Getting My Mind Back to Work

I had a brief meeting with the principal today to get my head started up for work.  Teachers are reporting in two weeks, so it's not too early, actually.  I am in a new position this year, so I have to hit the ground running.

On the home front, I have been on a sweet tooth satisfying binge - I made cheese danish yesterday and fudge today.  I can't eat much of either without feeling a bit sick, so the kids have been enjoying the sweet streak.

I think I am mostly missing my oldest girl, or the idea of her, as she really hasn't been home all summer with all her activities.  She moved to Oahu yesterday.  As she walked out the door on Monday night (she spent the night with her best friend), I happened to look up at her baby picture in hallway.  Yep, that did it, floods of tears.  She isn't going far - and she is going to family, but she is still making that first real grown up step.  In another year, my second child will be off to college, probably on the mainland.

I seriously determined years ago to not be a maudlin mom when my kids grew up, but  - I failed.  I am sure I will get over it....eventually. 

In the garden, I put out a butternut that wasn't doing well in the greenhouse - seems better out in the ground, and the new seedlings are starting well.  It's time to pull out the peas I planted in March and some of the cukes - they got some kind of mold or fungus and didn't do that great, although I had a fair amount of cucumbers in May and June, surprisingly.  It seems I need to mulch the potatoes on an almost daily basis - the combination of sporadic heavy rain and bright sunshine seems to be doing them wonders. 

I am trying to get my ideas for books to read with ninth graders together.  I am thinking about Nation and Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett, and Til We Have Faces and That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis.  Might be too heavily speculative fiction, but all four books have good messages, are fairly accessible - so many of the books on the recommended lists are just darned depressing or explore the darker side of life. 

Well, it is time to let the hens out for their afternoon constitutional.  Sorry I have been absent lately, but the fact that the oldest has moved now means the computer is a bit more open, so perhaps I will be able to be around more.