Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Sorry I didn't write yesterday. Three in-house interviews bracketing this well-attended workshop for Vermont public school teachers on blogging in the K12 classroom kind of kicked my ass.

Had Michelle and Peter and their adorable one-year over for supper Thursday, and old students Molly and Ramon last night. Darcie remarked it was almost like we have an actual social life.

Fellow rightsized faculty peer Michelle still hasn't found work for next year, but Peter's music career keeps growing, and he's got several half-time offers to teach music in Vermont schools on his way towards full certification. They've got a sweet house up there, too. Looks like they'll survive.

Slept in today. By two o'clock I was finally house-crazy enough to demand an excursion, reason be damned. The main branch of the library closes at two, so we headed from there to the pet store for a new retractable leash (warning: amputation hazard) and a play sessions with the bunnies and rats. Spent a while in the fish room ogling tetras and mollies, since we've promised Willow a fish once we get a new house, but she seemed especially taken with the ferret.

A call to our local branch led us to a new library in Turner's Falls, where they just happened to be having a kid's fair. Free hot dogs and a bunch of new books and videos should keep us going for another week's worth of late nights on couch and porch. Topped ourselves off from there with bacon cheeseburgers at the Wagon Wheel Drive-in; headed home full and ready for the usual prolonged bedtime ritual: bath, stories, toothbrushing, song and snuggle. Darcie was watching X-Men 2 when I finally emerged from under the sleeping two year old; lucky the last half hour is the best of it.

Small pleasures: I can wake up fully caffeinated tomorrow. I'd been drinking Irish Breakfast tea for a few -- no small compromise for a 72-oz.-a-day man -- only to discover late this afternoon that Darcie bought some on Thursday when it ran out. Yes, I know, it was right there. But who looks for coffee if there isn't any? I bet if she drank the stuff, she'd have mentioned it.

And I'll need it. Maybe it was the books, or the weight of the Willow as we peered over the French King bridge, but my back's been spasming up and down for hours. After years of separation, pain from the bone spur stripping out my shoulder muscles and the back-to-leg sharpness of the herniated disk finally merged into one continuous pain, or so it feels.

Realized this evening that I haven't applied for a job in over a week. The school year ends in two. We've got to be out of the house in five. Wanderers, for sure. But where we're going, I cannot say.

It rained off and on all day: dark clouds in bands across the sky, alternating with sun.

I looked and looked for the rainbow, but it never came.

Comments:

Someday we'll fiiiind itttt....

The raaaainboooow connection....

here Josh, that's my request for tomorrow's show. I'll try to find a way to jerry rig this damned dial up connection to get your show

# posted by

Shaw Israel Izikson : 6:34 PM, May 22, 2005

Sure thing, Shaw ol' pal. You okay with the Sarah McLachlin version? Or I think I got a Dixie Chicks cover around here somewhere.

Other rainbow possibilities might include that great Negativland recording of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" by a two year old with hiccups. Or that other version of the same song in the similarly linguistically broken (but thousandfold more beautiful) medley by that long-diceased adipoise Hawai'ian that everyone hears on TV.

And I believe that would be "Jury Rig," you eggcorn coiner, you. :-)

/language policing

# posted by

boyhowdy : 11:50 PM, May 22, 2005