Ketchup

The last couple of weeks have been filled with snips of insight provoked by interaction with strangers and peers. I've felt like that bug on the wall, listening to what others say about themselves, about life, about me.

Life may be good for most of us in the weeks following the winter break. Some are refreshed, while others are depressed, but almost all are stressed: it's the end of one semester and the beginning of another, hampered by the district's decision to provide 2 meaningful days of mandated in-service training which held at least 1000 teachers and administrators captive in a large room for one of the most uninspiring, tedious presentations of my career.

Any public speaker who earns a fee should know when he's lost the audience, especially when the audience of his colleagues is guffawing throughout the motivating slide show that proves his approach to forming collaborative educational communities is the way to go. He was mildly interesting for about the first 90 minutes, and then he headed downhill in an uncontrolled tumble.

It was awful! I completely lost it when he recommended that we all wear the t-shirts proclaiming our intent to "Harass 'em 'til we pass 'em." I could not stop laughing, and then had to get up and leave when the woman sitting next to me proclaimed loudly, "I need a drink!" I'm sure she meant water or iced tea, but there were so many voices raised in agreement with her comment that I had to leave to regain control.

Where do we all need to be? At our sites, printing rosters and the materials we need for Monday. I believe in the philosophy of begin where I intend to end, so I'm ready minute one of day one, especially when my student population has changed. I don't know the new faces coming into class, so I will have to demonstrate my classroom process to them beginning when the bell rings. If I'm not prepared to do so, they will know that they don't have to be prepared either, and that's not the way I do my job.

Today's Saturday, and I'm going into work.

The college class is off to a great start, and several have accepted the extra credit option to blog. A person who needs to become a better writer needs to write, not read about writing, and one of the best ways I know to get the writing process engaged is to offer extra credit for a blog. I read and respond to each posting, which takes a bit of time, but pays off huge dividends in the classroom.

Word is around that I'm retiring, so interested replacements have approached me to ask me about working at my site. Great, I tell them: go for it. We all know that if this one isn't a fit, the next one in line may be, and life goes on. I'm on the college roster for both summer session and fall classes, so will continue working for a while. Far better to look forward to 3 classes and 2 days a week than 5 classes, 5 days a week--and close to 200 students, few of whom want to be there.

The landscaping is about to begin, and I pray that this landscaper will do the job right, do it well, and not "adjust" the agreed to price. Once it's in, the landscaping will be manageable without using a gardener, so that's the goal. I hope it will also add value to the house.

Next on my plan is to finish the dresser I began refinishing last summer, then add the cabinets to the wall above it and create a built-in buffet. I'm also going to empty the boxes in the garage, keeping some and discarding other contents, with the goal of parking 2 cars inside, rather than leaving one outside.

Then, I'm taking apart my office and redoing it with shelving I can use, cabinets, and only current materials. I have contents that need to be shredded and the boxes discarded. I've allowed it to pile up until I can't stand it, so I'll probably be as ruthless as it takes to dig out from under the decade of disinterest.

The biggest step is landscaping the smaller backyard, the one off my never-used patio. A fence was installed to create a dog run, but then I broke the arm twice and lost my momentum. It's time to get up and running again and make my house at least as run-down as the rest on the block, rather than looking like it's abandoned ... .

I've lost weight, brought my blood sugar down, and look and feel a whole lot better than I did a short 6 months ago. I have more energy and fewer headaches, so can't complain. Have even received a couple of compliments on the self improvements, which adds motivation to continue the process.

time for the shower and shoving off: I have work to do.