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 |  Welcome to Whatsit's Wild World. |
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Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know. ~Dorothy Gilman The Tightrope Walker |
| Hurricane Isaac came to see us. I live 150 miles from the coast, so all it has done here is rain and blow. However, a lot of the area to the south of us has flooded. The closer you get to the coast, the worse it is. We do have a few people where I live with no power, but that's it. The administrators downtown at my job made the executive decision to close all the schools. I am disgusted. I know that the point was that they didn't know what would happen, but all it has done is rain and blow somewhat. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. Hopefully no ice and snow will show up, or we never will get out of school at the end of the year. |
| We have started school. The air is out in my room. There are several rooms that have no air. If you have never been to Mississippi in August, it is a million degrees. I have two doors in my room, which helps a little with circulation, but it's still hot. Interesting factoid about my job: The district I work for is well-known for blocking any and every website that might conceivably have anything that young eyes don't need to see, however miniscule. After four school years of having writing.com available, it was vaguely amusing to see that this year, all of a sudden, it is blocked. God forbid any schoolchildren should see any type of writing going on, right? I have started the year by reading The Three Little Pigs, among other things. One little boy wanted to know what The Big Bad Wolf's name was. I'm a big believer in honesty: I told him I had no idea, unless it was Mr. Wolf. He accepted that. I was glad he didn't go on to ask the names of the Three Little Pigs. Every school got new copiers. We got new copiers the first year I worked at this school, in 2008. I suppose copiers become elderly after four years. This one has already run out of toner. We can't print and we can't copy. Try running a classroom without being able to copy. On the upside, our principal is acting a little better. In four years, we had three principals. The first one retired after I had been there two years: she had been there twelve. Then we had one for one year. Then we got this one. It is her second year. I suppose she doesn't feel that she has to prove herself as much this year. She is well-known for doing things just to be principal-ish. No reason, you understand, except that she's the boss and she can. That may be slowing down this year, I hope. However, let's let the year progress a little before we pass judgement. |
| We are in New Orleans, at the Maison Dupuy hotel. It is super nice. My husband and kids are in the pool swimming. My mother and her boyfriend came too. The ARE in two different rooms. Heh heh. We went somewhere called The Gumbo Place for supper. Everybody had gumbo but me, even the kids. I think I have blogged before about my dislike of gumbo, due to the boiled okra in it. Okra was one of those things that, as a kid, I knew I didn't like without even tasting it. I had the Red Beans and Rice with Smoked Sausage and it was superb. We went to the Cafe du Monde afterward and had beignets, which were also superb. Every writer should people watch in the French Quarter. My mother brought her dog, Belle. In fact, we picked this hotel because it is the least expensive dog-friendly hotel in New Orleans. We left our two dogs at home. If we just had one perhaps she could have made the trip, but one of our dogs, Wimzy, is not a good car rider. You might as well put a bucking bronco in the car with you. Mama's dog is a pretty good car rider most of the time. One good thing about taking her to a hotel is that she never barks. We have never heard her bark, not one time. We were afraid Mama would try to bring her to the restaurant with us, but we managed to persuade Mama that she would go to sleep. Actually, she would probably do nothing of the kind. At home, she always sits and watches out the window for Mama. Anyway, that gave Belle something to be happy about when Mama walked back through the door. |
| I am at my mother's house, babysitting her dog. This dog is traumatized when she goes out the door, you understand. Actually, this dog does sit on her bed and watch out the window for Mama to drive back up. It kills me. Mama has gone out on a date. Hooray! She has been going out with this guy she knew when she was ten years old. Now both of their spouses have died and he lives in the next little town ten minutes away. My husband and I are slightly acquainted with his son, whose kids have played sports with our kids. They all seem to be nice enough. I'm glad she has found somebody her age to go out with. She swears she does not feel romantic about him, having known him when they were children, but we'll see. They went to Jerry's Fish House, which looks like an igloo. No lie! This could only be in Mississippi. I have included the link just so you can see it - the picture of the building is up at the top. http://jerryscatfishhouse.com/aboutus.htm |
| It's raining finally. It hasn't rained in several weeks and the ground is just as hard as concrete. All the grass and shrubbery is looking wilted. Actually, it isn't raining YET, but it's thundering and dropping one drop at a time. Hopefully it will pour down shortly. I went to the store a few minutes ago to pick up one of my husband's prescriptions and I saw that they were putting school supplies out. They had spiral notebooks for 17 cents, which I couldn't pass up. I bought twenty. They will be used up before it's over with. I may go get some more. The cashier told me that they wouldn't be there long. I have no doubt of that. Emily is at camp. No telling whether she is getting rained on or not. She took her cell phone, but she had to borrow her friend's phone to text me that she couldn't get a signal. I don't have any trouble believing that. I got away from AT&T because of the problem finding a signal. One of our church members is a pilot. He invited my husband and the other two children to go flying with him yesterday. They never had been up in a plane, so that was big doings. They flew for about thirty minutes. Emily will croak when she finds out that she missed it. I got up around 7:00 this morning, then got back in bed around 10:30 with my little dog and snuggled with her. I love summer! |
| I have done almost nothing of significance since I got of school at the end of May. For one thing, I came down with a sinus infection. I've still got a cough, but it acts like it's trying to go away. I did refold everything in my linen closet, which gave me the big head with myself. Everything in there had gotten into a big jumble, plus I had all of my grandmother's towels that my mother gave me in there. Getting a big project like that done always helps. Emily is getting ready to go to church camp. Our little redneck church is not going to camp - we don't have anybody who is willing to volunteer to work with the youth who will take them. She has two friends who invite her to events at their church. Both of them have active youth groups. One goes to the great big First Baptist up the road from us. She is going to camp with them in a couple of weeks. The other friend goes to a Church of Christ in the next community. That is who she is going with this week. Since we are Baptists, we are confident that she will not learn anything out of the way at that one. We aren't worried about the Church of Christ one either. One big difference in their denomination and ours is that they do not believe in using musical instruments in the church. I think we can live with that! My husband has been cleaning out our garage. I am thrilled with this. I may have said before that he is a pack rat. I am just the opposite - I am a tosser. One of the major mistakes that we made was putting a door on our garage. When we moved into this house, it didn't have one. My mother talked my grandmother into giving us the money to put one up. The garage is detached from the house and does have an unfinished look to it on the inside. On the outside it matches the house. At any rate, all the door did was inspire my husband to see what he could fit in there. Then when his dad passed away and hubby got all of his tools and other things, that just added to it. It had gotten so full you couldn't put a flea in there. He had a path you could walk through. He has a friend that has volunteered to come help him with that. It did my heart good to see all the trash they took to the road the last time they worked on it! My grandmother would have been 87 today. Happy birthday, Memaw! |
| We went to Clarke County today to see my grandmother's 90-year-old first cousin. She and her husband were married for 52 years: he died in 1995. She is the matriarch of our family now, the repository of the memories. We tried to go see my aunt, Pauline (who never wanted to be called Aunt Pauline, I have never known why) but she wasn't there. She is 80 years old and says that she spent so many years at home raising children, then helping with grandchildren, that she is entitled to some time away. She has lived in the same house her whole life: her grandfather built it. I never have been able to get the exact date it was built out of anybody. Her husband, Martin, was there. He was sitting on the back porch. That's some serious old-school country-people right there - just sitting on the back porch watching the grass grow. Nothing wrong with that! He's made it into his eighties for a reason. He is the opposite of Pauline. He spent his working years driving a truck for an oil company. I don't think he cares if he ever leaves home again or not. He never got a day off or took a day off that I know of. I asked him one time when I was a teenager if he got Christmas Day off. His response: "If it's not on Monday, I don't." We also stopped by the cemetery where my grandparents and various other relatives are buried. We pulled the flowers out that we had left last time and there were wasps in the vase. Anna Claire got stung. When we buried my grandmother there in January, the caretaker, a man my family had known for decades, called my mother and harassed her for some $300 fee that she had never heard of that was supposed to go to the upkeep of the cemetery. She is going to call him tomorrow and harass him for her $300 worth. |
| Today is my 6th Writing.com birthday. Happy Birthday to me! My husband knows a family whose kids were taken away due to the extreme uncleanliness of their house. The teenage boy got arrested at 3:00 in the morning - we don't know what for. When the police came to the house to inform the mother of his arrest and to let her know that he would be spending a few days in the detention center, they saw the house and took the two younger boys to foster care. They arrested the mother also for child neglect. My husband wants to take the kids in as foster children. I anticipate great anger when he realizes that I am serious when I say that I am not up to taking on two more kids in addition to my own three. |
| I'm not just retiring from the company, I'm also retiring from my stress, my commute, my alarm clock, and my iron. — Hartman Jule We had a retirement ceremony for three of our teachers this afternoon. These are the people who have it made. Who says that getting older is a problem? I can't wait to get old enough to be retired! One of the teachers was not present for the celebration because she is on a cruise. That's what I'm talking about. |
| Believing we can improve schooling with more tests is like believing you can make yourself grow taller by measuring your height. Robert Schaeffer of FairTest We have been doing Standardized Testing this week at my school. It is a big big deal. They always send somebody out from downtown to monitor. This year's monitor was rather apathetic. She mostly sat around looking like she wished she were anywhere else. Another thing about her was that every time I would run my mouth off (something I am noted for), she would laugh. It was rather refreshing from an administrator. Our district believes in testing. Their belief in testing is rather severe. We have bi-weekly tests by the teacher, and from the district we have mid-term tests, nine-weeks tests, semester tests, and the big end-of-the-year test, the MCT2, which is what we just finished. This amounts to district-level test around every three weeks, not counting the bi-weekly's by the teacher. Every time our principal or the district wants the teachers to do something that they don't really want to do, they have a strategy. In order to try to get us to have a good attitude, they will say "As long as it's for the children, let's do it." Is all this testing for the children? Of course not. There are four levels: Advanced, Proficient, Minimum and Basic. Less than ten percent usually get Advanced. If there are four levels, approximately 25% should be in each level, right? The children don't have time to absorb what they are being taught. Of course, I know that part of it is failure on the student's part, but the teachers hardly have time to cover one objective before they are required to test on it and move on to the next item. The ones who are confused will have to remain confused. This creates the "I don't care" attitude on the children's part. I'm not sure what the solution is, but more testing does not seem to be helping these children. |
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Well, it is the time of miracles I guess.