Parent's Weekend 2013

I need to go ahead and blog about parent's weekend at the University of South Carolina before I forget everything we did since it happened over a month ago. Time flies. Gets swallowed up. Disappears in the blink of an eye when you're working full-time again. And thus I'm back to wishing my life away to some extent, looking forward to the next big school holiday.

On Friday, we all played hooky from work and school in order to fly to Charlotte at the crack of dawn. I don't know where everyone else and their dog was flying that morning, but Terminal B at the airport was swarming with people. The security line twisted and turned and backed practically up into Terminal A. The straight shot flight to Charlotte was uneventful. We got our rental car and hit the road for a pleasant drive to Columbia. We checked into our hotel, let the coed know we had arrived and toodled over to campus to meet up with her. She has an afternoon Spanish class on Fridays, so after we got checked in for parent's weekend at the student center, we found a shady bench on the historic horseshoe to wait for the coed to arrive.

As we were walking in between two buildings, with the 7th grader about a yard in front of us, all of a sudden something fell out of the tree and landed on the sidewalk right in front of the younger daughter's feet. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's a poor squirrel with crappy balance and worse luck that obviously feel from a branch way up high. After landing with a really loud thud (OUCH!), it hopped up and scrambled into the bushes. I swear the daughter and I almost had a heart attack. 

The four of us went out to dinner that evening to locally owned Lizard's Thicket with their down home country cooking. You know you're in the south when you see fried bologna on the menu. We grew up eating fried spam and potatoes, which seems kinda high falootin' compared to bologna.

We also made a run through the bookstore to get a t-shirt in order to represent at the game the next day. Aggies get shortened to Ags. Longhorns get shortened to Horns. And Gamecocks get shortened to Cocks… which makes me want to giggle even though I'm middle-aged. I did NOT purchase the shirt below, but rather a vintage design. 

After we returned to our suite that evening, we all piled up like lazy dogs to watch TV or check email. The girls had fun surfing shopping websites, with the younger daughter giving her opinion on potential clothing purchases to the older daughter. Awww!

The next day, we took the coed shopping at the mall in Columbia. It's miles from campus and since the coed has no driver's license or car, it has greatly curtailed the amount of retail therapy she has been able to do since she headed off to college.

After a late lunch at Cracker Barrel - more home cooking - we headed back to campus so both girls could get manis and pedis. Rotten, much? Then we went back to the hotel to spruce up and head to the football game. Here are the husband and girls in front of the famous USC Cockabooses. Some guy towed a bunch of run down cabooses onto the stadium site back in the '90s and now they're the ultimate tailgating venue. You can snap one up for a cool $300K!

The sun was setting while the football players wrapped up their warm up and were getting ready to take the field.

The picture above was taken by the coed at an earlier game in the season. This is the students only section. For parent's weekend, we were sitting in the end zone directly across from the students on the second to last row of the third deck. Talk about bird's eye view. And not even a whiff of wind in the humid still-warm-as-summer night on bleachers that had us all crammed together like sardines. I didn't mind the lady seated in front of me who kept madly swinging her USC towel so that I was forced to duck multiple times to avoid a slap in the face because at least it provided a bit of much-needed breeze.

Since it was the start of breast cancer awareness month, they shot off pink fireworks whenever the team scored. Plus the players were wearing pink gloves and socks - really cool since the coed's sorority's philanthropy is Think Pink, breast cancer awareness and education. What a worthwhile cause.

And, finally, I couldn't help but include the crowing rooster sound they play in the stadium. This is just a smidge of it, but you get the drift. HILARIOUS!

One More Can't Hurt

OK, so I lied. I told my husband I wouldn't buy one more Santa anything after packing up part of my collection when we prepped to move home to Texas. And then seeing the rest of my collection once we made it back stateside. That's a whole lotta Santa stuff! I've been collecting jolly old St. Nick for 20+ yrs and have racked up a nice variety of items. Ornaments, plates, stockings, figurines, snow globes, tablecloths, bowls, cups. You get the drift.

I just couldn't resist yesterday when I was snooping through a local shop looking for a ceramic rooster to place on the eat-in-kitchen table and stumbled upon the most darling collection of themed Santas. This one really called to me because I intend to put out my Kathe Wohlfahrt pyramids. Aren't they cool?

Herr Santa will be a perfect accent piece in the same room where I display my lovely pyramids, most likely the formal dining area. Right across from the cuckoo clock I purchased in the Black Forest. Just too danged cute, I tell ya!

Happy Birthday to Ollie

On September 24, Ollie turned two. In human years, that makes him about the same age as our 7th grade daughter. Thankfully, he doesn't behave like an adolescent. The little guy still has a lot of energy - he is a Cairn Terrier - but in general he minds his P's and Q's.

This morning we rolled out well before dawn to get the coed off to the airport for her return flight to college after a super short fall break. I'm the sort that can never fall back to sleep once I'm up, and so I decided to get a few things done at 5:00 am this morning after the husband and daughter hit the road in order for her to catch her plane. The first thing I did was load the dishwasher. Then I started on the pile of dirty clothes in front of the washing machine. Next, I sat down with my current seating charts and created new ones for the second nine weeks that kicks off tomorrow at school. I rearranged student desks Friday after dismissal, so it's fruit basket turnover at the start of every class tomorrow.

About the time the sun hit the horizon, I bathed the dog after I fed him and took him out for a little walk to take care of business. He's tolerant of a bath. In typical canine fashion, it's the bit after he's clean that is a real show. 

It's obviously a desperate situation. Must.remove.clean.smell. No matter how much he begs, I don't let him go outside off leash all day because that's just inviting a roll in the grass and dirt that will undo all of the shampoo applying, scrubbing, rinsing, drying and brushing I just accomplished. I'm a pro at ignoring his pleading looks while he longingly gazes out the back door.

Thursday Night Lights

If you're in high school, football games in Texas are usually played on Friday nights. However, if you're in middle school, then it's a Thursday afternoon ritual which kicks off at 4:30.

The 7th grader is a member of her school's pep squad. It's a combo cheer and dance group. Her older sister, the coed, was also a member of the team when she was in middle school. The coed was a great dancer, but because she's shy she never really seemed to enjoy it as much as I would have hoped. However, her little sister is really into the whole pep squad scene. 

My only complaint thus far is the danged placement of the football stands, making it kinda miserable for the spectators. In the five years since the coed was in middle school, I had forgotten this little fact. They face west straight into the sun and so we all need to slather on SPF 50 just to enjoy a little pigskin every week. It was especially fun in September when the temps were hovering around 100 while we sweated our butts off in the unrelenting heat. 

The coed flew home on Thursday for her very short fall break of three nights before she headed back to South Carolina this morning, but she arrived in time to see her sister perform. We're keeping the pep squad/team mom tradition alive and well in our house.

Tying a Knot and Holding On

It's not that I don't enjoy teaching. I missed it terribly while we were living in England and I'm glad to be back in the classroom. However, the one thing I didn't miss is the need to go up to my dark, non-airconditioned school building every Sunday for about 3-4 hours in order to stay on top of the demands placed upon teachers. Six day work weeks are no fun, especially when you factor in the salary I receive for my efforts.

Oh sure, I enjoy getting paid during the summer when there are no classes. And yeah, we get a 45 minute planning period every day. But every week we have at least one meeting of some sort during planning time. This past week I had a meeting on 3 of the 5 school days. My students may not have any science homework most nights, but I certainly do.

Right now what's keeping me motivated is travel. At Thanksgiving, we'll be in NYC for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Over the Christmas holidays, we'll be traveling with the 7th grader to California while the college coed visits a friend in England. At spring break, we'll head to Turks and Caicos for a relaxing beach vacation. June will find us touring the east coast while July will be busy with an Alaskan cruise. 

As they say, you can't take it with you when you go and so I intend to enjoy the fruits of my teaching labors by traveling with the family every time we have a holiday from school. You hear about folks toiling in the work trenches their whole lives, only to up and get sick or die as soon as they retire. If that happens to me, I won't have any regrets because I plan to rack up the travel miles from now until the Lord calls me home.

My Second Home

So it's not a ski chalet. Or a lake house. And it sure aint a beach condo either. But it's where I spend a good chunk of my time for nine months out of the year. It's my classroom.

I chose a safari theme for my classroom many years before I actually went to Kenya in February, and so it's convenient that I could return with some of the things I purchased from the Maasai tribe we visited and use them as decor.

It's not some cutie patootie little kid look - more like a comfy family room. However, it suits me just fine. And I might as well feel at home because that's where you'll find me for at least 9 hours every Monday to Friday, from mid August to early June. And weekends... can't forget you'll find me there on Sunday afternoons for at least the first six weeks of any given school year trying to stay a step ahead of the kids. Fortunately, I can say it's all worth it.

Just Another Manic Sunday

What is it about Sundays? When I was in college, Sundays were the worst. I wondered what fab homecooked meal granny had whipped up for the rest of the family. I knew I should have washed clothes Friday or Saturday but didn't and now I'm hoping I have something clean in the back of my closet to wear tomorrow. My project for class that's due in a few days didn't magically finish itself, so there's that. 

Now that I'm middle-aged, I find I kinda feel the same way about Sundays as I did when I was a college student. I should have worked out on Saturday or Sunday, but I rolled over and slept until 7:30 since that seems like a luxury compared to the rude 5:30 am alarm Monday through Friday. I should have done everything on my school to-do list, but after 4 hrs on campus this weekend I threw up my hands and came home. I should have taken the dog for a long walk, but I never got around to that either.

What I did do was buy a ticket for the college coed to come home for a long weekend next month. I let the 7th grader invite several friends over for swimming and a meal Friday after school when my fanny was dragging after Parent Orientation Thursday evening at my campus. Plus I washed every piece of dirty clothing in the house, so we all have clean undies to wear tomorrow.

As much as I love teaching, I'll still do the countdown to next Friday when we're staring down two more precious days of freedom from the workaday routine.