Along Came a Spider

Talk about a random post! I am so sick of this winter that I even welcome the return of spiders (while I find them fascinating, I still have an aversion that may go a bit beyond what is accepted as normal). The guy (or gal) on the left was living in our back yard last year when s/he posed for me and, I suspect soon after I took the picture headed south for the winter - probably Florida. I have to give him credit as this has been a winter for the record books. So far, this has been the snowiest one in over a hundred years and is number two on the all-time list (at least since official records have been kept). Just when I thought we had turned a corner, this past Friday was yet another day out of school! So far, our regular school days have been extended an extra 35 minutes to make up for all of our missed days - that may not seem like a lot, but my students (who feel about school the way I feel about spiders) are getting to be even more of a handful than usual. Even though this has been a pretty good year, I am ready to think about retirement, which simply means looking for another job to supplement my state's lousy retirement offering. Maintaining health insurance is my biggest concern. If anyone reading has any offers, I'm ready to listen. What am I looking for? I don't know - I have taught for nearly thirty years, so I don't even know what's out there. It seems like so many jobs have gone to China, India, etc., that there are not many left. I would love to somehow to have benefits and work from home, which itself would offer many benefits. As it is now, I walk a delicate tightrope as I take a mild diuretic in the morning. At school, I can't just walk out of my classroom to go potty (an expression that emerged when our child showed up) - if anything happened in the classroom while I was elsewhere, guess whose fault it is.... The thing that seems to most drive schools is fear of liability - I'm old enough to remember when schools used to be about education, but that's another story for another time.

Later.