Back to work

I started back to work today after a more than two-week break. I work in an elementary school as a Special Education teacher's aide. But the kids didn't come back today, it was a teacher's workday. The kids come back Monday.

I helped prepare bulletin boards, bind books, sort papers, glue buttons, copy papers, refresh the M&M bag (yum!) and stuff like that. It was an easy day, with an hour long lunch, no less. But tonight I'm so tired. You'd think I had been asked to jackhammer up the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I went grocery shopping after work. The prices are simply unbelievable. Many things that went on weekly Wed. special are simply gone by the time Friday rolls around, but I still stuck to the specials and didn't drift from my list. It was still hard to come in under budget. Noticing the rise in prices and the difficulty of staying on budget even when buying strictly the same thing, I've still had to raise it $10 per week. But not complaining, I have access to good food, I can afford good food, and I don't lack for good food at home.

I swung by the library to pick up the book on order, "The Paris Correspondent." The Amazon.com blurb says "High-profile journalist Alan S. Cowell's latest novel is a fast-paced trip into the dark heart of a newspaper office abroad. Addictive and illuminating, it deftly portrays the rivalries and complicated passions at the story's heart. Ed Clancy and Joe Shelby are journalists with The Paris Star, an English-language paper based in Paris. Relics from a time when print news was in its heyday, when being a reporter meant watching a city crumble around you as you called in one last dispatch, the Internet age has taken them by surprise. The two friends are faced with the death of what they hold most dear--their careers, and, for Shelby, a woman he cannot bring himself to mention. The Paris Correspondent is a tribute to journalism, love, and liquor in a turbulent era. Written in riveting prose that captures the changing world of a foreign correspondent's life, Alan S. Cowell's breakout novel is not to be missed. Writing from experience and in homage to Reynolds Packard's Dateline Paris, his razor-sharp and darkly funny style will win readers the world over."

So, should be good.

When I got home I had a salmon patty sandwich on crusty boule bread, some potato chips, and green tea. A couple of butter cookies with the rest of the tea for dessert topped me off.

My kitties were happy to see me when I got home. They'd been used to me being here every day and better still, having exactly the same routine each day. Maybe I'm really a cat at heart.