Straight up

This is a good one.  I think I'll read Winesburg, Ohio next.  It's been in the basket beside my bed for probably two years now.  Perhaps the time is right. 

One more day to pack up the classroom at school.  I'm taking this opportunity to purge my filing cabinets like mad.  It's gorgeous...but it's taking forever.  I lost an entire day Saturday when I was sidelined with an icky stomach thing.  Dammit.  Oh well, if they want to fire me for not being done, let 'em.  Rumor has it our "new" classrooms won't even be ready for the beginning of the school year, so I'm already mentally gearing myself up to unpack right back into the same room.  Can anyone say "typical educational bullshit"?  I knew you could!

After I'm finished at school, I start on Teh Thesis.  And before the week is over, I will have seen Toy Story 3.  Can't wait, actually.  :-)

'Night for now.  More...much more later. 

I'm not dead yet!

Just entrenched in the school-year-end psychosis that goes along with excessive grading and excessive hours spent at school in said grading.  So I shall forthwith entertain you (or bore you) with bullets of life since I failed to complete NaPoWriMo:

• I failed to complete NaPoWriMo.  But I'm not beating myself up over it.  The fact that I made it as far as I did lets me know I can actually do it for real next year.
• I have to move out of my classroom at the end of the school year!  Gah!  I've been in this room for 10 years and have, obviously, accumulated 10 years worth of both treasure and crap.  While I welcome the opportunity to purge, I am frustrated at the district's expectation that we will have grades in the day after finals schedule (the day after graduation duty) and have all of our classrooms packed and ready to be emptied the day after that!  We're requesting that they give us the weekend to finish up.  Contrary to popular belief, we do give finals during finals week (shocking, I know), so the notion that we're "not doing anything" and can just pack during school hours, using students as free slave labor, is not one that works for me. 
• The district also swears that they'll have our "new" portables in place and ready to go in time for us to move in before school actually starts in August.  Forgive me for saying I'm skeptical, given their track record over the past decade.  (Lord, help us.)
• I will write my thesis and have it finished during the first month of summer.
• After returning last night from a thirteen-hour grading day at school, I had to spend the next three hours monitoring an impromptu party (flash mob style) at a vacant house across the street from me.  Police were involved (finally).  They finally shut off the big searchlight, which was glaring almost directly into my window, at 3 a.m.  Needless to say, church attendance did not happen today. 
• Visited a junior high in San Diego area last week to see their failure-is-not-an-option model of student accountability.  Food for thought. 
• I've been looking through a lot of photos today, putting together an album for a niece who is graduation from junior high.  What a trip down memory lane!  The things that stand out most to me:  (a) I used to be thinner, a lot thinner;  even when I was fat, I was still thinner than now.  God!  (b) My yard used to be pretty, with a backyard lawn that wasn't patchy, and with semi-tended flowers in both the front and back yards;  now...aw, hell.  Where did I used to find the time and energy?  I'm not that old.  (c) I used to take a lot of pictures;  now I only take them on special occasions;  I miss capturing art like that. 
• I'm so angry about the BP oil spill in LA that my own bp goes up when I read about it or see horrendous pictures of it.  I might have to (re)join the NRDC or something.  I feel furious and powerless. 
• Is it just me, or have there been lots of odd celebrity deaths lately? 

And on that note, I'll stop whining.  I think I'll get this blog back to a more regular pace when summer starts.  Till then, I'm still checking in and reading everyone else's blogs at least once every week or two.  Prayers for survival and health and effectiveness always appreciated! 

#22 NaPoWriMo

Today's prompt was to use any or many of the words in this Wordle.  Here's my half-assed, last-minute, hoop-jumping effort:

dizzy with lack of sleep;
tomorrow my exhaustion
will reverberate through my day
and pepper my instruction
with gaps and rust,
and my colleague
will crow at lunch
about how she’s caught up
on all of her grading,
and I will smile
while a small fierce squall
inside my soul
rages,
my soul an emporium of
grading jealousy
and tired indifference.

#21 NaPoWriMo -- off-topic again

Too late a night spent grading
to work up a draft
to meet a prompt. 
So these impromptu
lines
will have to do.

***

The wind tonight
is steady and cold,
firm and fierce,
promising rain,
but sometimes
the wind lies.

#20 NaPoWriMo -- Just a little whining is all

Too tired for the prompt again.  This'll have to do:


warmth of heating pad on shoulders
soothe the tensions of the
millstone around my neck.

(excessive grading)

#19 NaPoWriMo

Today's prompt:  lightbulb moments, eclat, epiphany, aha moments

This one is borne of the moment.  Very much so.


Dutifully I sit
to write my poem, when
the lurch,
the tremor,
the rattle,
the waiting…waiting
to see if it becomes something more.
In a frenzy of googling
the guru’s version of
postshake websanity,
I am struck
in fear and shame that
we still haven’t bought
the planned case of
water and Dinty Moore beef stew,
and when the freeway falls
and the houses split,
we will be woefully unprepared
--still--
and I am moved to make
public confession of my
sin of omission,
to my chagrin,
I a twenty-plus-year resident
of this shaky locale.

*The guru is CalTech’s Earthquake Center.

#18 NaPoWriMo

Today's prompt:  Write a poem featuring the cat family, whether big or small.


lionize her
leonine grace,
the pride,
the language of the tail,
the purr of harmonic resonance,
the purr that heals;

quiet paws give pause
and so we hang a bell,
when we should worship
the ancient god instead.

a cat by any other name
would scratch as deep,
bite as hard,
shed as much,
disobey as often,
eat as many moths,
and knead and nudge and curl up around the heart