Tag Archives: school

First Day of School

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Our children hopped on the bus today. September one–first day of school. I have to admit I am happy school starts in September. Starting in August is hard to take. I can think of September as fall, but August is still summer, no arguing, even if the temperature is supposed to top 90 today. I am off to work, hoping to get it all done before the bus returns this afternoon. Another school year underway, with the good and the bad that comes with that. My kids were excited and nervous at the same time, as I imagine I was back in the school days. A colleague of mine, when I saw her for the first time since June this week, said to me, “Happy New Year!” I thought that was apt. So here is to a good new year. Cheers!

Bus on the Way

And Off They Go...

Snowing Like Stink

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Snowing Hard

This is what it looked like this morning when we rose. It was snowing like stink. It was snowing hard last night as well. And check out this vehicle:

Loaded Car, Early in the Day

This was way back this morning when we looking at getting two feet of snow by the end of the day. Now it looks like we will get three feet of snow. It is after 3:00 now and it is still falling like the devil. It has been snowing for a long time now. Yesterday, all last night, all day today. We have maybe two and a half feet of snow now and we will likely get another six inches or so. Nuts. Check out the same view later in the day:

More Snow on the Car, Afternoon

The plow crew will be out today all day, maybe all night. I can only imagine them barely keeping up with it. We are in some kind of weird snow belt with this weather system. Usually we are not the spot to get the most snow, but this time around that is just the case. It keeps falling and falling.

Town Plow Getting the Job Done

And here’s one more, trail in the snow with intent to create smiles. Happy New Year with this storm. We might have a snow day tomorrow. It won’t affect me, as I have a day working at home planned, but it gets me excited anyway. Here’s hoping we break some snowfall records.

Love the Snow. You?

Proud Parent

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My daughter had a holiday concert this evening. She was one student of all the students in her grade and the grade above hers, singing and dancing. They had practiced for weeks and tonight was the big night. It was a packed gymnasium where they performed. It was fun to watch and to hear, and the kids had lots of fun.

She was a little nervous when we left–not worried so much as anticipating that she would have to do something in front of others. She knows already that she wants to please others, to show herself in a positive light, to do well.  And of course she was stellar. She sang right out. She smiled the whole time. She looked around. She laughed. What more could a parent ask?

At one point her class sang as a unit. I watched her sing, smiling all the while (both she and I), and I felt a pang of proudness. I had a feeling of how quickly time passes, how she will grow to do wonderful things and lead a fine life, and how I will remember this moment more than she will remember it. I felt proud of her standing up and doing her best, enjoying life in that moment. I was genuinely happy, from within as well as for her. I didn’t just feel the small pride of a parent that comes from watching one’s child do something for the first time or trying hard to accomplish something. There was something more there. It was a flash of the future, an emotional glimpse of the power of the world that is hers now and will be as she grows. For just a moment, time flared out and tingled over me.

I am sure there will be many more moments where she performs in a group or even on her own. I will feel proud then as well, I am sure, but when she ran out of the building afterward, as I walked with her brother in the cold air, and jumped into my open arms for a huge hug, I held onto her and to that earthly briefness tightly, knowing that it will not be long before I remember how long ago this night was. And she may not remember it at all.

In a short while I will look in on her sleeping. I will feel proud, and I will love her as much as one can love one’s child. I will her as long as I am alive to do so, and I will miss that child when she grows up. Tomorrow I will be sure to make meaningful the moments we share, and to let her know again that I am proud of her, and that I love her. And both of us will be better because of it.

First Day of School

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Today was the first day of school for our children.  After some anxiety about what that might bring, it worked out OK for them both.  Now we have some worries about what day two might bring.  One day at a time, I guess.

Bus on the Way

Bus on the Way

Off They Go

Off They Go

Really Gone (at Least for the Day)

Really Gone (at Least for the Day)

Sharp Pencils

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Crank This Puppy Up

Crank This Puppy Up

We all have our quirks.  Some people are particular about how the toilet paper roll hangs.  Some people have to load the dishwasher just the right way.  Some people never use their turn signal.  I like sharp pencils.

I know a lot of people don’t even use pencils.  They yse pens, if they write things by hand at all.  It’s not like people tend to keep journals these days, or write letters.  Even the words I am writing now are not being written by hand, unless you count typing on a keyboard.  Pencils seem so elementary school.  But I love them.  If I start a grocery list, I reach for a pencil first.  Crossword puzzles?  Gotta be in pencil.

The thing is, I like sharp pencils.  A dull pencil is like a dull knife.  Sure, it can get the job done, but it isn’t fun and it isn’t easy.  A dull pencil makes for work.  A sharp pencil makes for pleasure.  A fine graphite tip scratching across paper–that is simply a joy.  And those mechanical jobbers won’t do.  A newly sharpened wooden pencil is a fine and incomparable thing.

I got a pencil sharpener from my grandmother a few years ago.  She moved out and so cleaned out and gave me one.  It hangs on the wall and has a hand crank.  It is one of the most used tools in our house.  I use it almost every day, in fact.  I attached it to a post next to our desk downstairs.  A few pencils sit in a bin above it.  When my pencils start to wear too much, I crank it and start writing again.

One thing of which I am not a fan is an electric pencil sharpener.  That seems like a waste of energy.  That seems like it was designed for sloth.  You can’t even wrap a couple of fingers around a little knob and make a few turns?  You need electricity to sharpen a pencil?  How lazy can you be?  I guess if you have to sharpen hundreds of pencils (SAT test administrator?) it would come in handy.  But otherwise, come on people.

We have been trying to weed through all of the random crap in our basement lately.  We have boxes with art supplies, kitchen supplies, office supplies, all of which are half unpacked.  I keep wondering how one couple could have gathered so many damn writing utensils?  We have hundreds of pens and hundreds of pencils.  I kid you not.  I have to keep changing the system for how we will store them to accommodate more.  We have a whole bin of pencils on the kitchen counter, tucked behind the telephone.  My sharpener has been busy.

This doesn’t count, of course, the pencils that my daughter brings home.  Apparently someone at the National Education Association convention recently announced that all teachers will be condemned as half-ass slackers if they do not provide dozens of pencils for each pupil to bring home each month.  And the National Halloween Federation must have passed a ruling that since candy is bad for you, the safe and smart alternative is to hand out pencils.  As a parent this isn’t all that bad–hey, less candy to rot my kid’s teeth.  But if I were a kid I’d be pissed–A pencil?  Do that again next year and I’ll poke your eye out.

In summary:

  • I like to write with pencils
  • I have scores of pencils, some of which are older than Thriller
  • I like sharp pencils
  • Electric pencil sharpeners are for lazy people
  • I sharpen my pencils with a tool that is older than Michael Jackson himself
  • I support, although I do not necessarily agree with, the idea that pencils are better than candy, even if they are sharp
  • If you happen to need a pencil when you stop by, and I’m not home, you can find them behind the telephone
  • Satellite television is the biggest ripoff ever

OK that last one has nothing to do with pencils.  Got a problem with that?  Write me a letter.  In pencil.

Ready to Burst

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Heavenly Beverage

Heavenly Beverage

I drank a lot of coffee this morning.   I whipped up a cappuccino, since I had a little more time this morning than usual (plus it was 0 degrees while we waited for the bus to pick up my daughter; I was chilly).  Then I had another couple of cups of regular coffee.  I mean, it was there.  I didn’t want to waste it just because my wife only had one cup before she left.  That would be irresponsible of me in this bad economy.

Then I drank a bunch of water.  That is important.   Dehydration causes more headaches than stress.  That is a fact.  I want to be healthy, don’t I?  And after all that coffee, which is a diuretic, I had to hydrate.  So I chugged away.  Then I started meeting with students in back to back meetings.  Suddenly a couple of hours had passed.  And I needed to find one of those little rooms with the plumbing.

So I walked over to the faculty room.  I ran into a friend, we’ll call him Chris, who I hadn’t seen in a long time.  We caught up a little.  We chatted.  It was good to see him.  But I still needed that plumbing.  Finally I excused myself and took care of business.

I find myself in this situation more often than I would like.  But at least I have a place to go.  A friend of ours teaches kiteboarding.  She spends literally all day out on the frozen lake with visibility measured in miles.  It is great for business–everyone can see all those people having fun.  But she doesn’t drink coffee.   Or water.  Or anything.  Things are just easier that way.

I made it through the day, of course.  I will face many others like this one.  But what is one to do?  I want to drink coffee (warm, tasty, hearty, comforting), I need to drink water (hello, you can die without water) and I have to work.  I suppose if I were a lumberjack I might match all of these things a little better.  Or a park ranger in a remote place.  But no, I had to switch from outdoor education to indoor boy.

Such is the price of the professional.  I wonder if Chris ever has to deal with this?  I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.

Snowing Like Stink

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I would, of course, be in Milton all day.  Most of the schools in the state were closed but all of Chittenden County was open.  That made sense in the short run, since it was not even snowing when I left this morning.  But whenever I got the chance to peek out of one of the too-few windows at Milton High School, it was snowing.

By early afternoon it was snowing like stink.  Some schools that had not closed for the morning closed early.  That would have been smart.  Driving home was craziness.  Snow was falling hard, visibility was low, there were lots of cars on the road; it was a recipe for smashing.  I made it home, however, with nary a scratch.  I simply had a long drive.

Now, long after I am home, it is still snowing like stink.  Look:

Snowing Like Stink at Night

Snowing Like Stink at Night

The timing of this was all wrong.  Schools were open because it wasn’t snowing in the morning.  They can’t close around here because too many parents complain if they are closed.  But when it was time for buses to carry students home, the roads were about as dangerous as they can get.  Plus, it will likely peter out so we don’t get the bonus snow day tomorrow.

Not that I can afford a snow day.  That would mean more work to make up. But still, I frickin’ love snow days.  If I can swing it, I will take a couple of hours to go skiing tomorrow.  Or not.  But maybe.  We’ll see just how much of the stinky stuff we get.

What, No Snow Day?

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My wife is an educator and, come winter, is seriously crazy about following the weather for the purposes of discovering the perfect convergence of snow/sleet/ice/cold and a school day.  This ideal scenario means, of course, a snow day.  She only works part time so the quest to find this meeting of the weather and the educational system has even more significance than it would were she to work full time, as there are fewer days on which it might happen.

I have some of the same feelings, I admit.  A snow day makes me feel like a kid.  That feeling of another day in the old classroom, suddenly turned into a day romping through the drifts of white, now that’s something to celebrate.  Having my own children these days, I get to experience a little of that all over again.  Plus, I get to do some romping now and again myself.

My wife, however, gets way more excited than I do.  This is a reflection, perhaps, of my own surliness.  Or maybe I just have a little bit less hope, or I hate to get disappointed if it does not happen.  In any case, she keeps me up on the latest.

This morning had real potential to be a snow day.  It started snowing last night and was falling heavily this morning.  The forecast was somewhat squirrely, so it had been continually updated over the past week as a couple of systems converged on us.  As of last night, it looked good for some poor travel.  Poor travel conditions are the key element to the snow day.  School gets cancelled if it seems unsafe for buses to make their way along the slippery roads.

Not only the severity of a storm has to be right but the timing has to be right.  If the roads can get cleared in time, well, forget missing a day of school.  It was seriously a tough call for those school administrators I am sure.  I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes.  If you cancel school, some parent complains that it was fine and their little Einstein missed another day of fractions.  If you don’t cancel school, some parent complains that their kid had to risk his neck just for another day of fractions.  Not an easy business.

You might have guessed by now that we did not have a snow day today.  Frankly, that isn’t a terrible thing for me.  Making up a snow day is big fat hassle.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy it.  It just puts a thorn in my tender side.  My wife, as you can imagine, was not exactly thrilled about this.  She even got a tad grumpy, but don’t tell her I said so.  Every school in the state, except for a few here in Chittenden County, was closed.  Apparently, they like to play it safe, while here in Chittenden County feel the need to risk a bus full of children in a ditch to keep the moaners at bay.

Don’t get me wrong, we have some stellar bus drivers around these parts, and I would trust them to make safety a priority.  It’s just that, couldn’t we have a snow day?  That would be so much more fun.  My wife certainly thinks so.  I am not home at the moment and I need to travel to get there.  It is snowing, ice covers the car.  It is slick as a booger rag.  But even if it were 6:00 am, I am sure schools around here would still be open.  Too many little Einsteins to educate.

Snow Day Tomorrow?

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I have been watching the weather closely today.  Supposedly we are getting a big storm.  It will start snowing some time tonight.  It was forecast to have started snowing by 4:00.  Didn’t happen.  Now the National Weather Service says it will start by 7:00.  That is right about now.  All the predictions say we are looking at half a foot of snow.  I hope so.

Problem is, I am scheduled to work at a high school tomorrow.  If we get a snow day, or even a delay, I need to reschedule.  That won’t be simple.  Every day the rest of this month is booked for me.  So I have the classic dilemma.  On one hand, lots of snow means poor driving which means (potentially) no school tomorrow which, as noted, will be a pain the snowplow.  On the other hand, it could be a snow day.  I mean, no school.  How great is that?

OK, the down side of the snow day thing and the excitement of no school is that I still have to work.  I have plenty to do and I will need to do it, even if I take a break to sled with the children for a bit.  But still, no school.  Sleeping in a little.  Making a snowman.  Hot chocolate after getting cold and frosty.  That is plain old good stuff.

I look forward to waking up and seeing what we’ve got.  I will be checking my school’s web site first thing.  My curiosity will keep me from sleeping in after all.  I’ll crank up the fire and sip an espresso drink and get down to work while my wife takes the children outside.  Or, if the storm fizzles, I will head to school.  I suppose that wouldn’t be so bad.

But we might have a snow day.  Yeah baby.