A Bit Distracted

Well, I've been really slack at posting this week!

Monday morning, my principal texted to say she'd be working at the school some this past week, so I jumped all over that. I spent Monday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, and all day Thursday working in my classroom. I finished painting the door, heater, and busted up storage unit, and even hung some stuff up on the walls. I also was able to get into the library and laminate--do you know HOW MUCH stuff I had to laminate?! When you start over from scratch, you have a lot because nothing is laminated and you know from past experience that laminating makes things last a LOT longer. I have a trunkful to cut. Still. We ("we" means about a dozen teachers) also did lunch on Thursday, which was nice because I got to see some I hadn't seen yet since we got back and got to meet 2 new teachers that came since I was there last.

Tuesday, I helped our dear friend Marie teach four sessions on designing classrooms and schedules for literacy. It was great to meet some incoming corps members (we saw probably 200 over the course of the four sessions) and spend time talking literacy classrooms with other alumni. I've also been helping calm fears, find housing, and an assortment of other things for the new 2010 corps members. With 273 (yes, you read that right--273!) incoming corps members, TFA staff simply can't do all that needs done in an ideal world, like calling landlords and going to look at houses with them. Which, I've discovered, really goes extremely better with an alum in tow. So far this morning, I've explained how TFA works, explained housing needs to a landlord, and made sure our newest CMs don't land in overpriced or unsafe housing. It's a lot easier to do all of that when you've lived here for 5 years on and off, know the people, and know the community. And the CMs are awesome, which means we'll be getting awesome neighbors!

On the house-front, it has been HOT this week.  Now granted, it's been hot since we got here, but this week it was sweltering. The heat index was solidly above 100 and warning were all over the radio. We did have on garden fatality because of the heat--one squash plant who had never been doing the best succumbed to the heat on Thursday. Poor thing just couldn't hack it. Everyone else seems to be doing fine, and I'm attempting to shade and water the dead one back to life. Not holding my breath. I did do a good bit of work inside in the air conditioning, and we now have organized stuff on our living room shelves, the majority of the unpacked boxes have relocated into the master bedroom (still empty and ceiling-less) out of the way, and the kitchen floors are now.... WHITE!!!!!!!!

That's right, folks, the black and dirty linoleum tiles are now undeniably black and white! Marie is probably the only person who can appreciate this fully, because the little turkeys always seemed white enough in pictures. But they were not. The little photographic liars had deep black marks, dirt embedded way down in, and just were generally not looking so good. Over the course of the past week, I've scrubbed them on my hands and knees twice, stripped them with ammonia (not. fun. at. all. BUT amazingly effective), washed them again on my hands and knees, and then got back down again on the poor knees to wax them three times. Now, they are white and they shine! My knees are angry, peeling, and have infected hair follicles from the whole mess, but they'll fix. My kitchen? Totally worth it.

I may post some pictures later--once the weather stabilizes I'll get out and weed my garden and get up some current pictures on that!