First Day of School

With all this heat, it's hard to believe that another school year is beginning. I remember when school began in the fall, you know, the real fall! But alas it is on, so a very busy time indeed.

Actually the weeks leading up to today have seen their fair share of action, too. First, Mama D realized the gravity of her new school situation shortly after returning from vacation up north. The cool part was that the visual arts department (her and 2 others) had their own building, but the real part was that it was going to take hours and hours of work to get the building ready for school.

You see, Mama D and another newbie arrived to this building on the tail coats of two 20+ year-career teachers. The departed obviously were wonderful and successful teachers, with a big reputation to live up to, however they shared a common feature among art teachers: they couldn't throw anything away. There were a thousand storage cabinets filled with a million objects, arranged in no logical order what-so-ever (picture shows the clean-up process mid-term). There were many kilns yet none that fired properly due to a voltage mis-match within the building. There were looms hanging from the walls, equipped by a whole caged-off area's worth of stuff, that had barely been touched in over a decade!

Three weeks of muscle, at least a half-dozen filled dumpsters, and several hefty "permanent loans" later, the building finally started to feel navigable, if not homey! Mama D spent a ton of nights and weekend days trying to figure out where everything would go (we basically freed-up a whole 30'x80' area to use as a classroom that had previously served as a broom closet). naM would go on other nights when there was a pre-arranged list of tasks that generally required tools or the lifting of objects over 25 lbs. All was good, for he got to know Mama D's new coworkers, who were also quite busy there, in the meantime.. And then there were nights we hired a babysitter so we could both work! Romance!

But things are looking good- Mama D is ready to begin a new year in a new place and is already feeling the energy after a single Open House session, Iris is taking her two new places in stride, and naM is going "wee wee wee" all the way home!