Randomday, and What I Haven't Been Blogging About

It's the midpoint of the school year.  Final exams are graded but not all given back to the students.  There are still stacks of worksheets to grade and a few extra credit points to assign, and the comments to write, and the report cards to finalize, and the 3rd quarter's syllabus to finalize, and the Latin Olympika Certamen tests to write, and ... and... and...

This will be my final year teaching at Cedar Tree.  I have known for a year or more now, and it is a good and necessary change even though I will miss my 16 years of teaching Latin to young minds. But somehow it has become That Thing That I'm Afraid to Blog About, and that has kept me from writing as much and as freely as I need to on this blog, for the last year. I have noticed a distinct lack of the spunky sense of fun that I think my blog should have, although the very few who do follow this blog have probably, at most, only thought, "hm, she's not blabbing as much anymore."  We all live in the world of our minds to some degree; I especially plead guilty to replaying and overthinking and overanalyzing every decision.  If you're wired this way, it helps tremendously to have some kind of creative outlet (knitting, quilting, writing) and a circle of supportive friends; so I will be unpacking my thoughts on the idea of not being a teacher anymore over the next months.  I don't require comments or feedback, although I'm by no means shutting them down. There's a lot I, personally, need to process and my personal blog is the most logical place to do it. Even there and presuming I share it to Facebook friends, I'm always fearful of negative feedback. But first, you know, I have to make the initial announcement.  So, yes.  I'm not going to be a Latin teacher after this year.

I get some people who ask "What will you do?"  These are the people who have no memory of me as anything other than a Latin teacher at my kids' school.  With the best of intentions, I'm sure, but this only has the effect of making me feel more typecast into a role somebody else wrote for me.  I have always enjoyed the Latin teacher identity, but I have 4 young adult (well, teenage at least) children, one of them with special needs, a 100-year-old house, and far too many hobbies and interests to keep up with on one blog. I have been teaching longer than any of my students have been alive.  I'm relatively sure I will find plenty to do.  Whether any of it will make money or not is quite another matter, but money has always been a secondary consideration for me.  Rather obviously.  

I could stick in the Latin field and be quite happy, doing things like creating this course on the Duolingo discussion forum.  I'm rather proud of it, even though it's not official and not finished yet.  I believe that some of my more conventional study guides and lesson plans would be useful if published.  Or I could devote myself to researching the legal and financial steps needed to prepare Tertia for life and work as an adult with Down syndrome.  I could take a few months and schedule all the medical appointments I've been putting off far too long, then another few months for that thorough housecleaning that has never happened.  I could write books, people! Or I could just make a lot of quilts and sweaters.  I used to be a community organizer... some people have found that leads to very prominent careers.  There are some who think that William Shakespeare, during his "lost years," was a teacher of Latin at a country grammar school.  He had a pretty good second act.

So, there are my ramblings for today.  It will be back to quilting and wooly endeavors and blabbing about literature, philosophy, family, politics and who knows what else after this, I sincerely hope.  

Latin Olympika

Last Saturday we hosted our first ever Latin Olympika at Cedar Tree.  It required a tremendous amount of organization and preparation... thankfully not mine.  Kathy H. built the structure of the program in a way we could use again in future years.  I came up with the Level 1 certamen and the individual subject tests... content work that I enjoy, but is fiddly and time-consuming.  I was so pleased that the event came off without major glitches and everyone seemed to have a fun time.

The spirit of competition was lively but friendly.  Especially with the light-up buzzers.

The weather was beautiful, which helps foster a happy day.

Cedar Tree teams won at both levels, but the three other schools made us work for it.  We used upper level students and a graduate to supply the Certamen proctors.  It is fun to read these competition questions!  And a good learning experience for the next generation of leaders.

Then yesterday, the 5th-8th graders took the National Latin Exam.  Now we wait for the results to be processed and returned to us.  Tomorrow is the school's spring program; next week we have parent-teacher conferences, and I have to prep students for the final exam the following week.  It's the time of year that exhausts teachers on every possible level.  Last year this time I was developing a terrible case of walking pneumonia... so far, it seems like just garden variety upper respiratory stuff this year for me, and I hope sincerely that it stays that way.  The students, of course, are going to be fine.  They're much more resilient and capable than their parents may think.

Looking forward to a bit of Spring break in a few more weeks.  Maybe I'll even blog about other things than school.  In the meantime, the plum tree is blossoming and looking beautiful.

Randomday with Assorted Holidays

Sinterklaas day: I found this completely delightful assortment of St. Nicholas songs, in Dutch, to celebrate with.  They bring back such fond memories of  my mother, who used to sing almost all of them.  My parents lived in the Netherlands for 4 years and I was born in year 3; a lot of these tunes are familiar from my very early childhood, when the language and culture must have still been fresh in her mind.

A difficult week at school, capped off by what I will probably remember as the St. Nicholas Day massacre, when I intercepted one of Those Notes, spiteful and immature, punctuated by more "lol"s than any decent writer could stand to see in a lifetime.  It was written on a bright neon pink 3x5 card that was supposed to be used for studying Latin grammar rules, but obviously the 4 joint authors and unindicted co-conspirators don't see much value in the study of Latin or have any respect for the teacher.  Funny how they think I won't notice something so bright, passed hand to hand during what's supposed to be quiet work time.  Not since the "pretend to shoot Mrs. Chapman when her back is turned" note years ago have I been as disgusted with a class.  They should get coal in their klompen. It's been 15 years of this, the long dark middle-school of the soul, and I'm teaching kids who weren't even born when I started.  And it's not really any easier.  I don't think the teachers who don't teach the most-hated subject can understand.  "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" is a tragic movie.  Peter O'Toole is brilliant in it but I can't bear to watch it anymore.

Oh well, on to Christmas.  I somehow lost my taste for ballet and so today instead of the Nutcracker I took the girls to see Journey Theater Arts' production of White Christmas.  We know several cast members and it was a lovely production, very professionally presented.  Quarta now wants to watch the movie version sometime soon.  I could do that, I suppose.  Right now, though, we're watching the live Peter Pan recording we started yesterday.  "How old is Wendy supposed to be?" asked Quarta.  "About as old as you, just about ready to become a young woman but still enjoying being a child," was my answer.  That makes one think.  Also today, we went shopping for some Christmas lights and Steve and Peter put them up on the front fence and the gable over the front door.  Sometime very soon I will need to clean the house and figure out how to organize the Christmas shopping.  And here's how you say "bah humbug" in Latin: "Phy! Fabulae!"

Easter:
I've been working through a translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History for the Latinstudy group, and we are stuck in the interminable debate over the correct observance of Easter.  That part, as Steve observes, is tedious to read in English.

I did not get any sewing done on the Grand Illusion mystery quilt today.  I did mix up a pflaumenkuchen to take to fellowship tomorrow.  Yesterday I taught Steve how to make fudge.  I hope to have a chance to do more domestic things like cooking, cleaning, shopping, and sewing soon.  I keep hoping!

School's Out!

Officially now for me as well, with grades turned in and inservice over.

Peter is in Washington, D.C. with the rest of the rising Senior class.

Taking in the monuments...

...maybe getting a little philosophical...

...and making the traditional stop at Five Guys.

Back on the home front, a few days ago Daniel bottled his plum wine.

Today he printed out labels and put them on the bottles, and turned the bottles on their sides for storing a little longer.  It supposedly needs the time to develop a bouquet.  I think it's pretty good from the sample I had before bottling, but I don't know much about wine.  It's pretty, though!

Tertia's last choir concert of middle school was tonight.  It was sweet to watch her.  She mimicked a bird in "The rhythm of life."  It's hard not to get rather emotional about it; choir has been central to her positive experience in middle school, and she's going on to a lot of unknowns next year.  She has a lot of friends -- real friends -- who are in the typical classes, and they support and obviously like her.  It's great that she had such a positive experience in middle school.

And Quarta took a Red Cross babysitting course on Saturday.  Now she's all set to join that competitive job market.

With school out for me, I hope to get back to blogging more.  I might even have pictures of quilts soon.

Field Day/ Happy Dance

At Cedar Tree, it was Field Day today.  Yesterday was graduation, with 6 seniors taking their place in the real world.

One last chance for handbells.

 Future babysitters, passing in the sunshine.

Team Tarantulas, planning their strategy.  They came in second.

There was even a beautiful quilt - although it's not mine, I had to take a picture of it.

Andrea, one of the Kindergarten moms, showing off the pieced strip on the backing.  Love it!  Maybe I'll have time to do some quilting this summer, after catching up on sleep.

And at Tertia's school, it was 5th grade welcome day.  The 8th grade girls dance class was a big part of the assembly.

 Each of the three groups was responsible for developing and choreographing its own routine.

 I am so proud of these girls for embracing my daughter's differences as something to be celebrated.

 Too blurry to tell much, but she does her part to hold up a team member.

 Precision timing and coordination.

And this was the end of the routine.  Pretty sweet!  Many thanks to Mrs. Ingalls for making her dance experience such a great and inclusive one.  Hard to believe she will be a high school student next fall!

Then the choir came in and sang "Let it Go" from Frozen.  Is it just me, or is that a fine song that has been a little ... overdone?  But I don't care, because school is over or nearly so, grading is finished, all but the data entry.  It's a lovely sunny day outside with a gentle breeze blowing.  It's past time to recover from a hard winter.

Randomday, with grading

At least someone is getting some relaxation during finals week.  If I could just train him to check vocab lists and verb conjugations...

All my final exams are graded now.  I gave them yesterday morning, and it's been about 9 solid hours of mind-numbingly tedious grading since then, I estimate.  I'm so grateful for the students who actually pay attention.  Their sentences, even if they make a few mistakes, are easy and quick to grade.  It's the ones who flounder, who write anything that seems close without trying to learn vocabulary at all (seemingly) who push me into despondency.  I have to write out the correct words, longhand, for every word, every phrase, every sentence they miss... so I'm basically taking the test myself for each one.  Do they realize how much personal attention they're getting?  No, they're in middle school.  Which is, essentially, the cognitive dissonance of my life.  By the time they snap out of the brain fog, they'll be breezing through high school Spanish and I'll be drilling the next set of awkward-age kids.  Ad infinitum, or until I can't do it anymore.

Tertia's school play, a new take on Snow White, was a lot of fun for her.  We went to Thursday's performance, and she gave her handful of lines very clearly, which was delightful to witness.  Today she had a cast party after the matinee performance, then swimming and a friend's birthday party.  She had pizza and cake two times.  The rest of the family enjoyed a cookout meal, grilled by Daniel, including extravagantly yummy salmon (what happens when I send Steve grocery shopping is he isn't paralyzed by the price of meat.  I'm still trying to follow my mom's old rule of thumb, nothing over $2 a pound.  Yeah, that doesn't work so well 30 years later).  I was just glad not to have to cook.

Daniel's allergies are really troubling him the last few days, especially as he has a job doing outside work now.  Hoping he is able to get them under control so he's not so miserable.

Recently read books: The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel.  If you have seen the movie, it is a bit of an eye-opener about how many liberties the movie took, and how much detail was left out.  It has the same theme, the task and difficulties of preserving civilization's great achievements, as How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill.  Just several centuries apart.  There is something appealing about the idea of being a scribe in a remote Irish monastery, especially if I could help produce something as beautiful as the Book of Kells.  I'm also reading The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly.  This last one makes for melancholy reading for a literature major.  An astounding number of ancient books have been lost to history.  It makes me wish for a time machine to go hunting for them.

Or maybe I should just get back to grading.

Getting Near the End

Peter came home from his first training weekend with the National Guard with this stylish haircut.  It accentuates the scars on his head from his adventurous childhood.  I took him to get his i.d. card made this week, which is not as flattering a picture as this one.  They told him not to smile, that the sergeants tease you mercilessly if you smile, with the end result being that his i.d. card is... not his best picture.  I prefer when he smiles, but maybe that's just me, and I have never tried to be a drill sergeant.  He also gave his Junior thesis presentation today, and is very glad to have that over with.  He did a fantastic job, on the theme of leadership, and did not look nervous at all.

Daniel is working this week at a temporary job that gives him some experience with public transportation into Portland.

Tertia is in the midst of practices for her school's production of Snow White, in which she will play the part of a maid at the castle.  We took her this week to visit her high school for next year, and she signed up for the bowling team and the color guard (Peter's reaction: "Does this mean I can't make fun of the color guard anymore?")  We'll see if she actually does all the activities she'd like to.  If I had my way, all my children would be recluses.  I am not so sold on the American minivan Mom role at the moment.

Quarta received a perfect score on the National Latin Exam Intro level this year, which comes with a letter of commendation for her from the organization.  I'm just a little bit proud of her for achieving this honor!

The school year is grinding us all down, not so slowly but very surely.  I am neck deep in grading the Dies Irae, part 2 of 3.  It is that quirky dark sense of humor that we Latin teachers have that makes me assign the 18 verses of the Dies Irae in the last quarter of the 7th grade year.  I have a class that appreciates such things this year, at least a little bit.  Dividing it into bite-size chunks helps them, but especially me, with the grading.  And here is a link to a fascinating bit of musical history regarding that medieval hymn.  I bet you will be surprised at all the places it shows up in modern movies.

Tomorrow I give my classes their pretest for the final exam: this is a quiz that contains two pages of information from the final exam, and if they get a B+ or better on that material, they do not have to take that portion of the test next week.  In 8th grade we finished our last required Caesar reading and we're trying to finish up the story of Odysseus.  In 7th grade history today we talked about the Fall of Rome.  I guess the end of the school year must be really close.  But all I can feel is utter exhaustion.

Magistra's Day Off

"All me life flashed before me eyes.  It was really borin'."

- Babs the knitting hen in Chicken Run

So what has Carpe Lanam been up to lately, since she clearly hasn't been blogging?  Not much that is blogworthy, that's for sure.  I've been busy, yes.  I've been trying to shake the cold that has been plaguing me since Christmas.  Now, with the Ides of March fast approaching, is the busiest time of year for Latin teachers.  I'm kind of at the eye of the hurricane today, since I had the day off.  This is because my classes are all taking the National Latin Exam today and, by the very specific rules, the Latin teachers can't be present for that.  I guess they're afraid we'd coach our kids or something.  It's a welcome break, particularly since last Saturday I spent the day ferrying kids to the Latin Olympika, yesterday I was at school all day for an inservice, and tomorrow I'll be ferrying kids to practice for the Spring program, and next week will be both parent-teacher conferences AND the pretest for the final, and the end of the 3rd quarter is just a week after that.

 This morning dawned sunny -- wow!  And Tertia is naturally sunny.  She dressed up because she was supposed to give a presentation about rainbows in science class.  I started to try to steer her towards more carefully coordinated clothing, but then I decided that her ragamuffin chic fashion sense is pretty okay and anyone who doesn't like it is the one with the problem.  She wanted to pose with the other flowers.  She can blend in with the bed of daffodils, right?

 And just then the bus came along and she was off.  We had the big meetings last week for her evaluation and IEP... I'm impressed by how much her teachers genuinely like her.  It makes it a little easier sending her off to school when I can't be there with her every day to watch over her.  High School next year, though.  That's gonna be hard.

 The violets have been pretty lately.  A few more days of this sun and I might be able to get rid of the sore throat/ cough thing.

 Daffodils.  That's what happening in our yard in March.  Lots and lots of daffodils.

Since there was no school for me this morning, I did my weekly grocery run early, when Winco is less crowded.  I had a couple of appointments already scheduled for the afternoon even before I knew I would have the day off.  I scrubbed a toilet and unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned Malvolio's fish tank for the first time in I'm embarrassed to say how long.  After a bit I will make Mongolian Beef for supper with this recipe I pinned, and then I need to take the girls to buy new shoes.

And - the knitting.  So yesterday I discovered a slight error in my math calculations for the yoke, picked back 1.5 rows and added two extra stitches on the section that will eventually become the sleeves.  I think I have a handle on it but I'm not completely sure even yet.  I need to lengthen the yoke by about an inch before I separate for the sleeves, and the speckled pattern has to be worked over a multiple of 6 + 1, and I am a better Latin teacher than a math teacher.  I'm craving an evening where I can just sit and knit, but that's not so very likely.  No progress on sewing or quilting this week at all.

Books in brief:

I've almost finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.  I like it but I'm not sure I like the heroine, Flavia de Luce, a rather horrible 11-year-old girl with a disturbing interest in deadly poisons.  I recently finished Branded: the Buying and Selling of Teenagers, by Alissa Quart, a dated (ten years in popu culture IS dated) bit of social criticism on the over-commercialization of American teenagers.  It was assigned reading for all teachers, and I suppose there is helpful information in it, but it annoyed me with its hand-wringing without any prescription to fix the problem.  And since I believe the author is secular, I felt that the only prescriptive advice she would have given in any case would be for government intervention.  It made me a bit more cynical as we began reading the now thoroughly dated (30 years) classic, Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman.  Can a classic be dated?  Well, it merits further discussion after I've made it through the whole thing, but I was annoyed at the outset by Postman's assertion that it is impossible to "do" political philosophy (or any other important work of the mind) on television.  Really?  I'm pretty sure that I've seen George Will, among others, "do" it many times, quite capably.  I'm working on an idea, something about reverse chronological snobbery and dystopian literature, as if somehow our era (or the 1980's, in this case) is the most at risk of cultural collapse of any era in human history.  But as I say, I should really bear with it through reading the whole book before I do a full book report.  This is just a teaser.  Speaking of cultural collapse, I am about halfway through Carthage MVST Be Destroyed, by Richard Miles, which provides a lot of insight into the decline and fall of a civilization that one of the 5th graders, bless his heart, guessed was located in Australia at the Latin Olympika.  Study of the ancient Carthaginian culture is very helpful to understanding ancient Rome and also the culture of ancient Near East in Bible times.  Africa, not Australia.

Yarn-Along and WIP Wednesday

Olympic knitting continues.  I am heading into the last two decreases of the neck for my Olympic knitting project, the yoke of a Drops cardigan, knit with my thrift store sweater yarn.  I'm liking the colors a lot and I think when the whole thing is finished it will be a sweater I will wear often.  Getting it finished will be the trick.

I'm reading, among other things, 7 Men by Eric Metaxas.  It is a selection of short biographies of, you guessed it, 7 men who positively changed the world, starting with George Washington.  The author has written full-length bios of Dietrich Bonhoffer and William Wilberforce, condensed versions of which are included here.  I also enjoyed reading about Jackie Robinson and Eric Liddell.  I'm recommending the book to Secundus, who is doing his junior thesis on the theme of leadership.  It's a good one, easy to read if you're busy but still quite well-written.

Not much progress in quilting at all... this is my mother-in-law's top that I pinned for her over the weekend. I like the scrappiness of it... she doesn't think there are any repeats in the fabrics. Celtic Solstice is still being worked on when I work on anything sewing-related.

 Quarta was assigned Filippo Brunelleschi as her Renaissance artist, and so here is her Sculpey/craft foam rendition of Il Duomo.

Today her class is having the Hobbit Feast that was postponed because of the snow two weeks ago.  We made pflaumenkuchen, which seems like something Hobbits would eat.  But they would probably call it plum cake.

Randomday with Angry birds

Halfway through the school year, and my ability to grade another page is absolutely shot.  No, seriously.  14 4-page finals in 6th grade, 18 5-pagers in 7th grade, 16 5-pagers in 8th grade.  I started getting bleary-eyed after the 7th grade, but I was able to hand them back Friday, the day after they were taken for the first two batches.  8th grade always has to wait.  What kills me is the full page of sentence translations.  All of Gaul is divided into three parts, of which the Belgians inhabit one, the Aquitanians inhabit the second, the Gauls inhabit the third.  NOT "is inhabited by the Belgians."  Active voice.  It's hard to be nice to anyone during finals and grading week.  Today was spent almost entirely grading the 16 -- no, 15, one girl was sick -- 6-page copies of the Isaiah 40 Vulgate worksheet.  My mental state could be best described as somewhere between "melted down" and "dead." Physical state is pretty much what it usually is after a grading marathon... headache, blurry vision, a column of fire from the base of my skull down to about mid-back, and really sore shoulders.  I have "Panis Angelicus (18 copies of 3 pages) to grade for 7th grade still, but it will be next week before that's done.

After supper Steve took us out to Cold Stone and I had the "Falling in Chocolate" with their new truffle flavor ice cream.  I am somewhat restored.  Steve and the girls are going to watch the Pandorica episodes of Dr. Who.  I'm probably going to skip out and have a hot bath and go to bed early.  Or not.

I downloaded the Angry Birds Rio app for my Kindle this morning and have been playing it somewhat obsessively since on my grading breaks.  It's either that or try to conquer the world in Civ 4, and my attention span is not that great.

Speaking of my Kindle, I am enjoying it a lot.  Besides Angry Birds (which I had always secretly wanted to play but wasn't willing to get a smart phone for), here are some of my favorite apps:

Olive Tree Bible software - you can download several different versions of the Bible (I have a Latin Vulgate and a Greek New Testament as well as KJV and ESV) and you can do a split screen in 2 different languages or versions to compare.  You can also load a chronological or other reading plan and check each day's assignment off when complete.

Duolingo - This is a free app for language learning, using similar methodology as the expensive Rosetta Stone.  I have been (obsessively) learning Italian this way, although knowing Latin is definitely a big boost.  It's addictive because it turns language lessons into a game -- you don't want to lose all your hearts! If you are so inclined you can link up to Facebook or other social sites and challenge your friends.   You can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or German so far.  And for free.  Occasionally there is an unreasonable expectation for knowing a word or usage that hasn't been introduced yet.  And as a devoted grammatical language teacher, I get frustrated sometimes that they don't just give you the rule so you can supply it.  But it's a pretty cool app nonetheless.

Cogs is a fun game that was one of the free apps of the day after Christmas.  You have to arrange gears and steam pipes to make little machines go.  It's simple enough for kids to want to play but complicated enough to keep adults engaged through a series of puzzles.

Eufloria is hard to explain.  You are supposed to plant trees on asteroids, harvest seedlings from them, and then use them to fight other seedlings from other asteroids.  But it's fun and addictive in a hypnotic, zen kind of way.

I check every day for what the free app of the day is and usually I don't like it enough to download it.  One of these days I'll do a bunch of mini book reviews from my Kindle reading.  But that's all for now.  I'm for a hot bath, a glass of wine, and an early bedtime.

WIP Wednesday; Yarn-Along

Wow, for a couple of weeks I haven't really had anything much going on in any of my hobbies, and now I've got stuff by the bucketload.  Feast or famine, I guess!

It's Roman Culture day in 7th grade, and we're talking about the role of women in Ancient Rome, so here is my spindle collection all ready to give the kids that want to a chance to try their hand at spinning.  All of them except the Kundert (2nd from right) were hand-made by me; the far right one is my iconic Ancient Roman spindle whorl, made of lead and purchased on Ebay, set on a dowel.  It doesn't actually spin very well, compared to the Tinkertoy ones.

If you are married to me or one of my sons, the next few pics contain potential spoilers.  On your own head be it; I'm far too tired to police these things.

Secundus' argyle.  I'm making very slow progress on these and they will not likely be done before Christmas.  But I did turn the heel of the first sock!  I consulted an old favorite book to remind me about how to turn the heel; it's crazy how I forget these things.  Also I did a review of How Civilizations Die yesterday, and I'm almost finished reading House of Hades, the latest in the Percy Jackson series.

I cut out 8 yards of fabric yesterday, and these will be for Christmas gifts.  I'm going to set up a production line and use black thread on all of them.  I've been meaning to do this for over a year.  It will feel good to use up so much fabric!

As many of you know, Bonnie Hunter's Celtic Solstice mystery is going on... here's the first clue, and I'm looking forward to the second coming out Friday. I'm making the smaller version, if 75" square can be considered "small."

 I'm also doing some cutting for what I hope will turn out to be another quilt-along, the one in the February issue of APQ magazine, for a low-volume Burgoyne Surrounded.  I find it oddly comforting to cut out fabrics for a scrappy quilt, and I'm slowly working on taming the mountain of scrap fabrics that has built up around my sewing area.

Since I haven't updated my design wall photo for awhile, I took this picture today.  Not much change, but the "nine" and "Nazgul" blocks have been added to my NAWWAL quilt and I made enough diamonds to complete one diamond of the scrappy String Star.  I'm going to think about the color progression this way and whether or not I want to change it.

Linking up to Yarn-Along and WIP Wednesday.  Go check out what others are doing!  Oh, and I just found out that next week is the famous giveaway day at Sew Mama Sew... get ready!

Veteran's Day, Old-School Style

Cedar Tree's 6th Grade class, AKA "Grammar 4" presents the adventures of Odysseus.

The Quick and the Undead

 Secundus has had a great season in Cross-Country.  For most of the season he has been running varsity.

 He's not at the top of the pack but he's solid.  After Tuesday's meet at Vancouver Lake Park, he was told he will get to go to Districts, as an alternate.

 It would embarrass him to tell him so, but he has beautiful form.  He ran the 5K in a personal best of 18:13.

It was a beautiful day for a sporting event at the park, too. The girls and I were able to go and watch for the first time this season.

Today's meet was an invitational and Secundus ran with the JV.  He placed second overall and got a medal!  Steve was able to be there and took this picture.  Secundus came home long enough to shower and change for the dance at Cedar Tree this evening.  It's got to be challenging running with the public high school while keeping up with the workload at Cedar Tree.  Hard to believe he will be a senior next year.  He's made good friends in both worlds.

 Speaking of otherworldly, it's that time of year once again, when Tertia's middle school dance class puts on the annual "Thriller" extravaganza.  Steve got to be the involved Dad again and went to her assembly (I was giving Latin quizzes).  It was great of him to take pictures for me.  I think it's great how Tertia sits with such good posture... that's her early physical therapy showing.

 I somehow missed the Michael Jackson craze in the '80's, growing up as a sheltered and geeky preacher's kid.  I think "Thriller" has something to do with zombies.

Cute zombies, who know how to accessorize.

Randomday, Random Book Review

Two weeks of the school year down.  I love teaching, but it is all-consuming and there seems to be no way for me to do it without family life suffering and risking depression and burnout.  And always there is the sheer physical and emotional exhaustion.  And I'm just a part-time teacher.  I wonder how the full-timers manage.  Please understand, I'm not complaining.  It's just a fact of life.  I often think of the final scene of Goodbye, Mr. Chips.  Life goes on, but it rarely ends well for the teacher.  I think it's no coincidence that the iconic teachers in the classical tradition have always been single, no children.  (Those nuns in the Catholic schools!)

There are new challenges every year.  This year, it's not having a Latin room and having to itinerate from class to class.  I have to prep all my materials in advance and stage my day with the tactical foresight of Julius Caesar besieging Alesia.  My classrooms are deep rather than broad, so the unforeseen consequence of that is that my handwriting on the board is not large enough for the kids in back to see.  I have to practice writing big.  And there are new students - one completely new to Latin in 8th grade, and others who have had it before but need to be worked in and have gaps made up.  I'm sure I'll manage.  I'm not so sure that all my students will love Latin and get awesome grades.  I'm not even sure all my own children will love and respect me.  Come to think of it, it would be kind of strange if I were sure.

There are things that are refreshingly the same every year.  Sixth grade students are always very literal.  Some of them are going through growth spurts, but I always find it a fun wake-up call that their minds still need to be babysat with the step-by step instructions that you would give to preschoolers, repeated frequently and with assurance that it is All Going To Be Okay.  Seventh grade students are in full-on puberty and even the sharpest of them may space out from time to time; but it is encouraging that, all hormones aside, they have brains that can and should be developed.  And I get to help with that.  I'm not nearly as willing to do the babysitting of literal brains at this age, though.  It's okay, because most of them come to realize they don't want it anymore anyway.  In 8th grade, it's obvious they don't want it.  They're fully in charge of their own study habits and it's a delicate balance how much I should repeat the kind of things that are necessary in 6th grade, but in 8th grade can become ad nauseam very quickly.  You can see those cute little 6th graders slipping away and being replaced by young adults, not quite but almost mature.  And then, faster than you'd think, they're on to 9th grade and I only see them in passing.

Quarta is a new 6th grader this year.  Tragically, her pet hamster Winky died this week.  Tertia is plugging away in 8th grade in her public school.  It's hard not being able to be very involved with her daily routine, but I do get to be with her at the beginning and end of it.  Secundus is in 11th grade, working very hard and running cross country.  His pickup truck is operational now!  He may start driving himself to school soon.  We think he may have broken his toe back in August when he ran into a metal pipe while playing frisbee at Family Camp.  It isn't moving right, but he did manage to run a marathon on it last weekend.  Apparently it's not hurting too much, but I need to take him in to have it x-rayed.  Daniel is loving life on the AEX hall at Grove City College.  The rest of us are missing him.

Not much in the way of knitting or quilting is getting done... a bit of mending and just enough knitting not to be at a total standstill.  I have been trying to trap fruit flies with vinegar traps, but the best way seems to be to leave the lid of the compost bucket ajar and then close it suddenly before taking them out.  Steve is happy today; he gets to play in the garden, harvest seeds and turn over compost.  I may make another batch of salsa, for the freezer this time, and some grape pie filling.  The squirrels are coming out in force: our yard is a major thoroughfare for them and we have several nests high up in some of our trees.  They are fun to watch.

Yesterday evening Quarta watched a particularly creepy episode of Dr. Who with us (with the Ood, a black hole, and Satan trying to break out of the pit, part 1).  Tertia was whimpering in her room, as far away from the TV as possible because she thought it had something to do with mummies, which is her current biggest fear... we are not allowed to say the "m-word."  So to recover, we played a round of Apples to Apples.  I had a moment of brilliance when I played "pigs" to match "radiant" -- remember Charlotte's Web? Literary allusions for the win!  But I didn't win.  Tertia had a lengthy fit of the giggles when Steve played "underwear" to match "cute."  It was pretty priceless, actually.  Secundus was at a reunion party for his kindergarten class, where they played Apples to Apples, too.

And as promised, a random (short) book review:

Indiscretions of Archie by P.G. Wodehouse was written early in Wodehouse's illustrious career, and it may not be the best introduction to the master, but it's certainly a fun stand-alone tale.  In it, Wodehouse honed his stock characters; irascible business tycoons, subtly underhanded butlers, and a vast array of feckless but amiable young men from all walks of life and both sides of the Atlantic.  One of them is the titular Archie, who, after de-enlisting from service in WWI, wanders off from Britain to America to seek his fortune.  He immediately wins the enmity of hotel magnate Daniel Brewster.  Then, a few weeks later, he shows up at Brewster's hotel again, newly married to Lucille, Brewster's only daughter.  The rest of the book is an episodic series of attempts to rectify matters, written as only Wodehouse could.

Back-to-School quotes

Tertia's first day of public school 8th grade was yesterday.  I am grateful my happiest child is the one I'm sending off to the educational situation where I have the least involvement and familiarity with it; I still worry about her, but she will be all right.  It's her gift.  She also has a very cheerful, efficient and punctual bus driver, same as last year.  Any other mom could probably confirm how beneficial that is!

As for me, I've spent the last two days in mandatory inservice.  Secundus and Quarta will join me Monday for the first day of school, at which we are expected to hit the ground running.  I was just up at the campus this morning, and I do have a desk now.  The paint is drying in the room where it will be.  I have three classrooms to set up as much Latin information as I am able to fit onto 1-2 bulletin boards and a bit of shelf space.  I have an entire year's worth of lesson plans canned from last year; I will need to manually change the dates and insert any different information -- that massive bit of text editing will take anywhere from an hour to 3 days, depending on variables I haven't calculated yet.  My biggest bit of copying is done (I added a ream of paper twice).  I would kind of like to know the names of the kids I am teaching before I walk into class Monday, but it will probably be okay.  I'm not quite so sure about the carpool.  Back to school will work because... there is no other option.  The moms and the teachers of the world need to make it work.

So without further ado, I will close with a series of quotes (from the cryptograms.org website I've been playing obsessively lately) that for some reason made me think of the back to school cycle.

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"The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin."
— Heinrich Heine

"Grade school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life."

— John Rogers

"Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them."

— Paul Hawken

"The sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes the sooner you will be able to correct them."

— Kimon Nicolaides

"I never guess. It is a shocking habit -- destructive to the logical faculty. "

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others. "

— Confucius

The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid."

— Lady Bird Johnson

"A human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world."

— Dorothy L. Sayers

"Life is mostly froth and bubble. Two things stand like stone - Kindness in another's trouble, Courage in your own."

— Adam L. Gordon

"When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over. "

— George Macdonald

Randomday

I had a cavity filled this last week.  Turns out, there apparently are (were) still a few spaces in my teeth without fillings.  I sure hope they develop the ability to use stem cells to clone new teeth before I get much older, because I don't think my teeth are going to make it.  Ever since getting the filling, my bite has been off.  It was on the far left lower molar, and now those two far left teeth meet before any of my other teeth.  Of course, it doesn't help that I don't have a corresponding far right lower molar.  That's the one I want to see about getting an implant for someday.  Of course, I'll never be able to afford that.  I might be able to work up the courage to call the dentist and ask about having the new filling filed down.  But not very likely.  Easier to just learn to live with the new normal, right?

I am in complete and abject denial about the looming start of school.  Even though I took Tertia and Quarta out and spent $200 or so today on school supplies, 3 pairs of shoes, 2 backpacks, 2 lunchboxes and a water bottle.  And I took Quarta to Dennis Uniform and spent over $200 on clothes in her new size and a few more things for Secundus.  They can start school.  Well, assuming I'm able to line up a carpool for them.  But I refuse to think about teaching until I absolutely have to.  And that means that my desk has to be set up first.  Last time I checked, I didn't have a desk.  And I'll be dodging the raindrops and carting stuff around to 3 different classrooms when school does start, which I personally don't think will be very conducive to me staying organized.  And if I'm not organized... well, to say I'm depressed about the oncoming year, my 14th of teaching, is putting it generously.  And there's inservice to be gotten through next week.  I just want to cry whenever I think about it, so I try not to.

Secundus' new truck won't start.  They got it home originally by means of a jump start, and it started again without one after a brief fuel stop on the way.  He replaced the battery himself, and it won't start at all now.  Best guess (because it's totally out of Steve's and my familiarity level) is that there's a problem with the starter.  And probably a leak in the fuel line.  He remains undaunted and is determined to learn what he needs to know to fix it himself, with the help of some friends who are good with cars.  Bear in mind, he did get it for fairly cheap (still about 1 1/2 months' salary for me).  But somehow I don't think he will be driving himself to school and cross-country practice for at least a few weeks.  Which means that I will have to think about how to get him and Quarta to school, since I have to stay home until Tertia gets on her bus and I can't do it.  Sigh.

My computer is not working right.  Steve says it needs a full lobotomy and a new battery.  Another thing I can't fix.

I used to be able to embed pins from Pinterest on my blog here, but they have changed the code for the way to do that and I can't figure out how to make it work at all.  I was going to try to do a book review.  Another thing I can't fix... if it can't be done with a needle and thread or a cogently written paragraph, I'm hopeless.

I'd like to be able to put one lighthearted, happy thought on the blog today, but I can't seem to muster it.  Sorry.  I won't share to Facebook for fear of the happy police.  Usually I'm cheerful enough to avoid them, but they do stalk me occasionally.  What is the procedure for dealing with "friends" who complain about you to your boss rather than talking to you personally?  Should I unfriend them?  Another problem I can't solve, apparently.

"Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such." 

 Samuel Butler

Field Day

Graduation was last night.  It was nice, in contrast with last year, just to go and enjoy.  Steve and Daniel met us at the ceremony - they had gone to Montana (Bozeman) for Steve's work conference.  Daniel is taking an online class that will fulfill a core curriculum requirement.  Cedar Tree has four fine new graduates and many reasons to celebrate.

Secundus was at a sleepover with friends last night.  "Did you hear that, guys? Mrs. Brabec's house got t.p.'d last night! Who would do such a thing?!" ... was his reaction when I asked him if he knew anything about that.  He settled into the Field Day activities as captain of the Cuckoo Bird team.

First came the talent show with events from the sublimely graceful...

...to the musical (there were two versions of Star Wars)...

...and this act made Mrs. Chapman covetous of hammered dulcimer lessons...

...to the silly, "trained gorilla"...

...to the silly, "Arnold Schwarzenegger's nursery rhymes"...

...to the silly act by Quarta and Minuet...

...who have also been ringing a lot of bells together lately...

Team Ostrich reciting its chant.

I spent most of the morning finishing up my grading in my deserted classroom.  Two little boys came in repeatedly to borrow the classroom monsters, Gaius and Brutus, and the snakes, to reenact little-boy style battles and silliness with them.  I followed them to Mrs. Brabec's classroom to take this picture.

Always in motion are little boys.

Gaius and Brutus are safely back on the classroom shelf, along with the snakes.  I asked the little boys if they wanted the girl monsters (Rubella and Prunella) and they looked at me as if I were crazy. 

I pushed through the grading and for perhaps the first time in 13 years, I emailed my grades in on field day.