Looks like we'll be staying home for a while. Job/school/home improvement all taking up time. No $ for airplanes for a while. Oh well, lucky in love is good enough for me. And the sunsets have been spectacular.

Today there was a beautiful fox right outside the window eating juniper berries from the grove of trees where I pray in the mornings. Rust red and grey with black eyeliner and a thick black stripe on her tail.

I've nearly got the new loom set up (the one I've been using was returned to its delightful owner). We're hanging up the new sari S. got in Vancouver. We're rearranging furniture (anybody got a fabulous comfy chair for the sunroom?) We're eating well and recovering from our various adventures.

I'm nearly out of the woods from a bout of poisoning from vacuuming mouse poison in a major housecleaning expedition last weekend while S. was out of the country. The mice, FINALLY, appear to be gone. However, CFIDS means I have extreme immune reactions to things. It's been challenging.

Next semester I start classes for my school administrator's license. It's one of those "if you want it done right, do it yourself" kinds of things. No one is doing some of the admin. work at my new school (which is way too much work but otherwise a great place to teach). So if I'm going to do the work, I might as well be official. They're giving me enough of a pay increase to pay for the classes. I'm just worried about exhaustion. And doesn't spending Saturdays from 9-5 studying "School Finance" sound just fabulous?????????????????

Oh well. Like I said, Lucky in love. The rest is a crap shoot.

Life is good. New job is good. Relationships are good.

What's that song? "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy." OK, so I gave up the beer a long time ago, but you get the idea.

I am rich in everything but dollars. There's enough gold in the sky to make up for that. If you live in NM, look out your window right now. It's impressive.

New job is good. Really nice people, do-able work and do-able work schedule.

And we are receiving health benefits AS A MARRIED COUPLE. NYNPSIA (NM public schools insurance) accepts marriage certificates from other states and countries.

Please let queer teachers in this state know. It saves hundreds of dollars to be married rather than domestic partners.

Also see Silveredmane's journal for where I went this week.

Only a couple more days of summer. I have to go back to work on Wednesday.

Haven't made much of a dent in the project list. However, a month off work certainly improved the physical and emotional well-being. Finally some time to weave and read and be married.

Happy pride, by the way.

I did get to visit with my family of origin. I did get to hike in the woods. I did get to see some friends without being on a deadline to get home or to an appointment.

My intentions for the new school year at the new job are to be open-minded, efficient and flexible all at the same time. Challenging, as being efficient ususally involves everybody doing things my way. However, I'd really like my job to just be my job, a pleasant and important task that pays the bills. I'd like things to be a little more relaxed, a little easier this year. I'm tired. I'm thinking easy is looking really good. I don't mind when the kids have drama. I just hate it when the adults do. So: whatever I find when I go in on Wednesday, I'm hoping to take it all in stride, do my best, and come home content with having done a decent day's work.

Of course, I might have to start a revolution if nobody else is doing it. ;)

We'll see.

If you'd like to show off your muscles, I have a trundle bed and desk that need moving on May 24th, and many boxes of books and papers that need moving on May 21st. Both fabulous opportunities occur in Albuquerque. The 21st has a Santa Fe end, and the 24th has a Rowe Mesa end if you'd rather do those.

I used to just do these things myself, or with a friend or partner. I'm still stubborn enough to do them, but I'm still paying for the move last July. I haven't gotten that thing down that's referred to as "growing old gracefully." I'm trying. This post is an attempt.

All the hoofed beings seem to be doing well this year. Elk, deer and pronghorn herds are healthy, and I've never seen so many longhorn calves in my life. I guess I'm just a sucker for baby anythings.

I did get a job in Santa Fe, finally. No more 2 hour commutes. No more being away from home for days. I'm hoping it was the right decision. I will have to work for a month this summer, but will have at least a few weeks off. Everyone always says that it must be nice to have so much time off as a teacher, but I was part of a study that tracked how many hours a year teachers work and it came to 52 weeks a year on average. We just crunch it all into 10 months. And then collapse. I'm ready for the collapse part. I could barely walk today and tomorrow we're taking the kids to an amusement park. Not my idea of a good time. A whole day walking on pavement. The kids like it, though.

We have 25 graduates this year, many of them the first in their families to graduate from high school. Most of them figured at one time that they wouldn't make it. Most of them have dropped out or been kicked out of other schools. Many of them will make stellar contributions to society. A couple want to be philanthropists. They aren't starting with any money - every kid in the school qualifies for free lunch. We talk about grant writing and non-profits and respectful cooperation and design methods with the folks receiving the benefits.

One girl is going to be a teacher. Another a cop. Since her cousin was just shot by cops for holding a cell phone, she's obviously got an agenda. More power to her if she can change that institution from the inside.

The survival stories are amazing. The number of close relatives who have died this year is astounding. The fact that these kids actually manage to get to school enough days to pass classes is a miracle. Many times I've heard of OD's, suicide attempts by family members, raids by the police, often leaving small children in the care of older children, pregnancies, abuse, parents who have late parties on the couches where the kids wait to go to sleep, parents who get deported and leave the rent unpaid, parents who haven't been home in a while and have left the fridge empty.

And still the kids graduate.

One girl's sister's body was found in a trash can last month. Several have cousins whose bodies were found on West Mesa last month. Several have lost parents this year. Several (5, I think) have had children this year. Death and life.

And still they finish their portfolio projects and their essays and their final exams and they write in the teachers' yearbooks and thank us for not giving up on them.

They've read Othello. They've written a business plan. They've calculated the areas of the school buildings. They've given powerpoint presentations. They've hiked Tent Rocks. They've pulled weeds. And tomorrow they get to ride the roller coaster.

I should remember to wear a hat.

I should tell them at least 2 more times that I'm proud of them.

And on the 25th I should sleep in.

100 cranes flew over my little mud-spattered Subaru as I was coming home. The CD was singing "Jubilate Deo" and the moon was rising over a pink and peach and lavendar sunset above blue mountains. In the rearview mirror was an orange flame western sky.

Deer and antelope and elk are all in herds this time of year. Cranes and geese are in big flocks. But we're just 2 2-leggeds and 2 cats up here on the mesa. Oh, and mice. (I think Gertrude is still around. Her name was Athena but S said I'd never catch her with that name.)

The house smells of baking bread.

Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria Tua.

I have everything I've always wanted. My dreams have come true. A wonderful relationship, a beautiful, peaceful home, a loving family, useful work, fabulous friends and hope.

They are all temporary, of course. The debt is beyond critical mass. Health is fragile - in loved ones especially. I WILL lose all of this. That is certain. We don't get out of this alive, and I'm guessing I don't get to take anything but the love and the experiences with me when I die.

But for the moment, there is good coffee, my beloved sleeping, scarves on the loom, a blue sky, purring cats and all of you.

May we all recognize the fleeting perfection of these many unique and magnificent snowflakes in our lives.

Wishing everyone a beautiful eighth day of Chanukah, 3rd day of Kwanzaa, end of 2008 and whatever other acknowledgements you make in these short days.

Blizzard.

See ya'll next spring.

Actually, come hell or high water (high snow drifts being the most likely), I've gotta get to ABQ tomorrow to pick up S at the airport.

And it's final exam week.
And I have 2 field trips this week.
And grades are due on Friday.
And I do not want to spend the week snowed out of heaven just so I can go to work.

So: I'm hoping for about a foot of snow. The intrepid Subaru can handle that. Plus it'll be spectacularly beautiful and we won't have to worry about fires in the spring. I'm also putting in a request for more snow between Dec. 27th (after Solstice and after the kids come up for Chanukah and after the Turtle Dances) and Jan. 4th. Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask.

Back to the loom. The eagle shawl is coming along. A new technique I might have just invented, though it's probably been invented a hundred times before.

Looks like a fabulous day for a fire in the woodstove. I understand my nephews are out learning to use a chainsaw after the blizzard back east blew down a bunch of their trees. Perhaps they'd like to visit their dear old aunt next summer (hint hint) and use their new skills making next year's wood pile.

The cats are playing with their new pet mice. The pet mice are hoping I catch them and put them outdoors before the cats get them again. The elk are hiding in the woods. And all is peaceful in the wild queendom.

A herd of elk outside the window. Flocks of cranes over the gleanings of the cornfields in Moriarty. Full moon fights at school - 2 girlfights, 1 boyfight, 1 teacher/principal argument.

I'll just go on a dump run.
And weave. An eagle on a sun-colored shawl.

Nov. 6th - at an education conference:
"The young people in military uniforms with presumably fake guns presented the colors this morning to open the teachers' conference. For the first time, the first time since I started making choices about such things, I was drawn to some sort of complicity in the respectful standing for the striped flag. Like perhaps it could become something other than a symbol of the largest military-industrial complex in the world to date."

And then I went on about education.
And then I ran into an old friend and we talked about how we've downplayed the "black man in the white house" thing and worked on issues and "most likely to succeed" kind of choices (OK, I really like Cynthis McKinney sometimes) and then, on Nov. 4th, we got kicked in the gut with "OMG we elected a Black man. We did it." and how it's not actually any kind of a side issue or side effect or footnote to history or anything but big. And finally.

The school counselor at my school (young Hispanic mother) says, with tears in her eyes, "I finally feel like I can say to my children, 'You can be anything you want to be.'"

And "Si (with an accent) se puede" got translated into English and everybody said it loud on TV. And Mr. Obama clearly and with fully present intent, stepped in line with Lincoln and Kennedy and King and didn't bow his head. And all those things that happened that I missed cuz I don't know the codes. But the people who've been singing in code for 400 years heard them, I know that.

And he said, "gay" and he said "Native American" and he said things in language nobody could miss and he said it in the same paragraph as "America" referring to the US and he didn't put his head down the whole time.

At the conference I heard, and I've heard it before but I keep forgetting, that a poor student in a rich school does much better statistically than a rich student in a poor school, and that acheivement gap looks really different from when we're looking around for some cultural factor to blame. And one of our kids got into those rich schools and look where he ended up. I've got a few more in my classroom this week. I'm trying to prep them for Harvard a little better, trying to spend a little less time congratulating them on completing some mediocre essay. It's hard to find the line between unconditional love and tough love. Tough unconditional love, I guess.

Last Wednesday, students were looking around the room at the 18-year-old first time voters entering the classroom with their fists raised, hugging me, discussing McCain's speech in positive terms, referencing the letter they wrote to a Republican Senatorial candidate who'd visited our class. You could see the confusion as the other kids tried to understand that what was happening on TV was being informed by some of their classmates. They never believe me when I tell them they'll do great things, leave a legacy. They tell me I'm crazy to think someone from our school will lead something, change something, save someone, inspire the world. But maybe now.

The kid who always gets asked to stop disrupting class, and who turns her projects in late, voted. And every candidate and every bond issue she voted for won. And she knows it. And you can't ever unteach something once someone has learned it.

Current Music: silent woods, purring cat