idontbelieveingrammar

I love summer. I love the smell of chlorine on my kids skin and sunscreen and an excuse to eat ice cream every single day. Not setting the alarm and no nagging papers that I should be grading. Time to actually eat breakfast. To stay up late. Time to put away the laundry and be completely caught up on my TiVo daily. Going out on a weeknight. I even like all the sweating. Summer is my season. The summer before last was pretty epic (and I know I am too old to use that word and be taken seriously). But, really it was uh-mazing. I spent a week in the mountains, a week in Vancouver and pretty much the rest of the time at the pool and the lake. It left a lot to live up to. I pushed through a long Spring and an exhausting school year just trying to make it. To summer. I had high hopes for cleaning out my house. Room by room. All the lessons I would plan. All the friends I would see and all the adventures my family would have. And it was a big fa...

I was waiting on a short flight to Lubbock, And there were some kind of maintenance problems and the flight was delayed. These flights to a place where the flight attendants usually don’t even pronounce properly Are small. Tiny. Puddle Jumper flights where there is hardly even time for drink service. Loud prop planes that make me a little bit nervous. So the crowd waiting it out, in the sub-terminal wasn’t that big either. Many of them started to chat and complain because it was before the time of iphones. I was sitting away from the group. Mostly immersed in a book and partly people watching. And I heard one of the women from the group awkwardly say she needed to get back today. Soon. Her father had passed away and she was anxious to be with her family. The group awkwardly tried to comfort this stranger, but mostly she sat in silence. After a long delay, the finally let us board the plane. again it was tiny, with 2 on one side of the aisle and a single on the other. I was hoping for a...

Lately I’ve had some hard days. I’ve written about some of it (see last post), other things I’ve left out. Some of my friends keep asking if I’m ok. And I’m really not. But I don’t quite have time to let myself not be. And I hesitate to say that I’m not. Because none of it is really my grief. It is all secondhand. Losing a student is tough. But it is not like losing a son or a brother or a best friend. Another friend is in the hospital. She lost a son in August and is pregnant again with some serious complications. 20 weeks along with a little girl named Piper. And yesterday, after my day job. I had a play date and got to see a friend of my own that I have missed. I made dinner for a neighbor who had surgery. I stopped by the funeral home to give a girl a hug who just lost her twin. A girl who happened to be Owen’s first baby sitter. Who called from her cell phone in the middle of MY class to find out if my baby was a boy or a girl while I was getting a sonogram. And I’m not even sure ...

Today I am supposed to be doing my last installment in five for ten and write about "yes". And this is not at all the post I intended. But life sometimes doesn't take the turns we want it to. And yesterday a teacher friend of mine called and told me about a memorial service for one of my former studetns and asked if maybe I would consider saying something. And keep in mind, that as a teacher, I pretty much speak to groups of people all day for a living. But. If I have to say something serious and heartfealt, even to an audience of one, I usually get all mumbly and stare at my shoes and forget what I was going to say. Even though I love this kid....and will miss him terribly I have a hard time imaging myslef on stage talking to an auditorium filled with grief stricken friends and family. I texted another friend about my reservations. And she knows all too well my mumbly shoe staring state. And she replied, "Did you say yes?" Did which I typed back. "of cour...