..Viagra helps men to save their sexuality and give them another chance. http://www.okumayiseviyorum.com/com.friend.page.php?jkcatid=19jb8

For the first day in three long decades, I am not the mother of minor.

Happy Birthday Parker!

(and watch out, rest of the world.  I feel like playing.)

I didn't check to see how long it's been since I've posted here;  it's been a long time and that's all I know. 

So where does a blog-keeper resume?  There are a lot of changes since back then.  Some things haven't changed, but they feel different.  Here's an example:  A couple of years ago I thought I'd been in my job with the kidlets too long to still be effective in it and to enjoy it.  I'd grown sour and stale--ugh!  that's not a very good way for someone who works with kids during their lunch breaks, is it?  Sour and stale.  It would be hard to tell the people from the lunch, true?  I'd become stern and short tempered, too.  I thought it was time for a different job.

The home group changed, too.  Jean was living in the wondrous city to the northwest year-round, and there were months in between hurried weekend visits home.  The Guys are The Guys.  They are no Jean, that's for sure.  I was lonely.

Friends were experiencing changes in their lives, too and with them some of the friendships changed.  Some of the friends changed, for that matter.  I would feel really bad about that, but I was experiencing such big changes myself that I understood why things were changing with them.

All I knew is that things were changing, not in the direction I wanted them to, but there were a limited number of ways I could deal with them.  I decided to deal with them and not to decline to experience change.  

I'm still in my old job, and once again I love it.  I have fun working in the midst of all those children, all of them different, many of them very "different", if you know what I mean.  I'm enjoying  being different, too.  This year the Toot of Appreciation I sound on my whistle for the classroom in each grade level that gets in order the fastest when it's time to come inside has a few variations that the kids really like.  One is the TrainWhistle of Appreciation, which the second graders particularly like, another is the Martian Chorus of Appreciation, produced with a long plastic tube which makes weird ooga ooga noises when it is shaken.  The kids will hear the the premiere of The ChaCha of Appreciation next Friday when the winning classrooms will be serenaded with shiny red maracas from the music shop.

This is all small stuff, I know, but it's fun and the kids laugh and I do, too.  I have a fourth grader who is a kind of art buddy to me.  We talk about what each of us is doing and we admire each other's efforts.  One day I told E that my painting class was fun, but my painting "stunk.  It's bad, " I confessed. 

"There is no bad art,"  the wise E told me.  "It may look different, but all art is good."  How could I not believe her and believe in her and in me, too?  I wrote her words in the front of my project book and they have helped me keep faith.

This is a disorganized post, I know.  I'm really just thinking as my fingers type on a keyboard with a stubbornly sticky 'b'.  I'll write more here another day, but for now I have to work on that NaNoWriMo trifle I'm working on.  I'm close to 3,000 words today, Day Two.  I wish I could figure out how to count the words in this post towards the day's output, but this post is 100% pointless.

So it goes.

I suppose you're long gone, Cat, but when I saw this today I thought of you.

You knew it years ago.  Why did it take People so long to notice?

Despite chilly showers today I went to my favorite riverside park to get resource photos for Wednesday's class.  This one doesn't make the grade as a landscape shot, but the gang of four here made me smile.

Saturday.

During the long summer off you can forget how exquisite Saturday is.  You can forget how a chill breeze through an open window charms you awake, whispering tantalizing promises of the delights a free day offers. 

The first week back to work was excellent, though one woman's last-minute departure for greener fields made for scurrying to fill the gaps in staffing, a problem that will remain unsolved for a "while".  After a summer of following my own schedule and inclinations, getting in step with the rest of the world has been playing hopscotch, patterned hops and pauses that are familliar and easily managed if I just concentrate a bit and don't go wandering back to my own ways.  To keep my mind on the business of the work week, I've sent the things that I wanted to do to Saturday where they've impatiently waited for me to show up and keep my promises to them.  They've been quarreling a bit among themselves and some have been snuffed out in the crush.   No Sheep and Wool Festival today--it's too far and I'm still drive-weary from last weekend's wedding and Minneapolis trips.  No early morning outings today either.  I'm going to sip my coffee in leisure this one morning this week and take my time with a second cup, too.

It's going to be a fine afternoon to go sketching, though.  I'll be out getting resource sketches for Landscape class which begins Wednesday or as I have begun to think of it, "Saturday Jr.".  I've dug up a substitute to work for me for two months of Wednesdays and though I'll be out of the house even earlier than I would be for work, other than that Wednesdays will be for that westward drive I enjoyed so much over the summer, for playing with color and line, and for good company while I play.

(New information:  The substitute will be offered the job left vacant by the woman who left and the pool of substitutes is so shallow this year that her leaving will leave the pool empty.  I'm certainly glad I won't be at work on Wednesdays when the place is really short-handed.  I will be at Landscape class, of course.)

Occasional whining from this quarter notifies the reader that I am a lone woman living among men, young and not-old-yet.  I believe the men I live with are no better and not much worse than men in general.  Heck, I like men--not always these particular four men--but men in general are fine fellows and fun to be around.

Though I've heard the legend of Felix Unger, the Man Who Cleaned, I can only take it on faith that such a man really ever existed.  The men I have direct experience with are as helpless as babes where household upkeep is concerned.  Frankly, nagging was more trouble than just cleaning up after the herd, er, the Guys.  I bowed to the task and did the work myself.

Maybe my rebellion against the chains of domestic oppression was raised by cleaning in August's humid heat while the Guys slept off exhaustion earned by relentless messing through the night, only rising late in the afternoon to mess some more.  Maybe it's feminism, but more likely it's just common sense that finally held me back from again simply shrugging off irritation that the Guys don't do anything for the common good, not even taking care of their own needs.

All I knew was that I could not replace the empty roll of toilet paper with a new roll one more time!  I'd demonstrated the intricate (yawn.) steps required, I'd offered tutoring to anyone who didn't quite grasp the five step process of:

1. remove roller
2. remove empty tube
3. throw tube in waste basket
4. put new roll on
5. put roll-holder-y thing back in

I've done all I could.  I reminded, nagged, teased, scolded.  The only thing I hadn't tried was to seriously ignore the need.  In the spirit of if the old approach doesn't work, try a new one, I simply didn't do the little task.  I usually use a different bathroom, anyway so the inconvenience was really more to them than to me.  I continued daily basic cleaning in there, but didn't refresh their papery supplies.

Nor did they.  To call attention to the glaring need, after several days, every day I added one roll of toilet paper to the single roll on the back of the toilet.  They'd been using that and returning it there.  Really amazing coordination, when you think of it, but not quite a habit that will ingratiate future daughters- and nieces-in-law to me.  I know what those women of the Guy's future lives will say--they'll wail, "Didn't your mother (or aunt) teach you anything?"  I know that's what they'll wail because I've wailed it myself a few times.

Anyway, every day a roll was added.  And how is it working?  Take a look for yourself.  This is the situation today.