why does it feel like it should be much later in the week? i feel like i’ve been getting SO MUCH DONE, but i think i’m deluding myself.
it got an e-mail from my mother-in-law, about recess/mute lunches. she wrote “From my cynical viewpoint (and 20 years in the schools here), the silent lunches and limited recess is because no one wants to monitor a couple hundred kids at free time. The teachers used to do it until their union clout wrote it out of the contract. Then the support staff did it until their union clout wrote it out. The schools are then left with the option to hire deaf, strong gorillas or make the kids SHUT UP! There’s a paucity of gorillas in the U.S.”
hmm, that’s interesting, a totally different perspective. the way the friend talked about it, i ended up feeling like kids are being smothered and not given any opportunity to burn off any kid energy. but then there’s the flip side of that, the pandemonium that lots of children can create.
and that, unfortunately, makes me think about the very very unpleasant experiences i had in my very very brief stint as a substitute teacher, about, oh, 15 years ago.
it was bad. very bad. it’s one of the many things i try to block from my mind altogether.
maybe, someday, if i can bear to think about it, i’ll share some of it with you. or better yet, i guess it would be great fodder for my next “gracetalk,” because i think it needs the drama that only saying it out loud could give the sad tale of being a completely and totally inept substitute teacher.
at least i don’t do THAT anymore.
i have started in on the second folder of hawaii photos, and my goal is to finish posting them by the end of this year. an easily attainable goal, i believe.
here are some more photos of the dinner cruise we took up the napali coast on Kauai. it was quite beautiful, as was almost everything in hawaii. it was an “all you can drink” cruise, with lots of free mai tais, but i didn’t even have one of them because i get a little queasy on the open water, and 7up was plenty strong for me. others, however, were slamming back the free mai tais.
many MANY movies/tv shows have featured this particular spot. i can’t remember what any of them are. while kevin was taking photos, i was videotaping this, and as the guides were talking about the stuff i was repeating it into the camera. but of course it was very WINDY out there on the water so although you can hear my voice on the video, none of the actual words are at all intelligible.
as part of the package, the crew was all very happy to take lots of pictures of the passengers. the passengers were, naturally, all taking plenty of photos on their own, at least till the alcohol started flowing.
there was this one rather large (both in number and girth) family from mexico, and one of their children, a teenage boy, spent a lot of time TALKING ON HIS CELL PHONE. for one thing, like i said, you couldn’t hear me on the video, so how on earth did the person on the other end of the phone hear the kid? and WHY was he spending all his time talking on the phone? because he’s a teenager, and i guess there is always going to be some teen who will be bored no matter how incredible the view is or unique the experience. “kids, i don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today…” i never got to go on a hawaii cruise when i was a teenager!
this is one of the many photos kevin took of my videotaping.
ahh, to be there now…instead of here, where it’s 19 degrees but feels like nine (not that i’m going to go outside at all), and it’s supposed to be FOUR tonight. right now on Kauai it’s 77 but feels like 78, and the low tonight will be 69.
hawaii, anybody? maybe if a whole lot of us scraped together all our savings, we could build a little shack together. we wouldn’t need too much shelter because it’s WARM THERE ALL THE TIME.
Mollie suddenly, urgently, needs some attention. because she is a dog. perhaps later i’ll tell you about the latest thing the cat dragged in.
ok already,
grace, slightly chilly.