They’ve already figured out when they’ll be back in town for wedding stuff, which is handy. As of an hour ago, they got their house rental, and I think the move is going into overdrive.

So I have my head wrapped around this, no problem, and arrive home to the news that the youngest child is also moving.

To Sonora. Or maybe it’s Sonoma. I’m still in stun mode and can’t remember, and she’s not home to discuss the whole thing. But she’s gotten a temporary job in the federal parks system for the next four to six months or so. It’s her foot in the door–although she’ll be cleaning restrooms and doing whatever else her job requires. I don’t even know what the job is exactly–I don’t think it’s ranger. At least not yet.

She’s leaving in three weeks.

So we’ll be empty nesters for a while, at least, and just in time for summer vacation. (Which doesn’t appear to be much of a vacation this summer based on what I have to do in order to move and what the district needs done for a grade level, and oh, by the way, who’s going to teach kinder boot camp this summer? Since I don’t want to because wedding. D’oh.)

Eighteen more days to go, and after yesterday’s insanity–the much-admired sub from hell in the room next door, and the chaos that resulted–I need  alcohol. Again.

Note: It is never a good sign when small children speak glowingly of a sub and include the words “lets you do anything you want.” Just sayin’. (Of course, the first sign that something was rotten was the parade along a four-foot high wall with the sub leading and a trail of thirty-four ducklings right behind him.)

The DO’s response to our principal’s complaint about the sub? Funny, the middle school didn’t want him back ever again, too.

Eye-rolling commences now.

I’m cutting silhouettes today for the class Mother’s Day gifts. I’ve moved into the digital age with them this year. First, I snap a photo of each child’s silhouette (which is amazing, because they hold as still as I need, which wasn’t the case when I had to use the overhead projector.)

Then, having purchased the latest Photoshop version (and thank heavens for teacher and student discounts because that’s a chunk of money right there), I managed to work my way through a rather steep learning curve to transform the photos into silhouettes and print them out.

Even with the quick select tool, they’re not good enough to print out and call them done, so I’ve cut eight in the past hour. I actually enjoy having the silhouette emerge from the paper as I snip, and it’s magical how a simple piece of paper evokes the child in question.

Only another twenty-seven heads to go. :P

And another twenty-six days of school. With packing. Now, if I could only find the time to pack. I have another district meeting tomorrow, so there goes that time. Thursday and Friday are reserved for lesson plans and running off homework.

I’m having a difficult time staying after school beyond 4 or 5P, if I don’t ‘have to’. Which packing seems to fall under. Sadly.

However, I’m looking forward to Saturday night, when the middle child and spouse are taking the moms out to a show–Neverwhere. Yes, I know it’s a book (and probably my favorite of Neil Gaiman’s works) but it’s appearing on the stage here in LA at Sacred Fools. All of the reviews are highly positive and I can’t wait. The actors for Croup’s and Vandemeer’s characters are physically spot on for me, and how often does that happen?

So the week thus far may not be perfect, but it’s better than I expected.

Now if I could only land on a dress for the kids’ wedding.

Caught between the Oh Nos! and the Yay! update: And the Eldest landed the North Face manager position for a soon-to-open outlet in Tulalip, WA tonight. Guess who’s moving this weekend?

Which is fine. We can sleep them and the dog. Theirs is one of the houses near the top of the ridge and the fire is now encroaching on the opposite side or it–which doesn’t make them feel secure the way the winds are whipping around. Plus their little neighborhood has one main exit to the freeway, and it’s a narrow two-lane road. Better they evacuate early than in a rush with other neighbors in the area. They’d be crawling.

The eldest child’s most difficult decision so far?

Which pair of skis to save. (You knew that, right?)

Answer: All of them.

(Well, d’oh. You might have to ski ash one of these days in SoCal. Best to be prepared. So it probably wasn’t that hard a decision. But it makes me wonder about his checklist. Fiancee? Check. Dog? Check. Skis? Check. Climbing gear? Check. You know those ropes just light up like a torch….)

The daughter couldn’t go to work today because the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and her offices there, are in the mandatory evacuation area.

The skies are smoke-filled and hazy. The view of the mountain range from the crest above Fillmore was pretty end-of-the-worldish–and that was from 20 miles away.

At least I’ll have everyone safe with us here tonight.

I hate fire season, but at least–knock on wood–the fire isn’t in Fillmore.

For a change.

(Now everyone cross their fingers, in case I just jinxed us by saying it wasn’t.)

I had the flu from hell mid-week and was out two days. That first day, I had the sub from hell. It’s amazing the kids were in decent shape when I got back Friday. I missed the KGB.

That just means they’ll get back to me this coming week and I have to be ready.

I had a half-hour meeting with a parent to resolve an issue Friday after school. Nothing new was said, but we cycled through it all three or four times to be sure. My principal hit me up for the incoming kinder assessment Friday afternoon, so I pulled that out (I won’t say from where) and then informed teachers at the other sites with my apologies for not having had time to consult with them.

Then I got an email from another teacher and screamed. Aloud.

She wanted me to write a poem for our school. (Novels=poetry, somehow. You write? Great! WRITE ME A POEM.  Her idea is to get new furniture through Ellen’s show with a poem and a video. The idea’s good. But to involve me in the writing and filming thereof? Oh, lordylordlord, NO.) No pressure, but it had to be done early this week.

But the capper of it all, is to find Harley on the grass with his back leg swollen. We have an appointment at 11:40, and we’ll most likely be saying goodbye.  Alix is in major tears, and I am… oh, stalwart. I’ve been expecting it for months and aching for him as he lost mobility and ability to do things once so readily available to him.

Anyway, it’s a sad day.

I can’t wait for next week to be over.

The weekend is school and singing three masses and writing.

Yes. Writing. I have to have something to send the Posse this week. Naturally, nothing’s written yet, but starting tomorrow there will be words.

Starting tomorrow afternoon, that is. Because the morning is dedicated to the first of two confirmation masses.

How tired am I? Well, I completely let myself go last night at rehearsal after a glass of wine and suggested we sing  the Doors’ Light My Fire for Pentecost. Everyone else was as  tired as I was by 10P, so we all dissolved in giggles and Kevin riffed into Light My Fire for a moment. Shortly before he sang something else we were rehearsing as Kermit.

Obviously, we need a Muppet mass, in addition to the polka and jazz masses we continue to tell Kevin he must write.

Some day.

And now, I will fall into my bed to make up for the five hours I got last night.

Today culminated with a field trip to Santa Barbara Zoo with 35 kinders–and those were the ones that were mine. The grand total of kiddos wandering the zoo that we could lay claim to was 125.

I followed that up with a lightning visit to a local restaurant to see an out-of-town friend, and then I zipped off for a 90-minute physical therapy session.

I hurt.

We have an Eagle Court tomorrow afternoon and some family members visiting us for brunch on Sunday.

I will be cleaning at the speed of light tomorrow.

I haven’t finished my lesson planning. I brought the homework for the week home to staple, but that’s all. Open House is next Thursday and our friends, the lovely AGB, visit us the Wednesday or Thursday after that.

I would scream, but I don’t have enough energy.

Bed is right around the corner. But first, a hefty dose of Ibuprofen.

And then I promise I will stop playing The Band Perry’s amazing performance of “Done” at the ACM awards over and over. And I will stop trying to figure out if I possibly have enough time (and energy) to hit LA to see Neverwhere. Because Neverwhere. I promise I won’t read tonight since that turns into an hour marathon of reading, which would be okay, if the alarm wasn’t set for 5A.

Yeah. All I want to be is done.

I could have, I suppose waited until the weekend, but this way I can get stuff don around here before school starts up again. (Where did my break go? How is it possible that I’m left with only four more days?)

Mom’s better than I thought she might be. She’s walking better, so the polymyalgia, while painful, isn’t as severe. Her shingles symptoms are abating, and I made sure she ate well, since her appetite took a real hit over the past few weeks. My concerns have receded, for the moment.

My sister–the sitting duck, as Mom calls her–was feeling guilty that she didn’t think to send flowers as I did for Easter. I sent them as an expression of my own guilt. The Sitting Duck takes all the day-to-day hits and I am not there to help. So I swept the patio, emptied the dishwasher and did dishes, shopped for food, moved one chair she wanted moved, and if Mom had just cooperated, I would have taken off two doors to get the chair she wants into the television room for her.

But nooooooooo.

She was worried about my knee and how taking a door off might aggravate it. The Sitting Duck would have helped, except she didn’t have the cell phone with her and I didn’t try the house phone because by then Mom was digging in her heels about being perfectly happy with a temporary substitute chair.

My sister’s boys aren’t… well, doers. They’re thinkers. I told her she ought to shame them with the comment that if their own mother can do it, they ought to be able to do the same task. (These are the boys who have admitted that my children will survive in the wilderness should they be forced to, while each of them would need an extremely long extension cord. OTOH, they make far more money than my children, so go figure.)

Anyway, home I came and with less angst than the last return trip home. I’ve got a list of chores a mile long for the next few days and I should do some writing. After reading something by Guy Guvriel Kay, I realized I need to up the theme of exile in this book. I’m not sure whether I need it to be the sum total of this book, or to save it for the big wallop of the next, but I’m tending toward the latter.

Writing starts this weekend.

(I’m throwing it out to be accountable. Go, me.)

And now, since Harley made me get up early, and I slept lousily last night, I’m going to drown my sorrows in coffee to try to cure the yawn factor that has taken over my brain. I am also giving up on this pillow and buying another new one. The foam rubber pillow at Mom’s was Just Right, and I slept through the night without a problem. I’m so done with the two-hour coming to and settling back in to sleep cycle I’m stuck in currently.

Yeah, it’s a surprise to me, too. Yesterday began at 5:30A and I fell into bed at 11:30P., five minutes after I got home I made every engagement/rehearsal/whatever I had to show for, and I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of anything. But it was close, based on my yawn factor.

Also, an apology to my crit buddies, because Debbie’s sesson was a hit-and-run crit based on a quick read of the story. This week was horrible in terms of time-suckers and energy-zappers.

Luckily there was Guinness. And wine, because Guinness was Not Enough.

Harley woke me at  7:45A this morning with a snappy bark in my ear. I dragged myself out of bed to deal with his breakfast, which he didn’t eat. He didn’t touch his food last night, either, and the only thing he ate this morning was whatever I handfed him.

His tail’s still wagging. I hope he makes it through Easter.

I will go back to school next Friday to prepare for the following week. That week includes a fieldtrip to the Santa Barbara Zoo on Friday. We’re also planting seeds, because that’s what I have to do for Open House. I’m still wrapping up the senses book and the four-page book they write–a page introducing the character, a page of setting, one for the problem, and the last for the resolution. I have seventeen typed and ready to illustrate. I have another seventeen to go.

I am re-evaluating the number of cool projects like that that I can accomplish with thirty-four and no aide.

Yesterday, my kids got a thrill because I let them do a dot-to-dot and color it as an activity. (Not suppposed to do that during small group time–focus on LA. I don’t care any more. Where’s the fun in school? <sarcasm on> I can’t imagine why kids don’t like school all that much any more. </sarcasm off> It’s all academic and use pencils and there is NO FREAKING FUN.)

However, we will do a spring show and I’m teaching mine the music in a few minutes here and there, and hang the consequences. When we return, my partner and I are switching ELD groups. She’s getting the smaller group with the beginners and early intermediate CELDT scorers; I’m taking the 40+ EO group. Based on the behavior problems in that group, that should kill me right there. OTOH, I’ll only have them for two-and-a-half months.

Today, though, is about the music for tonight’s mass. We’re doing Lacrimosa by Mozart, which I do love. Just listen*:

Easter Vigil is at the other church, and of course, they threw a duet at me for a verse. I am going to have to really work to overcome the nerves–there’s something about singing in front of a full house that does me in. I am grateful, however, that I don’t have to actually cantor anything. There’s five other people who can to take the pressure off of me. (Although the day is coming. It’s just a matter of time.)

And now, I’m walking in the hopes that the knee will respond a bit faster to the therapy. I’ve already done my exercises, and I’ve avoided climbing on the elliptical since the knee didn’t like that at all last weekend. And then, there’s the house cleaning. (I’m going to clean room-by-room to get everything back under control. Today is living room and entryway, which includes polishing all the furniture and dusting everything–including the damn ceilings. (No one else will be looking up, but the spiderwebs are approaching the ferocious level.)

*For those reading this on my LJ, click the comments to see the embedded video there. WordPress and LJ are not cooperating this morning.