I’m sitting at my desk at work having just written a lengthy response to a friend’s blog only to realize that I haven’t blogged in a long time. I felt guilty enough to sit down and write. My students are working on their last day of projects, and the classroom is already hot at 8:50 a.m. I actually am in between grading things. In a couple of hours I’ll get slammed with things to grade. In the meantime, I’ll write.
I can only explain my absence from the blogosphere by explaining, briefly, my insane preoccupation with our trip in August. I am obsessed. I can’t wait to bring the kids to Disney World. I bought a book entitled The Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World. It’s loaded with little facts about the place. I figured I would take a fact or two a week and then send them to my family who are going. I also thought that if I had some interesting facts to keep John interested as we went along, he would quit referring to the vacation as “our trip to visit the giant rat.” I doubt he will, though, because he’s really amusing himself by calling it “our trip to visit the giant rat.”
When I first started thinking about these facts and sending them to the family members who are going on the trip with us, I briefly thought about creating a scavenger hunt. Most of the people we’re going with have been so many times that I thought it would be fun to kind of spice it up a little. As I said, I had thought about it briefly. One of my nieces said that she thought it would be cool to do it, so I went ahead and wrote it. I finished it yesterday. It should be pretty cool. I can’t participate, but…Now I just have to think of a prize for the winning team.
I went, on Tuesday, to Anna’s school for their version of The Special Olympics. I totally screwed up dropping her off because I forgot that she starts school at 8:10. I got her there late. I never do stuff like that. But, I redeemed myself by helping out and drying off the playground equipment for one of the events. I didn’t score any points with the administration in the building by taking the day off, but honestly it was the best thing I’ve done in recent memory. The kids were so cute doing their events (hitting a ball off a T, running around the playground, kicking a soccer ball, etc.), but the best part was Anna. She was so happy I was there she danced the whole time. Every time we moved onto the next event, she looked back to see me. She waved me on and said, “Come on, Mama!” She held my hand as we walked from some of the events. Every kid got a “gold” medal and a t-shirt. That “gold” medal is probably the best thing ever. She wears it all the time and tells me, “Look, Mama! It’s a gold medal!” So obviously, I’m taking June 20th as my last personal day so that I can go to her end-of-the-year celebration. And even more obviously, I’m trying to find coverage for the afternoon of June 22nd so that I can go to Jack’s kindergarten “graduation.” I am not scoring any professional points for this, but I don’t care. I really don’t care. I think I’ve got the coverage covered—all except last period. I’ll sort it out.
The kids are doing way better than when I started blogging.
I know this will sound completely odd when I say this considering that Anna is 4, but she’s starting to discuss past events. She told me Tuesday that she had fun with her cousins on Sunday. Now, they were actually kind of mean to her, but she didn’t pick up on that. She thought that their shutting her out of their room was a game. But a couple of days later, she was still talking about it. A big step! Last night, she stopped me while I was reading so that she could match character names with character pictures. Again, well below her age level, but big steps. She’s happier, too. And that is important.
Jack has stopped crying every morning before school. I don’t know what caused him to cry when Judy dropped him off in the mornings, but he would sob. A lot of corrective things happened at the same time so I can’t tell what made it stop. We were bribing him. Pretty steadily. $1 a day if he went into the building without crying. Then it became $2 a day if he went to the building without crying and then didn’t cry at any point during the rest of the day. His teacher also told him that he had to quit crying in school now because he’s 6. He (and I) concurred. His teacher assured me that he was well liked by his classmates and that he’s lightened up a lot over the school year. There’s hope for him yet.
The class period is over, and I’ve spent a lot of time running around. Our big class field trip is coming up in two weeks and I had to get all my ducks in a row. Final payments, cabin lists, etc. Then I try to help out the women who really run the trip, so I was organizing where the staff will be on what day during the three-night, four-day extravaganza. It’s such a fun trip and one of the main reasons why I still teach seventh grade and not eighth grade.
I’ll end here as I’ve been rambling on and on…
