perspicacious.org

The snowfall has finally caught up, more or less, to where it usually is at this time of year. From the window I can see the kids running all over our school sledding hill. They are running up and down it, and some are rolling down the side. I sledded on my stomach yesterday (I learned afterward it's against the rules– oops), and went so far that I made a new track into the deep snow of the playing fields. It was really fun. It's easy to be enamored of winter on warm (0 degree) days when the kids are running around excited and even the principal is outside enjoying the weather.

I took this shot from our front porch on Thanksgiving morning. The birdhouse is empty now, but we have a feeder nearby and have lots of black capped chickadees. The cats sit on the back of the couch and watch with their tails twitching.

Thankful for:

• the kitties
• having this nice (sorta) house to live in for cheap
• having a decent job
• R having a decent job, too
• really good turkey yesterday, and people to share it with
• this room just for me and all of my craft supplies
• sitting on the couch and drinking tea
• the beautiful winter, and being able to look forward to many long nights of stars and aurora
• and most of all for my love (and candy and sugar)

She'll get the reference on the last one.
xoxo babylove. love you.

I just poked my head out my classroom door and took this picture. (If the image is rotated it's because your browser is lame.) If it looks like the sun is setting, it is. It's dark now at 4:00 or so, which is kinda depressing. Even at "high noon" the sun barely rises above the horizon. Alas, it's winter in Fairbanks. It's about 5 degrees out right now, so it's not too cold at least.

Currently, in Fairbanks, we are within the lunar arctic circle. That's kind of like the solar arctic circle, north of which you get at least one 24 period of sunshine and one of darkness. Being within the lunar arctic circle means that the moon is out all of the time for the next couple of weeks. Well, assuming it's not cloudy. I took this picture hoping to get a glimpse of moon, but all there is is clouds and snow. Still, it's been neat seeing the moon during the day, and I did get to learn about the lunar arctic circle.

I've been subbing in first grade, and after a rocky start I am rocking the wee ones. If I do say so myself. I am not by nature an early primary teacher. It is so hard– you have to mediate and mother and discipline and watch absolutely everything and make them sit still and go through directions with exact specificity in minute increments. It's incredibly exhausting.

On Friday I did a bizarre are project with them– a paper castle with the northern lights in the background, and had great success. They followed the directions, they helped each other, they shared materials, and their northern lights were a pretty good likeness. Not bad. I'll consider doing it again on Monday (subbing in 1st, not the art project). Not that I have a choice, as I'm already scheduled.

Yesterday a chair collapsed underneath me. I didn't come crashing dramatically to the floor, it was more like a hydraulic lift going slowly down until I was sitting on the floor. Confused. Closer inspection showed that the chair had just come apart where the legs were welded underneath. WTF? These are the kinds of chairs that we give our kids to sit on?

Thankfully, I was able to do this in a room full of 6th graders. If you've never had the experience of falling gracefully onto your tuckus in front of 27 eleven year olds, I highly recommend it. (Honestly, the kids were pretty nice. They didn't laugh and a couple asked if I was OK. It was still embarassing, though.)