Not All Who Wander Are Lost

So many days of full steam ahead, though it started a bit oddly when I got pulled from the classroom after the first fifteen minutes of class Tuesday to go off and grade 7th grade standardized essay tests, which I secretly enjoy, because it's so often hilarious. Didn't miss much back at school -- it was to have been my slow day this week. Ah, well -- my students seemed to do okay researching their "moment in computer history" without me there to constantly derail them with tangential trivia.

Yesterday at work we did a dry run of our emergency lockdown procedures. The cops brought the dogs in to check lockers while we huddled on our classroom floors in groups of twentyfive, behind closed curtains, locked doors, silent, in darkness. Twenty minutes never passed so slowly. But it's better to be sure, I guess.

Back to normality today, or what passes for ritual in the specialist's everchanging world. The lab's still busy, what with both 8th and 7th grade science projects in the last throes of completion, and my own students are mid-research, but while they cut and paste their pix from google I've got enough time for overdue paperwork. In the end, I fill up an hour's worth of tweenminutes with a hundred emails, a rewrite of the old and out-of-date citation standards for the school, a draft list of school technology project needs for the principal.

All the stuff once pending, now finally out of the way.

Back home the leaves have turned our lawn a bright yellow orange. The driveway is wet from the rain, slick with rotting, fallen foliage, and it takes two tries to get the old couchmobile up the turn. The kids have been home all day with mama, uncleaning in her wake, and it's good to bring some energy home.

Some, anyway. I still fall asleep on the couch before supper.

It's darker now when I rise, as if that were possible; dark when, dressed and showered but as yet unbrushed, I tread lightly upstairs to kiss the girls goodbye; dark, still, when I check my pockets, gather up the laptop, the third cup of coffee, the keys, head out the door. The garage door rises at the push of a sunvisor button to reveal the faint deepsea blue of a wakening morning, and I am off to another day.

The weatherman predicts a cold night, but it's still damp and warm outside, the humid air holding back the first true frost. Who knows how close we are to the edge? Let us celebrate the autumn while we may, for snow is coming.