Thanksgiving has been settled; Dave and I will go to the mountain, and the ILs will sit around staring blankly at the tv, wondering if the babies haave figured out how to tell time yet, and thusly will not cry until it is time to eat. Grrr.

ANYWAY! On a lighter note, some pictures!

Here is my mother and my husband, sharing Dave’s zombie costume.  And my inlaws think ALL families are weird.

And, it’s official.  We have become Those People.  The kind that commission portraits of their pets. I know. I’m sorry.  Just wait til we have kids.

Actually, I had noticed these paintings at the vet when the cat was on death’s door the week we moved.  I remembered the name, and two months later I was at our local Challenger Learning Center for a tour and mini-mission, and our leader shared the name of the pet artist I had admired.  I asked her, and it was her, so we went back and forth for a while, during which time I found out she had a kid at my school, that I was with for those 3 days I was an actual student teacher, before I got my job.

THEN, she was my sub on Monday, and saw the picture that this painting is based on at my desk. (My kids love FatKitty — really, who doesn’t? — and I have a framed 5×7 of her fatness in my room for them to gaze upon, and show their parents.  On Tuesday, she brought in the finished portrait, which was an anniversary gift for us.

I took the picture at an angle, because the glass is not nonglare, but it’s 11×14 and hangs in our dining room, and everyone who’s seen it, loves it.  It’s very cool.

Also, I’ve become an accidental hockey fan.  As an alumna of a Div1 championship hockey university, you think it would have happened earlier, but no.  That first game with Jess was a blast, and then Dave came into tickets this week, so my mom and dad came down so that I could take my dad to his first ever Maine game, which he LOVED.  So I spent my prep period on the phone this morning, buying tickets for all four of us to go to the December 4th game.  Hockey is pure and simple.  There is fighting!  AND ice skating! It is the perfect sport. There aren’t a million rules to know, or a half-dozen ways to score. It is straight up sport, and I love watching it live. Who knew?

First, Winkflash blows for photo service. Just an FYI.  Shutterfly costs more, but is far superior.  Winkflash does have a 100% money-back guarantee, so I’m not completely out of money and decent prints. Anyway.

I slept in embarrassingly late today, as Dave got up early to do the football game. Yay, overtime!  I called Angie, my friend and coworker, to see if she wanted to go to the craft fair at the civic center.  I wanted to see if there was anything cool, and to see what photogs were there, what they were charging, and whether I could compete.  I think I could definitely compete, and Angie thinks I don’t charge enough. I haven’t gotten any actual orders at school yet, which is weird, because I’ve seen people filling out the forms.  Maybe they are waiting til payday?  Ah well, I can at least give them as holiday presents.  Anyway, after that we went to World Over, to try to spend my gift certificate, but I couldn’t find anything I really wanted to buy.  There are some neat rugs that would be nice when the Sewing Room’s true purpose is revealed, but I didn’t want to buy today.  We then went to lunch at Ruby Tuesday, which is in the mall, and we got a booth next to a window that looks out into the corridor of the mall.  We saw three kids from school, two saw us.  One from my room, and a 6th grader whose mom just did the painting of FatKitty for me.  I wonder what kids think, to look in and see two teachers hanging out on their day off, drinking coffee and rolling their eyes and all.  We talked about being Embarrassing Teacher types and going into the arcade to throw down some mad DDR moves, but we didn’t.  I dropped Angie off, and came home, and waited for my sweet, wonderful husband to come home from working ALL day, on a scissor lift 20+ feet in the air.  When he got home, he was cold, cold cold…. anyway.

The school week ended well.  I had to get my grades done, which is always a pain in the ass, but three kids made honor roll that weren’t expecting it, and it was cool.  I also had only 6 As in math, and one went to a SED kid that had never been in "real math" before this year.  And, it was a "real A," too. He was so freakin’ proud, I wanted to cry.  I also had two girls come up to me to tell me that they couldn’t wait until graduation, (in JUNE) because they found a poem on the internet that they were going to read to me, about ‘the teacher they loved the most,’ and then they made me swear to not look it up before then. Ohhhhkaaayyy.  I also got some compliments at Digs about my magic fairy wand that I use to increase the positive energy in my class on bad days and before tests (and you know me , I am so not a fairywand person, but the kids love it in that "you are such a dork, and we love you anyway" way."

And after days like Friday, when the week was been just one big mindfuck as far as my teaching career goes (the whole Evil Empire ensuring NCLB will continue to be ‘enforced,; being hauled into SED because of a totally unfounded complaint that I instantly rebutted with documentation that I actually do a damn good job modifying for all students, thank you very much, another night to discuss our local assessment system and then, report cards) I feel like I COULD do this for another week.  One of my new honor roll kids is a kid that I thought would kill me last year, from the sheer hatred he had of me.  He started off sketchy this year, and then pulled it together.  As I said to Angie, "I think he gets it this year, that I’m not working against him, I’m working with him when I explain ‘Look, if you don’t take off the hat, Principal is going to nail you, and you know it, so I’M asking you to take off the hat before we leave.’ kind of stuff."  (Which, sidenote, no-hat policies are ridiculous.  I’d much rather have my kid wearing a non-offensive Sox hat than a hoodie pulled up an around their eyes, you know? Stupid rule.)

And, in the background is that whole ‘election’ thing that happened this week. I don’t even know where to start, except to say that if it comes down to an Underground Railroad for women that need an abortion, I live in a border state, and grew up in a border town, and would be right there to make sure women get what they need.  How fucking sad that I don’t think it’s that farfetched a concept?

(First, TypePad rocks even more than usual; I didn’t lose my post! It totally looked like I did, it didn’t show up in recent entries or on the journal itself, but it did show up after I posted the second recap. So cool.)

Daylight Savings Time. It was dark by Oprah, and that’s just sick.

Here’s the thing, every year I do this. I get wistful for winter. By February, I’m all “Get me some fucking SUNSHINE already!” but this time of year? I start to sniff the air for snow.

Now that the leaves are gone, and especially with the early darkness, I am starting to think about my cocoa supply, and I’m wondering when my first snow day will be. There’s just something about that first snowfall that I can’t resist.

Today felt like snow. It was gray and cold, and woodsmoke was in the air.

I can’t wait to vote. I have been reading so much election stuff today, and I’m so irritated by the current administration that I am voting EAGERLY. I only wish we had cable to see The Daily Show coverage. I’ll have to settle for networks. I also researched what districts I’m now in (first time voting in this specific district; last presidential election I was on the East side, and last election we were out in the sticks) and figured out that I’m pretty much checking the D box for everyone. I’m a registered Independent, and in our neighborhood race, the Republican seemed to have good ideas but the Dem was a retired math teacher and had education first. (The Republican had health care as a priority, specifically Dirigo Health, which I support.)

Anyway, these cycles of change: time, weather, politics, etc, all make me hopeful. I may not be pregnant this month, but mayde Future Baby will be so liberal that existing in even the simplest form under the illiterate Republican fascist president is just too much to handle.