One week away at school and the hornworms will play! Also the squash borers, weeds, and every pest known to man. My unpicked okra were like a foot long by Friday.
There’s hardly a chance I’ll get to the garden, so exhausting was my first week of school.
That said, it turns out and I’m hesitant to even say it: I sort of love teaching in the public school. It’s like me getting to dream up the funnest, most creative ideas in the world and then try to make them happen with real people in real life. I’m not at home, an anxious mess overthinking and obsessing every little detail of my four kids’ superior education and hoping I’m not screwing them up. Instead they are happy and thriving and conquering and learning and so am I! They’re still reading hundreds of books and playing music and driving me crazy, but once again there’s order and routine! Pinch me!
(But don’t pinch me, because I’ve done something bad enough to my back or hip that I’m worried about my future when it comes to passing out 23 glockenspiels every hour, eek!)
I’ve learned so many lessons from my first week. I thought about writing the principal some “music notes” every week but can’t commit to it. If I can keep a little journal I’ll be happy. Score for this week: one upset parent email (forwarded to the principal who graciously helped me figure out what to do) and two crying students.
I felt badly and spent one evening crying about the email (Joe was out of town for work so he couldn’t talk me off the cliff) but I have wonderful coworkers and friends who’ve assured me that those are good numbers for having seen over 300 students. I played Hanson and opera and Raffi and Billie Eilish (calm down, just Ocean Eyes). We sang solfège and played Row Your Boat with boomwhackers. We passed playdoh balls and an eggplant and squash and told funny things about ourselves. I can be silly and goofy and kids still think I’m awesome. I don’t have to impress any grownups or pretend I’m somebody I’m not. I am winning the lottery here, best job ever. Pray for my back!
You know how crazy it is to make plans? Well, right at the point in our lives we were able to break away from the steadiest of monotonous lifestyle, and all of the city work/school grind—that’s when we ended up moving to Honey Creek. In this beautiful place where it appeared as if the great pandemic had never happened, Joe became a work-at-homer and we settled onto forty acres where kids and crops and animals could grow and roam and suffer grass allergies to the point of misery. I could’ve become the next JK Rowling, hiding myself away in a locked room and writing middle school novels (the least realistic of possibilities, but a gal can dream). I could’ve turned the barns into a wedding venue. I could’ve started a catering company or planted a vineyard. I could be the hermit I long to be with minimal outside interaction. Heck, we could’ve legit homeschooled and traveled on a weekly basis, tagging along with Joe on his work trips near and far.
And what did I do? I put my kids in public school and got a teaching job. Locked in at the most opportune time to be untethered.
Joe’s work has an opening in Kauai right now—that’s what I’m trying to say. We could actually move to Hawaii at this point in our life. And wouldn’t you know we just installed solar panels, I have a contract for the next 10 months, and a very happy junior high boy who just made the ball team.
I think God works just this way, probably to show us what’s best. You could have it all in Kauai, but you could have it all right here too. Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t go to Kauai, but that’s just what I’d expect God to do: put a person solidly in a spot where He calls them. One of those laying aside your own desires for the Better thing.
Don’t judge me if we end up moving to Kauai.
Joe says he’s pretty sure there are no allergies in Kauai. True/false?
onhoneycreek.com 