Sunday, April 3, 2011

Is Spring Break Over Yet?


I always tell my students, Please, please come back after spring break. It might be tempting, because of the glorious weather and the glimpse of freedom, to never come back. But do. Come back after spring break. And then, I did what I tell my students not to...I didn't come back after spring break. Not to class, I mean here. I didn't come back here after spring break. I got busy, I had fun doing other things, and I stopped writing. Now I'm back. But I had a great spring break :)

A lizard played an April Fools on our cat. Magpie has proven herself to be quite the criminal. She's brought several dead birds into the house through the dog door. A few more have been left by the door on the back porch. April 1st I heard her outside meowing to come in. I opened the door and she slipped through my legs into the house and I saw a poor little lizard, dead as a doornail on the patio. I love those little guys, so on the off chance it was still alive, I poked at it a few times to see if I could rouse it. Nope, dead as could be. I left it out there and scolded Miss Kitty. About an hour later I happened to glance out the window and I saw that lizard limping over to the side of the house. Holy Schmoly! The damn thing WAS alive. I kept the cat inside for another hour and by then the lizard was up and running. All fingers and toes unfurled and functioning. After making sure the lizard was gone, I let the cat out. That cat went right over to where she left that lizard. Gone! She looked all over the patio. It was pretty funny, seeing the cat looking perplexed. I imagined that lizard....yeah, you thought I was dead? You were going to come out and bat me around some more? April Fools cat!

Jay and I caught a Phoenix Suns game over spring break. We also saw K-State play an NCAA game in Tucson. We saw The Body exhibit at the Museum of Science. I cleaned my house and I put a bunch of stuff on ebay. I read a book during the middle of the day. See, I've never JUST taught school (aside from my oneyearofopus) and so usually I worked all through spring break. Spring break meant nothing except that I had to figure out where Jay was going to go while I worked my OTHER job. This year I got the week off and it was wonderful. Kind of makes me want to be a teacher :)

Ever heard of Bountiful Baskets? Google it. (I'd put up links but I am not skilled enough to do that while still being lazy) Fifteen bucks a week and I get tomatoes, apples, mangoes, carrots, asparagus, lettuce, onions, pineapple, etc. It's CRAZY. Two bushel baskets of food. So, I end up with food I don't usually buy and I have to figure out what to do with it. I made an apple pie. From scratch, baby. I slice mangoes up and eat them for breakfast. I made sweet potaoe mashed potatoes last night. Cheap AND tasty. Check out Bountiful Baskets.

Oh, and B fired a plethora of pots (actually vases, mugs, a VERY cool watering can, and some other beauties) at the NAU soda kiln this last week. It's such an amazing, yet time and energy consuming process, and still so worth it at the end. There are so many talented artists throwing clay here in Flagstaff, and then a few of them get together and load the kilns, fire for 5 days, and when they open the kiln, you just have no idea what happened in there. Did things explode? Did their glaze and the soda combine to create wild blues and reds and greens? Did the best favorite piece of all time crack apart like an egg?
The anticipation is big and yet one should never expect anything. Hope without attachment.

I am so ready for summer. This year the raised bed gardens are ready to plant, the patio is begging to be sat on with a beer, and the chickens are laying again. A month and a half of school left to teach......ahhhh.

As for spring break....I truly had several students in each class disappear. And they were so close.

1 comment:

B said...

That pie was AMAZING!