The Sky Gods Bequeathed Us With...

...The remains of a balloon.

A few minutes ago, I watched something white gently float down into the backyard. It came out of the clear blue sky on a calm day, so of course I was intrigued. I went out and discovered the freshly popped remains of a balloon, resting limply on the paving stones.

I quickly picked it up and disposed of it before the chickens could investigate. I figured they'd think it was styrofoam and try to eat it.

Another Week Begins...

A glorious sickle moon reaped the horizon as I drove to work, but by the time I arrived there, the final, shining tip had been swallowed by the hills. There was supposed to be a meteor shower right after sunset tonight, but I missed that part. The moon was beauty enough.

I forgot to mention a funny thing about the kids I had to wake up last week. I made an exception to my policy of meeting the kids beforehand and having them show me where they were sleeping, instead relying on a hand drawn map with directions to their bunks. One of the teachers messed up though, and for two nights in a row, I woke up the wrong kid. Both nights, he got up and used the bathroom, never thinking to wonder why I was waking him up in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, the kid who I was supposed to be waking up was quietly wetting his bed on the bunk below. This week, I only have one kid to wake up, and I know where he is sleeping.

Oh yeah, and one of the girls I woke up every night last week is actually on Willow's soccer team. I hadn't recognized her. It's a small world...

Currently listening to: Wovenhand "Live in Novi Sad Synagogue, 2011" on Youtube.

A Bat to the Face

The phrase, "a bat to the face" immediately brings to mind a violent confrontation, but when hearing it, people tend to forget that the word "bat" has more than one meaning.

I started my work week by getting hit in the face by a bat. To be more specific, I got hit in the eye by a bat, and it happened so quickly that I didn't even have time to close my eye. I'm talking about the small, fuzzy kind of bat, of course. It was most likely a Little Brown Bat, but one with a faulty navigation system. The experience was sort of like quickly petting a mouse with my eyeball.

The bat bounced off and kept right on going.

This happened at the beginning of week number three of the outdoor school season, a week that is now mostly behind me. For the second week in a row, I've been tasked with waking up 5 incontinent campers in the middle of the night. That's a lot of potential bed-wetters. I'd rather have to wake them up than have to clean them up though. It does, however, sometimes seem that, with each successive year, the kids become younger and more helpless, not to mention more medicated. There was a time in history when kids this age already had jobs. Not that I'm advocating suspension of child-labor laws or anything like that, but it's interesting to think about how completely different the modern childhood experience is from, say, that of children living a hundred years ago.

Currently listening to: Marco Serrado Gallato "Taaru"