chocolate eggs and gold bracelets

It’s too nice to hole up in the cave. Way too nice. I stopped at the library to pick up some material and thought it would be fun to maybe take the bike off the car. But then I found out that Pink has a few too many problems to be road worthy without the attention of someone who knows something about bikes, so there’s no riding for a while. [Riding with a snapped brake line? Bad idea...]

You win some, you loose some.

Someone called the 'burgh the Paris of Appalachia;  there’s a whole book about it. I never really understood the connection, having lived here and been to Paris; you don't really see it unless you are sitting in Schenley quad, in spring, when the undergrads are out in force worshiping the sun and the food vendors.  We are far cleaner here; we put our litter in bins, I mean. By nightfall, Paris was a wreck; there was garbage and refuse everywhere. It smelled terrible. Maybe they figure they have a sanitation force, I'm not sure. I was not endeared. 

It’s my last week of student teaching. We’ve made a fabulous quilt [sort of]. The squares are done. I have to get fabric and put it together, but I have to have a résumé and a portfolio first. The burning question of stay or go is, well, burning. There are postings back north; I wondered what it would be like to go back and teach in the building that I went to elementary school at, and took it that step further to wonder if I was hired. Wondered what if I was assigned to teach in the rooms where I myself had sat on the other side of the teacher’s desk. I remember that world being so much bigger than it probably is.  We had a teepee in our second grade room. Big enough that five kids fit inside it. Our room is a little small for that. And Miss Honey's room is nothing to sneeze at. 

This morning on my desk there was a box decorated with a cupcake label that had my name on it [spelled correctly - no mean feat!!] with a fistfull of little foil wrapped chocolate eggs and a gold beaded bracelet. I'd been silently lamenting my lack of gold jewelry and picking gold posts when I got my ears pierced, and here's this little gold colored bracelet buried under a cupcake and a pile of chocolate. Just because. One box for me and one for Miss Honey.

What would my favorite memory of 1st grade be, if someone handed me markers and a square? I've been mulling over it all week, and I don't know that I could draw it. How do you draw kids getting something? How do you draw them not quitting when it's hard? How do I draw the time I ended up in the hospital and more recently, the death of my grandfather; having a cooperating teacher who smiled and said "We got this. It's not broken, it's just bent. No worries." [okay, her forehead probably wrinkled in concern; I wasn't there to see it. And that's not a direct quote. But close enough.] None of this has anything to do with drawing.

It's evoking. 1st grade was better than anything I'd imagined.