Not Laboring Day

All week I was home alone. Which is good because I spent too many hours at school and two nights last week, I had to go to classes. But CoolGuy was coming home finally from business tripping and we were anticipating a three day weekend. Except that I worked all day Saturday.

In the morning, while it was still (relatively) cool, I rode my bicycle over to my school (8:30 A.M.) and hung up all 97 papers that my students got finished the first week. They were to write a paragraph to introduce themselves to the rest of us and then draw a picture above it to illustrate. I had conferenced with each one just to check spelling (mostly--a couple needed a serious re-work for coherency). Now they were turned in and I could make a display in the hall. The reason I hung up 97 was because the other 6 students weren't quite finished and are going to bring it back Tuesday from home--completed.

Yes, we have 103 fourth graders. Yes, it is far too many to divide between three teachers. Yes, we have been authorized to hire another fourth grade teacher. YEAH! We just don't know how long that will take.

After that, I came home and started reading the chapter for my college class. I still need to finish and also to write a one-page paper about it (the writing is easy--the reading takes time.) But I have until next Monday night to do it. Then, I left the house at 3:00 to go to the teacher store for a couple of things, then I went by the airport and picked up CoolGuy. We came home and ate dinner and hot-tubbed and went to bed.

On Sunday after church, I read the first book of the writing series I'm using this year. I tried and tried to read it this summer and kept falling asleep. Not a good sign, huh? But, I've enrolled in a teacher development class offered by the district to use this series. Also I meet with another group of teachers at a school a block or two from mine once a week and we discuss what we've done and how to do it better. We are to answer questions and post comments in an on-line forum, too, to discuss this with the larger group. It will force me to use it and do it and I will also have support, so it is a very good thing for me.

Finally, Monday morning, after CoolGuy got back from his early morning run, he and I went off for some recreation on the motorcycle. Our original goal was to drive over to Hoover Dam and gawk at the new highway bypass they've built over the canyon, downstream from the dam. We drove up over the mountain on Lake Mead Boulevard and down and around through the desert until we came circling back up to the highway that leads from Boulder City to the dam/border of Arizona. And discovered that thousands of other people had the same great idea this morning to go to Hoover Dam. We were at least 8 miles from the dam and the highway was a parking lot. Cars backed up, creeping along at 5 miles an hour. The road to the border/dam is only two lanes, and winds down through the canyon. Plus there is a security checkpoint to make sure someone isn't driving a carbomb onto the road that crosses the dam.

Well, on a motorcycle in Nevada, one cannot "split lanes"--a practice one can do in California. I recognize that many car drivers hate it when motorcyclists drive between the lanes of stopped or very slow cars. But it is excruciatingly difficult to balance a motorcycle upright while driving in stop-and-start traffic. So we decided to just go the opposite way and travel into Boulder City and have lunch. We can go to Hoover Dam some other day when far fewer people are also heading that way.

I was struck, though, by one thing I saw in the desert as we traveled on the road through the Lake Mead Recreation Area, an official Bureau of Land Management area. You must stop at a kiosk and pay 5 dollars for the privilege of entering this zone, and you are in a stark, vast desert area, with very little vegetation and jutting slices of rock that thrust upward into mountain sized piles. It is beautiful, yet harsh and unchanged by the passing eras of time. One gets the sense of prehistory out here. An intersection appeared, giving us the choice go left or right, toward different coves and bays of the enormous Lake Mead. At this intersection is a yield sign shaped in a red triangle. And someone has taken the time to stop and with their two inch wide black marker (which strangely they've brought with them to this unique, remote, delicate area) and write stupid graffiti on the yield sign. Sigh. Jerks.

We ate our lunch and headed back to Las Vegas, passing at least one more mile of the long stretch of cars heading out to the dam. When we got back, I went swimming for a half hour or so, laid in the sun and now I'm going to finish my lesson plans for tomorrow. I wish every school week was four days long.