Miz S

Yesterday Morning.

I arrived at school at 6:45am. As I walked upstairs to my classroom, I saw...a bird. A common little house sparrow, flying around, looking desperate and panicky. He fluttered ahead of me down the hall, turned around and fluttered back, lit for a moment on a doorway, then disappeared down the stairwell.

Poor little thing. God knows how long he had been in there, probably since the evening before when it was hot and we had all the windows open. His sparrow wife must have been worried about him.

I know you birder-types disdain the ubiquitous house sparrow because you want to see Ivory-billed Woodpeckers or King Eiders or something, but I feel quite affectionate towards them. They are small and cheerful and content to nest in ridiculous places like gas station canopies. I love their busy squabbling at the bird feeder and the way they fluff themselves when it's cold. There's something to be said for being plain and sturdy and well-adapted.

But that's beside the point. There was a poor little bird trapped in my dark dungeon of a school, and it was up to ME to save him.

As you might imagine, I flapped my hands in despair. Then I calmed down and thought logically. I followed the bird around the school, down hallways and stairwells, shutting doors as I went. I finally got him sequestered in the main hallway. The building manager suggested that we get a trash can and try to trap him.

"That won't be necessary, dumbass," I said.

(Kidding. I SEE GOD IN EVERY ONE.)

I told him to open the outside door at one end of the hallway, while I opened the one at the opposite end. The little sparrow flew back and forth a few times, then suddenly figured it out and swooped out into the fresh air.

You can't imagine how elated I was.

@sanjaygupta hows it going down there in Mexico City?

What the &@#&$* is going on with my neck? What did I ever do to make it treat me this way? I am officially not speaking to my neck, the little fucker.

You Facebook hounds may have noticed that I was sick AND alone over the weekend and posted occasional weak cries for attention. Josh was camping with his boyfriends (Brokeback weekend, ha ha that never gets old). I spent the entire weekend sneezing, coughing, and sleeping. After a 3 hour nap that started at 10am, I managed to drag myself out of bed on Saturday to walk the dogs because they kept staring reproachfully at me. I am very sensitive to manipulation, y'know. I stumbled after them in the park, all light-headed and shit, and then went back home and slept for 4 more hours.  I practically had swine flu! But maybe not, because I was 95% okay by Monday morning.

Oh, and I had a blast at school today. If by "blast" we mean "blast furnace."

There are always a few days in the spring when we get some unusually hot days before the school building's HVAC system has switched over to AC.

Today was one of those days.

My windows face east and get full sun for the first half of the day, and I guess that's why we hit 96 degrees in the classroom by noon even though it was only 90 outside. I opened the windows, closed the blinds to keep the sun out and kept the lights off.

The children enjoyed the novelty of a dark-ish classroom for the first couple of hours, but it was  hard to keep them focused and on-task. And of course a wasp flew inside and the math lesson simply could not go on until I got a broom out of the closet and cleverly, very cleverly, got the wasp to light on the end of the bristles so it could be safely deposited outside the window.

I must say, I was quite pleased with myself. I did not think I was going to be able to catch that wasp without killing it. I have strict rules about never killing a pollinator unless it's absolutely necessary (words to live by, y'all), and I pride myself on setting a good example of kindness to small creatures, but DAMMIT I really wanted my kids to identify attributes of solid and plane shapes and I needed their attention. So that wasp is lucky he cooperated with me. 

One of my colleagues went out at lunch time to buy popsicles to give the kids when they came in from recess. Somehow we all made it through the day, but sweet Jesus my head was pounding when I walked out the door at 3:15.Normally I stay for an hour or two but that was some crazy heat and I am a very delicate flower which I'm sure we have been over before. 

I am so out of practice for writing a post, you won't even believe how long this took me.

Hey, I'll try not to be such a stranger.

Chez Nous, Chez Nous, Jiggety Jog.

It's rather satisfying to come home to Pushkin. He makes quite a production about how lonely he was and how glad he is to see me, and how I must never leave home again. This, despite the fact that he had company every day that we were gone (we did a house trade with a family in Atlanta--more on that later).

April and Rosie stayed at Grandma's house, and of course they wept with joy when we came to pick them up but they're DOGS. They are REQUIRED to make a fuss.

Did we have fun in Atlanta? Yes, we did. We did 3 tourist-y things:

• The Jimmy Carter Museum: Yawn. I wanted to be a grown-up and really get into the Jimmy Carter Museum, but it was hard.
• The World of Coca-Cola: Evidently it's a potential terror target because we had to open our bags and pass through a metal detector.
• Stone Mountain: That is one big fuckin' stone.

Stone Mountain was the most fun because it was a sunny, warm day (the only sunny, warm day), and we were outside hiking around, which is kind of our THING, y'know.

 
Stone Mountain is much stonier than it looks in this picture.


See?


This guy RAN up Stone Mountain and then turned around and RAN back down. We hate him sooooo much.

When we weren't doing tourist-y things we were hanging with my cool friend CIndy. Or eating. We ate a lot.

We did this cool house trade thing. Cindy organized it. Her teacher friend in Atlanta wanted to go to DC, and her teacher friend in DC wanted to go to Atlanta, and VOILA! I was a teeny bit worried before we arrived that it would turn out they lived in a mansion and would be disappointed by our modest cottage. Au contraire. (What IS it with me and the French, lately? I think I am covering up my nervousness about re-entering the blogging world by peppering my posts with French phrases. As if THAT will make me any friends.)

Their house was small and homey and filled with friendly pets, just like ours.

Josh and Fiona, relaxing after a hard day.


There's one thing that I must disclose, and I hope the good denizens of Atlanta will not take offense: I never had the feeling when I was there that it was a place I really, really loved and oh-boy-let's-move-here. The only real draw for me is Cindy. Maybe I just didn't see the right parts of Atlanta or something. I don't know. It didn't click for me.

We did the drive home in one day which is a long damn drive, but I'm so glad to be here in my own living room with my kitty and my dogs rather than a motel somewhere in North Carolina.

Hey, have a fun Easter all you damn Christians. (Ok FINE, I'm going to church, too. Shut up.)

Hi From Cold-Lanta.

That's Cindy and me in front of the World of Coca-Cola. My hair is an AWESOME color.

My poor blog. Abandoned. Cast aside in favor of naps and books and teacher work and watching movies with my husband. How does one write a post, exactly? I can hardly think how to formulate a sentence, then another, and then even another and have it all come together in some sort of cohesive paragraph.

I would love to tell you that over the course of recent weeks I learned how to knit a sweater or speak Spanish or build a stone wall in my garden--which are all on my to do list--but alas, I have no tangible achievements to report.

Josh and I are in Atlanta right now. My very good, funny, smart teacher friend Cindy lives here with her husband Tom. In 2 short weeks they are expecting the arrival of their first child, a girl. So naturally we thought it was a good idea to come down and visit and force Cindy to tramp all over Atlanta with us, wait in long lines at the World of Coca-Cola, etc. She is hugely pregnant, obv, and walks in that way that pregnant women do, balancing carefully on the balls of her feet and swaying slightly. When she sits down she rubs her belly gently with a secret smile on her face.

Does this make me happy? Oh God, yes. I love pregnant women and can barely stop myself from hugging her belly every 5 minutes. You know the film Children of Men? I adore that movie and I'm quite certain I could watch it many more times than the 3 times I have already watched it. I always cry at the end.

In my wildly over-active imagination, I am Theo to Cindy's Kee.

It has been unpleasantly chilly down here in Atlanta. In fact, there were snow flurries yesterday. Cindy tried to convince us that it was a pollen shower. Crazy pregnant lady! Pollen does not melt on the windshield!

Atlanta has some cool shops and restaurants. Cindy, who knows me so well, took me to one of the best children's bookstores I have ever seen. I can't wait to show my students the new books I procured for our classroom.

Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer, and Josh and I are going to go for a hike on Stone Mountain.

In other news, what the fuck is happening to the skin on my neck? I guess that's not news so much as it is an outraged question. It's all...wrinkled and shit. UGH. I am deleting that picture off of the "Atlanta Day 3" folder immédiatement.