The Big Wind

Or perhaps it was the Great Wind?  Or the Big Storm?  Most likely it was the Mighty Gust. 


My husband was awake in the night and heard something hit the house.  I think that sound is what woke me up.  What I heard was metal scraping on concrete.  I told him the grill had blown over.  It's happened before.  However, we went out back and the grill is fine, the yard looks fine, but there's a cat made of either plastic or fiberglass about two feet high.  It's lying on the ground not too far from being under the bedroom window.  We wondered how it got there.  It was too hard to imagine the wind blowing such a thing.  It was also hard to imagine the neighbor kids being out at nearly 4am throwing things like that into the yard.


All questions were answered the next morning when I saw the trampoline that used to be next door in a crumpled heap in the driveway across the street.  I returned their cat and the neighbor said that the cat had been on their patio table, the trampoline (which had a net) must have picked up the cat and flung it over in our yard during its flight across the street.  It broke their glass table top.  I'm glad it didn't hit our window.  

Getting Ready

Taking out Sundays, I have 7 days left to prepare for the first day of sixth grade.  Big shout of thanks to my friend C who gave me all kinds of ideas.  I think I might make it through the first week.

Official

I have officially crossed over to the dark side and will teach 6th grade next year.  I'm good with this.  I think I was actually reaching the point where I was hoping it would happen.  I've had the idea of switching grades on my mind since Christmas, but when we all moved over to the new school, my principal put me in fifth where I've always been and that was fine.  The numbers have drastically shifted though and so it was either sixth or fourth and I chose sixth.  (They'll hire a new 4th grade teacher from somewhere.)  I'm excited about doing something different, but I've got two weeks to "cram" my new curriculum.  So of course my first course of action is to get on facebook and announce it to everyone and then talk to my friend on the phone.  Now I'm over here blogging about it and I'll probably send an e-mail to another friend next.  Tomorrow we'll go over and shift books around and Monday I'll dig in to the new stuff. 

Up in the Air

So things are still very uncertain with numbers the new school.  Will I be crossing over to the dark side and teaching 6th grade next year or will they scrape up enough students (and/or FTEs) for me to stay in fifth?  I really am ok with either one, but we're getting down to the crunch time and I need to know!

Freezer Cooking and the Dogs' Day

At the end of each summer, I mark the coming new school year by spending a day or two cooking for the freezer.  (I was going to insert a joke about the freezer getting hungry, but I think that's just the caffeine overdose talking.)  Ever since I returned to full time work 5 years ago, I've done this, except for one year and I regretted it from August till Christmas.  Our one constant and ever present family goal is to eat out less.  (We have plenty of other goals, but nothing shows up as often on our list as this one.)  The reason we eat out so much is lack of preparation.  Freezer cooking is my attempt to keep us all at our own dinner table in the evenings. 


So today I've spent the day boiling lasagna noodles and cooking up red or white sauce.  There are 6 lasagnas in the freezer and I'm working on number seven.  There are also two pans of a spinach/sausage/noodle bake, one of which I would love to give to a friend, but a pan of frozen food doesn't mail very well and the distance is a little much to drive for a pan of food. 


The dogs have not enjoyed today all that much.  The small amount of time I've spent sitting, I've done at the kitchen table.  They are unhappy that there has been no nap on my bed while I fritter away time on facebook or playing solitaire.  They tried going outside several times, but the smells in here were too good to resist so they'd come back.  Maybe there will be something on TV tonight that I can get hooked on watching.  The girls would love that.


Meanwhile, back to the bacon.

Humidity

I live in a dry climate now, but grew up in a very humid part of the country.  I love humidity.  It helps take away that raspy dry feeling you get in your skin, but most especially, it makes my eyeball work better.  Today is nearly perfect at 82%.  I know, I'm a minority.

A Fresh Start

I love a fresh start. When I started having problems with my last blog, I finally gave up and started over. I wasn't happy with it anyway so I didn't post much. When it comes to cleaning I'm most likely to take everything off of or out of whatever I'm cleaning, scrub the empty spot and carefully choose where to put things back. My favorite fresh start is a new school year. I go back in two weeks, the students return in three. I'm sure there will be plenty of "cherubic tales" in the future.