My drive home

Come along with me on my drive home from school. It is 6 miles, down one road, and passes many beautiful sights.

It's rural here, and the pastures in any season are gorgeous. Right now it is still in the low 80s and the overnight temps are in the low 60s. There has been little rain, though, and the fields are brown. Pardon the dimness of the photos, I took them while driving at speed through tinted dark glass... Oh well.

Leaving school, the skies are blue-blue-blue with gorgeous puffy clouds.

I whizz past pastures with occasional barn.

 

There's one of our County school buses. Hello Driver!

Poor barn! Poor shed! Needs repair...

Chicken barns! Agribusiness dominates the local economy, with poultry production particularly important. Farm gate is over 300 million for this small county. Horses are also raised here.

Approaching Gholston's Stand, so named (the oral tradition goes) because of a skirmish between county settlers the Gholstons and their neighbors, and the local Creek Indians, in the 1700s. Read about the tale here. Still loving those clouds.

The traffic is a killer.

A large, fine home. With a fantastic rock wall.

A nearby farmstead. Getting close now.

One of the other county schools. I live close by. I hear the opening and dismissing bell, the busses crank up, and the children at recess.

There's Ralph's Farm Stand. Hi Ralph!

A church on every corner. Literally. There are two other churches within stone's throw.  Both are mine, we own two buildings. This one is sad...hardly anyone goes.

My street. Man, I really need to clean my windshield.

The shed on the property. And the small herd of sheep. Hello sheep!

I'm home. 6 miles, 10 minutes, from a great apartment to a great school and pretty all the way. Life is good!

Fall: flu, cool air, and roasted veggies

I've had the flu all week. It's not fun and it's not pretty.

No I never get the flu shot. I have not had the flu since 1984 so avoiding a drug that I haven't needed for 30 years is a plus, in my opinion.

I was feeling OK Monday night. Some friends stopped by. They brought me a donut on the way home from Athens, and we talked in the driveway for a while. I came back inside, cleaned up (ate the donut) and went to bed. I woke up around 2AM a different person.

From Tuesday through Thursday I was one sick puppy. I went back to work Friday but probably shouldn't have. I'd never been out of work for three days in a row, let alone four, so I sure showed the flu who was boss. Meanwhile my colleagues at work were quietly Lysoling behind me.

This morning I'm very weak but finally the fever is good and gone. For a while there I thought it was a defective thermometer, permanently stuck above 100. It does work though. The mercury is finally down below 99 now.

One of the hardest things about being sick alone is the work. I still had to clean the kitty litter box and feed the darlings, and at least do the minimal things to keep the house going. I have to do all the clean up now from the sick week- take out the trash, disinfect everything, do laundry. And just when I'm at my weakest. I'll take it slow.

I also feel bad because both my work and my school need helpers today. School is holding a yard sale and needs workers to help set up and take down. I don't mind the cool/cold and I would have helped set up in the pre-dawn hours. Church is having homecoming soon and they need workers this morning to clean the inside and outside of the church. Just when I think I'd like to go help, I get dizzy and weak from simply standing up too quickly.

The weather changed dramatically since yesterday. It went from humid and warm to freshly cool with a nip in the wind. The low tonight is supposed to be 41 degrees...the heater guy isn't coming until October 9. That means I'll do some baking and roasting to warm up the place. It won't take much to make the apartment snug. A friend gave me two bags of jalapeno peppers and I seeded them Monday. I'll roast some, and as for the others others I'll toss into a cornbread muffin mix. I got buttermilk at the store yesterday. I'll also bake some potatoes and dream up a casserole too. Maybe I'll try some jalapeno poppers. I have the feta...

Even though it's dark and windy out, when you step outside it feels so good to breathe in that fresh crisp air instead of breathing the hot air like when you open the oven and get a blast in the face.

Choosing just the right pumpkin...one of the joys of fall.
EPrata photo

Morning commute

My morning commute is only 10 minutes. It's a straight shot up one road and then I veer off a bit to the school road. I go by pastures and a few homes and trees and ponds and cows. I love the moon in the  morning and the when I pass the open fields I can see it very well as it sets.

This time of year, the drive starts out dark. (7:00 AM)

The hay is in!

I think about what's ahead. Usually I think about all I have to do and the little time I have to do it in. But I try to focus on the kids as I drive. I think about the funny things they say and do. For example, I overheard this yesterday:

When the day begins at school, kids enter the building and some go to the cafeteria for breakfast and some go to the gym and wait for the first bell. When the bell rings, there is a lot of traffic in and out of the gym.

The kids don't naturally align themselves into the proper traffic pattern of entering or exiting on the right side and the left side. This year we put little P.E. cones on the floor to direct them in, and out. Otherwise a lot of kindergarteners get bumped into by fifth graders trotting off to breakfast. However, some kids still cut the last cone going in and go across the threshold in the wrong direction.

There is a decorative cone-shaped neck-high plastic tree in the hall. I took it and put it in the spot where the kids tend to cut across.

Two of the fifth-graders came out of the gym. They spotted the tree.

The girl said, "That's a nice touch!"
The boy said, "I think it's going overboard."

LOL!

The day brightens fast around here. I took this picture while driving, putting up the camera, and aimlessly shooting the road ahead as I went tootling down the highway. I'd stop, but as you can see, there is no shoulder.

Today a kindergarten boy cracked me up. He's all boy, plain spoken, down to earth, loves his four-wheeler and says what's on his mind. I love him.

He had to choose 6 books for his book basket. He wanted books about puppies and snakes. We looked through all the puppy and snake baskets and he found five books he was interested in. We went through every other basket but nothing else appealed. We started to go through the baskets a second time.

Pink sky, moon set, cows wake up. (The blobs are cows)

I was started to get a little desperate. I had other kids to work with and he was taking a lot of time...and he was starting to lose his focus. I held up a book I knew other kids enjoyed, it was hilarious. But the cover featured a granny looking women scrubbing the floor. I said "Hey! This one's funny! You will like it!" he looked profoundly skeptical. I opened to the hilarious page, and showed it. "Look, she hung the Meanies on the line."

Glanced at the page, looked at me, waited a second, shrugged and said, "I ain't laughin'".

He had a point. Okey dokey then. Back to the book search!

I love morning ground fog.

It's full day when I arrive. There are a few cars lined up by the front door with puffs of air coming out the tailpipe, these are parents in idling cars with kids waiting for the opening bell so the kids can exit the car and enter their school day. I walk across the parking lot and think about all the important things I have to do. And those are: for the 2000th time, listen to the story of how the tooth fell out, ask how old they are when they tell me "It's my birthday!", say "Yes!" when asked "Do you like my dress/shirt/hair? And all in all, love on some kids.

The day has begun.

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.