On My Mind

• Coming up: report cards! Early in my career, educational trends had eliminated rigid scope and sequence-type curriculum, leaving a near vacuum. My resources were my own mind and the school library. I really struggled every quarter with "grade-levelness"- there were no guidelines for a new teacher, and no objective instruments to help me. Those days are gone. And, I might add, eduslators (I made that up. Clever, huh?) have as usual swung too far the other way. Achievement scores are starkly objective (although, to our credit, we have made provisions for Effort grades in every subject. A child can be "Unsatisfactory" with "Outstanding" effort. Or "Advanced" with "Minimal" effort.
• Book club! Again? We read Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Lyrical, funny, dreamy and prosaic. And, in my mind, about 75 pages too long.
• Flu shots. Available starting tomorrow. Is it worth waiting to find a clinic that is affiliated with my health care plan, or should I just pay out of pocket and get it over with? And, should I make an effort to get one for Rose? (Andy's status has never been in question; he has had one annually for as long as I can remember.)
• Pumpkin patch. We go to the same one every year, and every year they manage to have a litter of baby kitties. There is a straw bale maze and a cornfield maze, exotic poultry, sheep, antique tractors, gourds, tractor rides, sheaves of corn stalks, snapping blue sky and a little bite in the air. It is one of my favorite days every year, and the photo albums attest to it.
• My enormous stomach. My front view is not bad. It's the side view that appalls me. Something must be done. (I wonder what...?)
• Hoo!Hoo! a now-traditional trip to the mountains for a scrapbooking retreat with Madame Librarian. She has already begun planning ahead by getting some pix developed. I guess that should serve as a warning for me.
• The shade structure that drove our family mad during one particularly hot week this summer. What do we do with it in the winter? Take it down? Remove its cover?
• The raw, corrugated-with-old-adhesive kitchen backsplash which has been in its present state for FOUR YEARS. The elves haven't intervened.
• A bird walk that I haven't arranged or led, that I offered as a silent auction item last FEBRUARY. I need to contact those folks and get out!
• Soy silk paper. I made 3 sheets with my art club yesterday. It was very satisfying to start and finish something. The woman who taught us learned it on an internet art site that offers classes every week. I am going to check it out.
• myshape.com. See item above about my enormous stomach.