Certain parties who shall remain nameless, but who live in the North side of Richmond, have unfailingly reminded me that I do have a blog, and that I am supposed to be maintaining it. Oh, FINE. I have no excuse. I'm not really DOING anything right now, right?
Exactly. I'm not doing much of anything. Damnit, when you're a teacher, isn't that supposed to be one of the perks? A couple of months' worth of doing absolutely nothing?
I'm sort of doing something. I'm listening to Radio Dismuke, an online sort of thing that plays all of the '20s and '30s stuff I love. Tonight, they're evidently channeling my brainwaves, because they're playing loads of German stuff.
I'll just start with saying that this was, overall, a pretty damned good year. My kids were great. Annoying, occasionally, but that's the job of the teenager. After the horror that was last year at Parkville, my return to Parkville was the teacher equivalent of coming back stateside after a tour in the desert. I don't intend to demean our soldiers with that statement, of course--just that, Parkville was MY version of the worst that one could face on the job.
Then again: as the year faded, I fielded a couple of telephone calls from some of my old Parkville students. Take this, Evil Department Head Girl! These kids still felt that they had learned something from my class, had enjoyed it, and wanted me back. A couple of them wanted some advice on projects. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you Cecil County trash.
*bleep* Rant concluded.
This week, our first out o' skool, has been more productive than it is usually. I am reorganizing the china and silver. I am also reorganizing the kitchen--which has never been known for its organization, in any case.
I also have a leg up on my canning for the summer. Last week, we said goodbye to one of our Math teachers. Anne has been a great addition to Carver; she arrived during my unfortunate year away. She is brilliant AND is an excellent teacher--the two do not always go hand-in-hand. So, at the send-off party, we had watermelons--well, it IS summer! I snagged all of the rinds and have made watermelon rind pickle. I can't wait until the Hanover tomatoes come into season down home. I'll never forget the time that I hauled three big brown bags of them up to Baltimore on the train. The conductor gave me a right funny look until I explained that these were HANOVER tomatoes. He was surely a Richmonder, because he laughed and said "You sure need all those you can get!" (I was polite and handed over six of them.)
Tomorrow's missions: Mulch roses, finish papering trunk room, begin painting of outside trim. Oh, fart. I'd much rather catch the matinee at the Byrd!