Not the Usual Routine

Several things did not go as planned today.

To start with, I was up at the crack of dawn to get the news that Spilly's buses were canceled but my school was business as usual. That meant more than a little crowing from my usually-loving kid: "Mommy, I have sad news for you, but it's happy news for me. My bus is canceled, and I don't have to go to school. But YOU DO have to go to school." Variations on this theme tend to wear a person down. It was bad news for my long-suffering hubby too, as it meant that he had Spilly on his hands all day. And it wasn't just any old day--it was the final deadline of the major, three-months-in-the-making project that he has been managing.

The next thing that was different was that I didn't drive myself to school today, as I was a little leery at the thought of driving in the aftermath of our big snowstorm of yesterday. That meant that my hubby and Spilly took me in to school. It meant a commentary from Spilly all the way there: "Mommy, I see a caterpillar and a pyramid in the sky, and there's the castle in China, and I love you." (The castle in China is actually a Croatian church.) It also, thankfully, meant assistance in carrying the Christmas tree I'd bought my class, across the frozen tundra that is our school's back tarmac, to my portable.

Then, the next unusual thing was that only 8 of my students arrived. Turns out, some of the buses that caused Spilly's school cancellation also service our school. Turns out as well, some of my students treated themselves to a day off. I was faced with the dilemma of what to do with one-third of my class. Teaching was pretty much out, as I'd have had to teach it all again tomorrow to the majority of the class. So we did the logical thing, and put together the Christmas tree (as things turned out, it was practically brain surgery, because all the branches were separate from the trunk and needed to be inserted individually). Then we spent the rest of the morning making elaborate decorations. The tree now has various paper snowflakes, the world's longest garland, paper lanterns, and--its crowning glory--two impossibly tall, bizarre, tufty-looking things that remind me of pineapple fronds and jut out the top of the tree, crafted by a boy who says he learned the technique in India.

The afternoon was equally taxing--a movie, shared with another class. At the end of the day, one of my kids said, "Mrs. C., this was the shortest day!"

"That's funny," I said. "I thought it was the longest day."

When Spilly and her daddy picked me up after school, she announced, "Daddy finished his work, and so we're going out for dinner!"

It was news to either her Daddy or me (except for the finished-the-work part, which was apparently true, hallelujah, after the months he has put in), but we decided not to question it.
We're leaving shortly.