Vignettes.........

Normally the title of this blog post would be "random thoughts." If I were drinking a beer, I would have titled this post "random thoughts." I'm drinking a glass of wine, however, and that demands a much more sophisticated word like "vignettes."

I'm not much of a wine drinker, but I do own a corkscrew. I think that is an important distinction. Lawanda the Warrior Princess gave me a bottle of muscadine wine for Christmas, along with a ...... I'm not sure what you call it .... a stopper? A thingie that you put into the bottle of wine on the off chance you don't polish off the whole bottle because it's so good? Yeah, that. It has the first initial of my last name on it, and it's the same as the first initial of LWP's last name, so it will always remind me of her for both reasons. I realize I could have saved the wine for a special occasion, but I deemed the college football bowl season special enough. And after the way MY team played in THEIR bowl game, polishing off the whole bottle was not only called for, it was darn near necessary.

On one of his several-times-weekly trips to the package store a stone's throw from our house, he bought me a couple bottles of replacement wine. (I don't think it had the effect he was going for, but whatever.) I didn't have the heart to tell him I gave up beer because of the calories, and I didn't need to replace them with wine. And I couldn't hurt his feelings by not drinking HIS gift, not after the way I scarfed up devoured delicately sipped that of the Warrior Princess.  Tonight I decided to open the bottle produced by a local winery. I thought I would give Hubby the rare chance to be useful debonair, so I asked him to open it for me. I was busy loading the dishwasher and stepping around him as he leaned against the counter watching me load the dishwasher.

He peered at the bottle for a moment. "How do you get this foil thing off?"

Sigh. I found the little hickie thing and peeled the foil off.

To his credit, he did know how to work the corkscrew. He opened the bottle expertly, set it down beside the dirty dishes, and walked out of the kitchen to sit down at his computer.

Sigh. Wouldn't the next NATURAL step have been to, oh I don't know, POUR ME A GLASS?

Hubby's granddaughter, known on this blog as the Sullen Teenager, although she is turning out to be much less sullen now that she is nearing the age of reason, is sixteen years old. She is driving now, which blows my mind in no small way. She's not your typical boy-crazy teenager (thank you heaven above for bringing TWO such level-headed girls into my life), but she has had three boyfriends .................. named Colby. (Although one of them was spelled with a "K," but you get my drift.)

Have I mentioned (lately) that we live in a small town? As in we only have two high schools, one of which is relatively new. And Sullen Teenager has managed to have three boyfriends with the same name. Not Jason or Anthony or Michael or David or Joshua or Gregory or Jonathan or Justin or even Seth.

Colby.

Colby? Seriously? We HAVE three of those in our county?

One of her family members has accused Sullen Teenager of auditioning boyfriends based on name alone.

Justin? Loser.
Jonathan? Forget it.
Michael? Give him a fake number.
Colby? What time are you picking me up?

I don't know if it's because I'm tired of it or because it's such a rare occurrence, but the last few times I've been outside, I've been a little surprised to see that the ice and snow are STILL on the ground after five days. On a logical level I realize it hasn't gotten above the freezing mark, and I know all about the physics required for ice and snow to melt, but I'm just a little taken aback that I STILL can't walk from my front steps to my car without peril. Usually when we have snows in the South, even those of several inches, they are gone within a day or two. The roads are still treacherous. Those that are well-traveled are in pretty good shape, but even on those it's easy to become over-confident. You can be driving along just fine, and all of a sudden there's just a solid sheet of ice. And you just hold your breath and hope the driver in front of you doesn't decide to put on brakes.

Our psycho new superintendent sent out an email yesterday afternoon regarding school today. I may have mentioned it in yesterday's post. She basically said we had three choices: get to school by 11:00, take a personal day, or take a day without pay. (Students had the day off because it wasn't safe for school buses to run.) Apparently some folks in the district were rubbed a little bit the wrong way by that, so a softer, gentler email followed in which she urged all of us to consider our personal safety first and foremost before deciding to come to school. Oh, and we would be able to make the time up if we weren't able to make it, instead of being docked for it.

I debated whether or not to go, but was unaware of the softer, gentler email. I have personal days, and I have comp time from last summer, but I like to save those for important things. Like bike rides. So I had Hubby drive me to school at 11:00 and told him to pick me up at 3:00, unless I called him before that. The member of our staff most like to make the rest of us actually work couldn't come in, and the one who lives the furthest away from reality didn't come either. Because we are such a small staff, there's not a lot we can do with only three of us. That's my justification for these being the activities I completed while at school today:

• I caught up on the four days of newspapers that were finally delivered this morning.
• I watched videos of last Saturday night's gymnastics meet. Again.
• I worked on my quilt.
• I texted Katydid and the Warrior Princess.
• I went to Matt's room and interrupted whatever he was pretending to do.
• I went to Lynn's room and interrupted her work on her prospectus. 

At 2:00, when I was about to LOSE MY MIND, I texted Hubby and told him to come get me.

Fairly early in the afternoon, the superintendent sent out a new email, saying pretty much the same thing about tomorrow as today. Students will not have school for the fifth day in a row, but teachers are to report at 11:00 and stay until 3:30. (Did she even look at the calendar? Who in the world is left at school at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon EVER?)

I went to my principal and said I could do my work from home, and she agreed. I can monitor the handful of students who have taken the opportunity to work from home this week. I can work on an online course that we have set up using a career website. The owners of the career website have changed their site, and our course now needs to be tweaked a little to match the site's changes.

It's silly for us to sit at school with no students. It's not like the traditional high school, where we could take a rare opportunity to collaborate and plan together. We do that all the time. Our most important work is WITH STUDENTS, and if they aren't there, we are just spinning our wheels.

I will probably go tomorrow, but you can bet your next paycheck I won't still be there at 3:30. I may even take Gus with me and let him play (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) with Pebbles, the poodle that belongs to one of the teachers on the other side of our building.

An 11:00-2:00 workday. Now there's something I can sink my teeth into.