, I pulled up my own blog to see what day was 1000. On November 25, 2011 the title of my post was M, for 1000. (Little Cats Drink Milk is the way I always remember the Roman numerals for 50, 100, 500, and 100.)
I finished that post with the suggestion that I stop counting and keep writing, and for the most part I have, but that conversation made me wonder how many days I’ve written, and so I did another quick calculation. Today, November 7, 2022 is day 5000 for me.
Wow.
I wonder how you write that in Roman numerals?
The Buffalo Bills are having a pretty good season and their town is full of die-hard fans even in the worst of times. I happened to be out running errands when the game kicked off at 1 PM today, and the streets and stores went from bustling to abandoned.
Unfortunately for the hometown crowd, the Bills fell to the Jets 17-20, worsening their record to 6-2. It worked out great for me though; I had the shops to myself and was able to check out without waiting, even at Wegmans.
Let's go, Buffalo!
At its southernmost, the road to Buffalo this morning was bright with autumn foliage; sun filtering through thin clouds made the oranges, reds, and yellows sing. But as we traveled north, the journey seemed to somber as the day grayed and the leaves browned and then disappeared all together.
Perhaps contributing to the mournful mood was the abundance of roadkill: we passed at least a dozen dead deer, five foxes, plenty of porcupine, several skunks, and two turkeys. Each one made me sad for the life lost, but it was probably the two dead bears that cast the most profound pall on our progress: I'd never seen such carnage.
Night had just fallen as we pulled into the driveway of Heidi's parents' house, and I was relieved to be off the road and here at last.
