On Tough Love and Second Chances

Tomorrow is the last day of first quarter at the middle school where I teach, and I am not looking forward to the last-minute grading frenzy before grades must be posted for progress reports. Yes, I am allowing my students to turn in missing assignments up until tomorrow. Yes, the steady stream of crumpled papers featuring forgotten work that has been showing up on my desk all week will become a fire hose of frantically-completed assignments. And then it will all be FINISHED!

The pile of unclaimed no-name papers will be spilled into the wastebasket.
The list of students who haven't made up quizzes will be erased.
The leftover copies of everything since the first day of school will be filed away.

And then it's gonna get real.

I Left a Surprise in Your Purse

When I was a kid (and even a college student) my mom would sometimes leave me little love notes on slips of paper she hid in my lunchbox. It was always so exciting to find her words stowed away under my sandwiches, letting me know that she was thinking of me. These love notes aren't so common anymore since I've moved out and now live in a busy household where the morning lunch-packing routine means throwing an apple and protein bar hastily into my purse while I'm trying to remember my phone, my laptop cord, and the papers I graded last night. To put it plainly, not much thought goes into lunchtime anymore.

A Tale of Two Vomits

One of the little luxuries I have been enjoying lately is the fact that I don't have to take the dogs, Link and Yoshi, out on leashes in the morning. When R. and I lived at our apartment, it was my responsibility every morning at dark o'clock to get two wiggling furry bodies out of their crate, clipped into leashes, and out the door without too much fuss. The morning business routine went something like this: