School 9-5-12

School 9-5-12

School started on the 4^th for us.  The first day went well but it isn’t one of my favorite days.  Going over rules and supply needed is boring for me and the kids.  It’s all fine because it’s about all they can handle on day one any how.  Most of them are tired and not use to getting up early just like the staff.  My students are great!  I even received a very nice email from a Mom sharing her son’s comments about his first day and me.  It really made me smile.  My fellow staff members were good about checking on me to make sure I was doing ok.  Thank you to you who read this.

I had my students will out a form I title “All About Me”.  One of the questions is: What so you like to do?  I shared these things about myself in my cover letter.  Any how one of my girls really took this to heart.  They took the papers home to finish and returned them today.  This girl had a list.  She ran out of room on the lines I had provided and listed more on the back.  She filled about half of the back of the paper too.  As I read through her list I thought about Kathryn.  I thought about her notebooks that listed over 500 things that she liked.  There were many things in my student’s list that were in Kathryn’s list.  Pancakes, stickers, taking showers, staring at clouds, playing with dogs, going to the zoo, and the one that got me big was petting cats.  There were many many more.  Petting cats, well Kathryn would like to see how many different cats she could pet while on a walk.  If there were several cats in a neighborhood that she could pet it was deemed a good neighborhood.  If not it was a not so good neighborhood.  It was a good thing I read this paper after school as it made me cry.  The memories that come in to mind are good but it is hard to think that creating more with Kathryn is over.   Sitting under trees, drawing, getting cards, getting gifts, dancing, making new friends, laughing the pain away, making fire in the fire place, eating outside, talking in riddles, hanging out with my family, listen to music, make people laugh and make people smile.  I could go on.  If we all were like this it would be a wonderful world.

These are all just simple things that should make all of us happy.  Unfortunately some of us are too busy working for the all mighty dollar to realize that time and simple things are all we need.  I’m trying to be more simple, more patient, kinder and a better friend.  Kathryn’s death has made a huge impact on how I see things.  Some things just are so important and other things are now much more important.    This may sound silly but one of those things is allowing a big old spider to live in my living room.  Usually I would have killed him immediately.  Not now.  He is still alive and as big as can be.  I may even try to catch him and just set him outside.  That’s what Kathryn would want me to do.  You should have seen Richard try to shoo a spider outside.  It ran at him and made him jump.  It was so funny to watch.  But, he did get the spider outside.

I had several comments about my $10 thrift store dress today.  Good comments and comments about dressing nice.  I find it fun to do after spending almost a year in sweats or yoga pants and t-shirts.  It feels good to dress nice.  I appreciate the compliments too.

Well, day three tomorrow.  Real math lessons and all.  My yearbook class worked really hard and well together today to come up with a theme and a cover design.  The progress they made in one day was amazing.  They also worked so well together and were so polite to listen to each other’s ideas.  They were agreeable and just darn nice.  The yearbook rep was so impressed.  She said she had not seen such an agreeable group in all of her years.  I’m proud of them!

I’m off to bed as that darn alarm goes off so early.  I need some sleep to make sure I don’t’ get grumpy.  I’m looking forward to another great day at Columbia!