No, I didn't die!

Okay, so it's been months since I posted anything. I've been busy! And not very knitting inspired. Between running a PTA, working on my MS in Reading and Literacy, and teaching 37 ten-year-olds, I just sort of stumbled through the rest of my overly full days. This summer I just stopped doing anything. No PTA, no teaching, no classes for my Masters. By the time I'd said goodbye to my students last June, I was exhausted. I was literally too exhausted to even read the first week I was off. (This from a woman so totally addicted to reading that she panics when she's down to the next-to-last new book on hand.) I slept, I watched TV (not much, since my attention span was competing with a gnat's for last place), and I did nothing. I don't mean I sat around in a lotus position mediating, but I didn't do anything that required a lot of energy or any brain involvement. It was lovely.

When I'd recovered sufficiently to at least read, I ordered up a lot of books on teaching reading, and teaching in general, (and a few good mysteries) and read those. That took up July, and a bit of August. Then, once August was here, I began thinking of how I was going to change my teaching this year, what I was going to continue doing, and began organizing lesson plans, activities, etc., for my soon-to-be new students. And then, of course, I got back into my classroom to begin getting it ready for those students. This involves some heavy labor, since in my district, they pretend to have really cleaned your room, and think they can fool us into believing it by moving all the filing cabinets, bookshelves, desks, chairs, and whatever else is in the room into the center of the room and leaving it all there. Naturally, there's no one to help move it all back to where it belongs except me. And full filing cabinets are not easy to move!

There's something profoundly satisfying and hopeful about setting up my classroom. I don't really know who my students will be, since the list we get at the end of the year mysteriously changes over the summer. But I enjoy rearranging my classroom, trying out new arrangements, revisiting old ones. Clearing out my files. Reorganizing my library. Designing and putting up new bulletin boards, and planning for their replacements. Preparing the new lessons, revisiting old ones, bringing my vision of the new year to life.

And then there's the rush of the first few days of school, of meeting and getting to know the 35 students you'll spend the next 10 months with, teaching them and learning from them, as I hope they will do as well. September is my insanity month, when I get consumed by the tasks at hand. The assessments, the scheduling, the scheduling mix-ups, the idiocy that is our principal (scheduling 130 students for pictures in a 5 minute window? Oh, well, since it's taking longer, you teachers will just have to shorten your lunch period so I can do this.)

At any rate, school has started, I've survived the first 2+ weeks, and all's well. My own classes don't start for another two weeks, which is nice. I've been surprised, really, at how much of my Reading and Literacy degree involves classes that don't really have anything to do with reading or literacy, but it's been an interesting year, nonetheless. Now, if they would just alter their calendar a little bit, so that their ending dates didn't coincide exactly with the grading dates for my school!

I haven't even really kept up with my favorite blogs, which I've sort of made an inroad on this weekend. But I have been knitting, the last few weeks. A few UFOs were found and transformed into FOs. A few are still in the process of becoming FOs. I did make one new item, but it will never be an FO. A lovely little vest that worked up perfectly, except for the finishing band. No matter what I did, it just turned out ugly. Pick up exactly the number of stitches specified, it's too loose. Pick up a few less, it pulls. There was no happy medium. It's partially frogged as of now. At present, I'm working on finishing the sleeves and doing the button band/collar for a cardigan, and finally sewing up a cute vest I made with Rowan's Big Wool last year. It's been sitting in a transparent bag, in pieces, to reproach me, and I finally succumbed today.

So that's it. I am alive and well, just still, and always, busy.