a wedding party of thirteen

I'm now officially down one bridesmaid, but it's for very happy reasons. She is due two weeks after the wedding, making travel (especially five hours away) impossible. Congratulations, M--you're going to be one crazyfun mama! (And weird.)

PS: Not doing the dress in orange. Cornflower.

In other news, today is the first day of a new semester! I'm not sure how my freshmen hours will actually be... there are some hours that are packed to the gills and there are several kids who are used to having a certain level of attention all mushed into a room at once. And creative writing is a new bunch. The kids that I know are great--either former students (now current again) or co-curricular students--so I'm looking forward to getting to know them in a new setting (so far, working with repeat kids has been successful). I do miss the ones from last semester. Two stopped by after school to say they miss the class. I do too.

My recipe for last week is a cop out since it should have been a food or regular drink kind of thing (instant gratification and all that). But I had 120 research essays last week in a marathon grading spurt that really is shameful. I also had a thirteen hour Friday that should have been a relaxing day (no students). So this week's recipe is a Clover Mead, pictures of which are on that thingy a day blog.

Speaking of the thingy a day blog, I think it's interesting how people have such vastly different tastes in aesthetics. For instance, K's favorite picture thus far is the very first one; A's favorite picture is the one from 1/6; KF likes the ones with the holiday lights; I'm partial to the one from 1/9 (because of balance and whatnot). I like today's too... I think that's because you can't quite figure out what it is at first. Light and strange focus seem to appeal to me... I haven't done anything fancy to alter any of the pictures beyond turning the flash off and cropping the one. I haven't posed anything (except the program and of course, KF's special dress picture). This means nothing, of course; maybe I'm just saying it to defend the fact that it's nothing more than a series of snapshots and I'm in a family of artsy people. KF and I were talking about some pictures... how they aren't remarkable. The pinecones. Blah. Cop out picture. I just wanted to go to bed that night. (These are excuses I don't allow my students. Of course, this isn't as serious as all that.)

And my Friday the 13 hours... It was a grading day for us, but we also had a drama competition, which my school won. Huzzah! It was great because they also beat the "other" high school in the community (again--it's somehow always a big goal for our school to beat the other school) and (this is better) they beat the high school that came in first and went to state last year. Of course, they go to sections with our school, so we'll see, but it's wonderful for the kids and they definitely deserve it. And of course, I had nothing to do with their success this year or last, but I have had a nice time observing the process.

I'll miss it all. I found out at this competition that a LTS (long term sub) position may open up at the local high school. I am still in that fuzzy-headed I-don't-know-what-to-do place... Do I chase after going back to school? (Would I even get in? So many people are going now--so many very smart people!) Do I remain in a field that I enjoy (but may not enjoy enough)? If I want to go back to school, this LTS thing could be ideal because it would mean in that year, I could work on getting together my application packet, and the following year I could either go on to grad school or go back to figuring things out.

Ah, the future. So many things can happen. (And August!)