Time to Wrap Things Up

This monstrosity began as an assignment for my alternative certification program. It became a sort of obsession for a while, a place where I could explain and think at greater length than in a Facebook post. It was even a place to vent, although the warnings of friends and family convinced me to delete a few of my more caustic comments. It was even a place to tell the occasional long story, and a few people seemed to enjoy those.

As time went by, I don't know if I had less to say, or whether I figured I had already said what I was thinking before. Many experiences were later versions of the same thing that I had written about previously. And a lot of the things that were central to my daily experience were not things that I felt it proper to write about here.  The number of posts declined in response. By the time that the baby was born, I just had gotten out of the habit.

At this point, it is hard to know what to say anymore. We have the same events yearly. We have the same test-driven obsession that has apparently permeated education. More of our time is spent preparing for, administering, and "interpreting" bubble-based tests. Life outside of work centers on Alice, and time spent with her diminishes our time spent on school-related activities in the evening and on the weekends. There are social activities that we pass up because we don't have the time with a toddler, and there are ones to which we are simply not invited.

We have become kind of isolated on staff here. Our neighbors, and friends, across the hall decided that they needed a change of scenery and left at the end of last year for Bethel. We have seen them from time to time when we get up there, but they have not been able to make it down here, because of their schedule. Our new neighbor is great, but we do miss our friends. We have little dinners with our neighbor and our 5th grade teacher occasionally, but the rest of the staff seems to cluster in a group from which we are excluded. It's kind of childish and annoying, and I hate to give it a lot of thought.

But now, our lives are about to change dramatically. Some friends of mine own a law firm in Cadillac, MI, our old home town. They needed some help, and one thing led to another. I will be starting a new job around the first of June. I am going back to practicing law. I had not considered it, and was sure for a long time that I would never go back. I figured that I would retire from this job. Every year, I would grumble about renewing my lawyer license back in Michigan, and swear that this was the last year for that. I guess I was wrong...

My wife is going to take the next year, and stay home with our daughter. There is some loose talk about another child. She is going to finish working on her Master's degree in Special Education. This means some evening classes that will go on until nearly midnight in the Eastern Time Zone. But it will also mean that Alice can be a Shrimp for swim lessons at the YMCA, and that she can go to the library and go for bike rides in the trailer behind Mommy and Daddy. There will be a lot more activities available to her there. Having a child radically changed our outlook on things.

It took us literally weeks to make the decision. We agonized about it to the extent that we finally agreed to just stop talking about it for a week. After we decided, we hesitated before we told people at work and our students. We hesitated about turning in our resignations from the district. We waited to post it on Facebook. We thought about changing our minds afterward. It has just been a hard process.

But it is time now to quit temporizing. Six weeks from today, we will leave the Delta. Six weeks from tomorrow, we begin to construct our new lives in Cadillac. We have an apartment rented for the next year, which should give us time to make more permanent decisions about long-term housing. We will need furniture, which will keep us busy during that week of Memorial Day. Our car is apparently going to be driven from Alabama to Chicago, so we will be able to take it north after we arrive. Logistics will be a challenge, but they appear to be working out so far.

Until then, we are about the business of preparing to either ship or sell our possessions here. I predict a couple of yard-sale type events. We sold our snow machine yesterday, and we are working on getting the car sold. That may prove to be more challenging.

More on all of this to come. I have come back to this blog to begin to wrap it up. There had been something around 946 entries on it when I logged on to do this one. My plan is to get the number up to an even thousand and call it good. We have six weeks to go, and there will likely be one or two things to write about between now and then. We will see how it goes...

The Long Run...

Our trip back to the Lower 48 was pretty uneventful, once it got going. We stayed in hotels, played in the pool with the baby, and generally relaxed and had a good time. I got to meet one of my wife's high school classmates in Seattle, and we hung out with him and his family. I got reminded of how nice it is to fly first class. We had it for each leg of the flight. Free drinks, real china and flatware...such luxury.

Alice did very well with the travel, for the most part. She does not, however, like to be in a car seat. She made these feelings especially evident on the ride from Atlanta to my in-laws' house in Jacksonvlle, Alabama. Much crying and fussing. Of course, she had not been confined like that in over four months. Village life can do that to you.

We actually arrived in Alabama on the evening of Christmas Day, two days late, but happy to be in one place for a little while. We opened presents, had yummy food, and drank a few toasts. Ah, civilization...

There and Back Again

I think it was actually the original working title for The Hobbit, or something like that. We did see the latest installment of that series over the holidays. It was fun to watch, which is not a horrible recommendation these days.

We have been back since January 14. Our trips were long and eventful. On the way out, we had our originating flight from Bethel canceled because of inoperative runway lights. We had an idea that it might happen, because it had happened on the two previous evenings. We decided to go to Bethel anyway, reasoning that any rescheduled flight might be early in the morning, and we didn't want the aggravation of trying to fly across the river in time for that. The river never did freeze up well enough for us to drive.

We had gone to the terminal and checked in all of our stuff. We left to get some dinner. As we returned, I could hear the cancellation announcement coming over the loudspeaker outside of the terminal. Damn.

My wife went inside and got on the phone immediately with Alaska Airlines to make alternative plans, while I stayed in the car with a mercifully sleeping Alice. The process took her an hour. Alice continued to sleep in the car with me. She can be a very adaptive baby at times, and I am thankful for that.

The bad news: the cancellation had knocked all of our connections awry. We could either stay in Bethel for two days, and then fly three legs back to back, as was the original plan, or we could fly to Anchorage the next morning, overnight there, fly to Seattle, overnight there, and finally fly to Atlanta on Christmas day. We chose the latter alternative. We decided to make a mini-vacation out of the trip itself...

It's Done...

Well, we are, anyway. Another semester in the books. Some good, some bad, but a relief to be done, if only for a short while. The period from August to December always feels longer, and more of an endurance race than the second semester. I suspect that there are all kinds of reasons why this is true, and I have thought about them over the past five school years, but I am not inclined to stir them that vigorously at this point. The fall semester is just harder. It is always nice to have it over with.

The weather has not been conducive to river freezing, at least not for automobile traffic, so our car remains in Bethel for now. I thought that we might drive out for vacation at one point, but people much smarter about this subject than I are keeping their vehicles off of the ice at this point. Good enough for me. Maybe we will drive back down after the holiday.

Many of the staff members have departed for their back home climes already. Because this is our home now, we will be in less of a hurry. Our reservations were originally for Friday, but they had to be rescheduled after a mixup involving the dogs. We now leave Sunday night, but we have the comfort of flying first class all the way from Anchorage to Atlanta. Nice. My in-laws will be there at the ATL with our new Chevy Traverse-the baby and dog toter. They live a couple of hours from the airport. We get to Atlanta at about 3:30 in the afternoon Monday. I hope that some of the fearsome Atlanta traffic will be somewhat reduced by the proximity of the Christmas holiday.

We are also planning a quick trip to Detroit after the first of the year in order to visit family in Michigan. As Alice continues to grow and do cute stuff, we felt increasingly guilty about the thought that the rest of her family would be left out. This helps to solve that a little.

There are still some details to be dealt with before we leave town. I am finishing grading, and my wife has been finishing up two weeks of lesson plans, so that she does not have to deal with them when she returns. I am not so ambitious at the moment, but I have about four hours or so tomorrow with Alice while she is over here watching some professional development videos. I will get my plans done for our return. I may get ambitious and do them for the following week as well.

For now, though, I am just going to relax and enjoy life at a calmer pace for a while...Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all...

Two Weeks Left...

I mentioned the speed of time in my last post. Nothing about that has changed. We finish the first semester two weeks from today. We will spend tomorrow afternoon making sure that our grades are reasonably current. There are only two more sets of lesson plans to prepare, and then it will be time to spend an extended break with family.

Our holiday breaks encompass both Christmases, Western and Russian Orthodox, and for that reason, it runs 3 1/2 weeks this year. Although we do not have the autumnal breaks or the spring break that many schools have, the extended Christmas break truly feels like a luxury.

We will be taking Alice to spend the time with her grandparents in Alabama. She also has cousins there now, and we anticipate a joyous reunion. I am hopeful that some of my family members will be able to make it down as well. We faced a difficult decision when it came to the geographical split in family groups. Because of the unpredictable weather at that time of the year, as well as the 1500-mile round trip involved, we concluded that Alabama in the winter and Michigan in the summer will have to be the practical solution for the forseeable future.

For my part, I am looking forward to sleeping in. It is possible that I will spend the first vacation day doing just that. Wait, I am the father of a nine-month old child. It isn't going to happen....oh, well, I can dream, can't I?

Sunday...

The sun came out this afternoon. We haven't had much of that lately. Yesterday, it rained horizontally and the wind blew all day long. This morning, it snowed. Now, the sun is streaming in the windows and shining off of the new snowpack.

Fall has been weird. By now, the river would ordinarily be frozen, maybe even enough to operate a snow machine on it. There would have been snow that had been on the ground long enough to get good and dirty. But the river is still open. I have seen some recent video that showed it in a slushee-like state, but I am sure that yesterday's hours of rainfall ended that. I saw a boat moving down the slough yesterday at a decent rate of speed. No suggestion that the captain was picking his way around ice floes.

The baby has discovered the delights of guacamole and even could be sighted sucking on a lime this afternoon. My wife is determined that we will not have a "kid's menu" kid. It looks as if I will have to compete for the guacamole with an 8-month-old from now on. There are worse fates, I suppose...

Week number thirteen begins tomorrow. Nothing real fancy this week. Maybe kickball in PE, but that's about it. Thanksgiving is a little over two weeks away, and then it is a fast downhill run to Christmas. I am amazed at how fast it seems to go each year. Each year seems to be faster. Before we know it, the years will fly by and Alice will be in pre-school. Okay, maybe I am getting a little carried away.

I think that we will skype with the kids back in Traverse City, and then I need to get up and do some vacuuming around here. Three dogs worth of hair to contend with. On to the holidays!

11 Weeks Down...

The mad rush is beginning to ease a little. Since the last post, we have had our Halloween carnival, and things will be relatively quiet now until I take high school kids over to Bethel for the district high school speech contest. That is always intense, but fun at the same time. I do not care all that much for the part that requires me to sleep on a classroom floor for two consecutive nights, but the event is generally entertaining, and I enjoy watching the kids rise to the occasion.

After that, we have Thanksgiving week, which features a big lunch for the community at which we serve. Of course, we also have a nice, long weekend. From there, it is a short rush to Christmas vacation and a long break in Alabama.

The kiddies are coming along reasonably well, although it seems that one of my seventh graders has broken his arm this afternoon. With any luck, it will be resolved simply. We shall see.

I have some kids in here enjoying some free time on their computers. Time to kick them out and go home and snuggle the baby. Night, all....