School started Monday. MONDAY. Good grief.
For years and years, we’ve attended professional development on Wednesday and Thursday, then the students show up on Friday. After an interminable homeroom, there’s a shortened schedule. This gives students an opportunity to sashay down the halls in their new frocks or funk, scope out the new kids, reunite with the old ones, and, oh, meet their teachers in all seven classes.
Just enough time in class for me to hand out my syllabus, give them their supply lists, and reassure them that not every rumor they’ve heard about me is true. They’ll have an opportunity to decide for themselves in the next few days or weeks or months.
Then, that weekend, parents and students would swarm the local WalMart, Target, and Office Depot casting shadows over anything related to school supplies.
Not this year.
I just finished day three, and I’m wondering why the calendar isn’t saying October…
But, in another surprising development:
Sunday night, the husband and I and our fun friends, Billy and Carrie, actually ventured out of our comfort zones. We went to the Cyndi Lauper concert at the House of Blues. On the night before the first official day of school. Yep. We did it.
But had I known that one STANDS UP for the ENTIRE CONCERT at the House of Blues, I probably would not have signed on to see Cyndi. This girl just wanted to have the kind of fun that didn’t involve tiptoeing to share five inches of a stair with another 4’11″ chick because inevitably every tall person in the place stood in front of us. It was as if the universe kept trying to achieve some vertical balance by planting these towering humans of every shape between us and the stage.
What follows is entirely random:
A nice surprise today to find my “How I Found My Agent” story featured on Chuck Sambuchino’s Guide to Literary Agents blog.
Alanis Morissette just announced that she and her husband, who goes by the name of Souleye (seriously) are going to have a baby. Is that ironic? No, Alanis, it’s not.
Oh, and a few more headlines from momlogic that I found riveting:
- kids in kindergarten who scored in the 60th percentile on standardized tests can expect to make more money than their peers at the age of 27
- and possibly an exception to the above, there’s an article that Justin Bieber’s mother has the 16-year-old on a “strict” allowance of $50 a day. Now, if he saves that $350, he’s rewarded with a few hundred extra dollars to buy something special.
- The average woman tries on 21,000 items of clothing during her lifetime, but buys only half of them. By my calculations, that’s about 111 pieces of clothes a year for a woman who lives to age 90. I have a lot of catching up to do.
Okay, to stay on my self-imposed schedule of dividing my at home time between school and writing, I have to wind down. So far, my class load is over 160 students. If they have two assignments a week, that’s 320 pieces to grade. If I spend three minutes (ha!) on each paper, I’ll need 16 hours to grade.
Is it June yet?
