she who keeps this diary


29 August 2003 - 8:53 AM

Playing Weekend Warrior

I'm sorry Rosine, I am just fresh out of shining prose.

Wolf
What Is Your Animal Personality?

brought to you by Quizilla

The orientation sessions are finished and most of the students should now know where their lockers are, if not the east. Yesterday I turned on the English Teacher persona for the first time since June with my crop of freshpeople, who looked like deer caught in the headlights.

I have huge classes this semester. TWENTY-EIGHT in Freshman Writing. That's just ridiculous and getting the grading done is going to be abysmal. 24 in World Literature, 30 in Honors British Literature. Next semester is not going to be any better. And yes, I know teachers in public schools frequently have it worse, but that doesn't mean that classes of more than 15 are really acceptable anywhere.

The good news is that at least I have paid my dues and I am no longer a floater. I have my own classroom. No more pushing carts up and down the hallways trying to beat the kiddies to class. The conservation of energy may be small, but every little bit helps.

I get my last little breath of summer this weekend with a whole 4 days off. The Viking and I are planning to spend it dismantling my sewing room, then painting, ripping out the horrible navy blue wall-to-wall carpeting, and putting it back together (with perhaps a more thoughtful arrangement of parts). The carpet has to go; aside from the fact that it absorbs pet hair and dust and will not release them to a vacuum, we had some water in the basement over the spring and now there is mildew lurking in the mess as well. I spend a lot of time in the sewing room -- it's also where my computer and loom are -- and the combined effects of obstinate dust and mildew are not good for my health. I seem to have outgrown most of the horrible pollen allergies I had as a child and teenager, but dust and mold spores remain a problem.

We cautiously peeled up a corner of the carpeting and found a fairly boring tile underneath, so at least there is something more than bare concrete under there, and I will probably add an area rug once I find something that will coordinate with the brilliant raspberry pink shade I picked for the walls. The wall colour is a departure for me; normally I go for very soft, greyed colours on my walls (the living room/dining room upstairs are a kind of slate lilac) but the sewing room is a small dark basement room and the colours I usually like just looked washed out in there. I am a bit nervous about the raspberry, but the paint is bought and the Viking, surprisingly, thinks it will look great. I hope he's right, because I doubt either of us will want to repaint if it doesn't.

verso - recto

The WeatherPixie

Current Reading Past Readings Bookplate Bindery Signatures of Other Readers