You've got to love feedback

Every year at Avalon we give students, parents, and staff, opportunities to give us feedback.  It is always interesting.  This year, one of the students in the adivsory I share with a co-worker, evaluated both of us on the same form.  They wrote in response to the question, "What do you like best about your advisor?" that "They are funny/smart."  The student apparently then thought more about the manner and decided to revise her statement.  She drew an arrow from smart to Carrie's name, and from funny to mine.  I think we should both be a little wounded by that delineation, but I do think I got the shorter end of that particular stick!

April blues

Back on April 3, when St. Paul was deluged with yet a new form of frozen crap falling from the sky, I tried not to think of it not as some evil little weird derivitive of snow, or even as some sort of late spring micro-hail, but as confetti.  It didn't work.

Spring Break tripping!

For Spring Break 2014, we really went all out.  The boys and I joined Tim Leone-Getten and 11 other History Day scholars from Open and caravaned down to Carleton College.  We spent the windy, wintry day in the cozy library, with one quick outing to St. Olaf for a book there, as well as a stop for donuts.  It was a treat to spend the day with such a bright, inquisitive, group of kids- all willing to get up early and spend a precious spring break day studying.  Loved it.

He's faster. Shoot.

In late March we ventured back up to Dunord for another winter weekend.  Sure, the weekend was billed as 'Spring Fling', but with 3 plus feet of snow still on the ground, we took advantage of the one last time to get out on skies. With unfortunate results.  No, no one got injured as we glided down the ridge from the BWCA back into Dunord proper.  No, we did not suffer from frost bite or get stuck (for too long) in snow mounds that were over our heads.  What happened is that I skied with Eli and had to face up to the fact that he is faster than me.  The first time we went out and he left me in the dust I chalked it up to the fact that I was carrying a heavy backpack and he was unencumbered.  The second time I blamed it on a bad wax job (not eyebrows, but skis). But when it happened on the third ski, and we were waxed the same, I had no backpack, and he still dusted me, well, then I had to own up to the fact that the kid has gone and done it. Dang.  My only condolence is that several other people saw him out on the trails and remarked on his smooth, quick, stride.  Which was nice to hear, as I couldn't see it- he was too far ahead of me.

Real world homework

I love St. Paul Open School for a variety of reasons, but one of them is the homework.  It has not caused us many battles this year as there is very little doing of stuff for the sake of doing it- like the spelling homework we battled through in years past. Well, except the three-dimensional shapes Eli came to tears over.  It should have been fun, but something went haywire.

Anyway- one day this spring I had Eli making Spanish tapas- he chose a nice fried potato with a spicy tomato sauce, and Theo practicing a TED talk. Theo's class was given the assignment to create a new idea for a children's museum exhibit.  Then pitch it in the form of a TED talk.  Then actually walk down to the Children's Museum, meet with staff, and pitch your idea.  My goodness, the kid took it seriously. As he should have.

Later that same evening, Eli, inspired by his coding class, claimed that trying to hack into our computer and take control of the mouse while I was trying to do some work, could actually be considered homework, and therefore I should quit discouraging him from doing it.  Hmm.  Not sure how I feel about that.

11 year old vocabularly building

While we were eating dinner on St. Patrick's day, Jon was commenting about how he ran into some people coming from the St. Pat's day parade.  He mentioned that although the calendar said mid-March, the weather was more like January, and people were definitely not dressed for our current temperatures.  He went so far as to suggest some of them might even have been dressed in a 'lewd' manner.  Theo asked what lewd meant, but before we could answer (and how would we have answered?) he said, "Wait, does it mean ludicrously nude?"  Yes, Theo, it does.  And I'm sure in his mind, lewd is spelled lude, which makes his definition even better.

Winter induced stupidity

One freezing cold morning  I ran out to my car after working out at the Y.  I was already on the cusp of being late for my 7:45 meeting.  I unlocked the car, jumped in, started it as it was about 20 below zero, then jumped back out to scrape the windows, as ice and snow had accumulated during my brief time at the Y.  I scraped and then went to get back into the RUNNING car.  But my door was locked!  What?  How did that happen?  All my stuff was in locked car.  That was running.  My phone, my house keys...so even if I could catch a bus quickly to run home and get another car key, I had no money to pay for the bus, nor a key to open my house door.  And it was -20.  I think the cold froze my brain, causing me to bolt into action before really thinking the whole situation through.

So I ran into the Y, frantically, knowing that I had about a 3 minute window that if I was extremely lucky, I might catch Jon before he jumped into the pool at the Y closer to his work.  I used the Y phone to call his cell, once, twice, fourteen times.  No answer!  I then thought to call the front desk of the Skyway Y before Jon checked in there.  I asked the Midway Y desk person for the number of the Y down the street.  He had NO idea.  What?  So I demanded he give me a unused Y membership card as I knew the numbers for all the local Ys were on the back.  Not sure why he didn't know that.  I called the Skyway Y and breathlessly asked them to look for a tall, not-blonde, guy in his 40s who answers to Jonathan.  He should be passing by the desk in the next few minutes...and if he did, stop him!  Ask him to call the Midway Y (Wait- here's their number as you may not know it!!) and ask for Gretchen!  Don't let him get in the swimming pool as I need him!

I then started to worry about my car out there running on the street, unattended.  So I quickly tried to explain my situation to the sleepy desk guy.  I think he got it. If someone called the front desk and asked for Gretchen, it was me!  Then I ran back outside to check my car.  I was sweating by this point.  Shower wasted.  Car was still there.  Still locked. Still running.  Ran back inside.  No calls for Gretchen.  Back outside. Still there.  It was at this point that I had the brilliant thought to check all of the car doors.

Sure enough.  It was only the driver door that was locked. All other doors unlocked.  So I sheepishly got in the back, crawled over the front seat, grabbed my purse, turned off the car, got out, ran back in, explained to the desk guy that if someone called for Gretchen to tell the person that the emergency was over.  Then I used my cell phone to call the other Y, cancel the APB on Jonathan, and then try Jon's cell.  He answered. He had been home in bed the whole time, having skipped his workout.  He woke up to find 14 calls from an unknown number (the Y!) and was getting worried.  I told him to go back to bed.  Crisis averted.