love this sign

Actually the thing I love most about this sign is the road it's beside......

It looks somewhat "driven on", wouldn't you say? You've gotta love a small town. We sure do!

a slow week

I have been sick all week. It's been a rather strong reminder to me that I have not been careful about washing my hands when I'm in the schools. I will now do better at that!

We are still without snow but it's in the forecast for this coming week. I took these pictures last Sunday on our walk when I was feeling much better and wasn't being too careful about keeping my head out of the breeze. In the end it was probably the ice cream that did me in!

what's wrong with this picture?

The workers are putting the windows in the house across the street. I looked out and saw this guy working and thought - "What's wrong with this picture?". So what is it? Well, it's November 9 today and he's working in short sleeves. It's supposed to reach 15 degrees today which would be a record high for this day.

We've had glorious weather and soon it will be over but for now we've certainly been enjoying it.

a perfect day

November 7. A beautiful day. 15 degrees. Howard and I walked down to the creek and sat in the grass there for a long time, soaking up the sun.

Then we walked and walked and ended our stroll with ice cream from the local diner. Howard took me there for the first time over 20 years ago and introduced me to "twist" ice cream.


Someone called out to us as we walked past with our ice cream cones. "Ice cream! In November?!" We all laughed. What a perfect day.

sunrise this morning

life for me these days

If I'm not at home sorting and cleaning or sewing curtains, I am probably at a school in the area subbing for the day, or part of the day. I am now on the radar big time and I have been getting called - a lot! It's been really good and I'm starting to find a bit of a rhythm with a job that has no rhythm at all. On Friday I spent the entire day teaching music in an elementary school and I was reminded why it was that I grew weary of teaching music! It's a tiring job and you never get a break. You go hard all day and you have to be up for every class. After singing "Hot Pumpkin" at least 150 times that day, I was almost ready to scream! But I didn't. :) I am really, really enjoying this subbing thing even after an afternoon with a very hyper grade 5 class today. Mostly I find it very interesting and just plain fun. Because there are so many children of German and Russian/German immigrants in the schools in this area, I've been able to startle quite a few kids by speaking German to them. It's been great! And I've even used my Portuguese a few times - once with a little kid from Columbia who spoke virtually no English (I could tell he thought Portuguese sounded a bit funny!) and again today with a little kid from Paraguay who also spoke Spanish (and both Low and High German). He said he once knew Portuguese so he understood everything I asked him in Portuguese and you should have seen his grin!

So it's been fun. The picture below was taken of a letter of apology that I was given on Friday. One young man felt guilty after being so naughty in music and he managed to track me down before the day was over and give me this letter. I was touched and told him as much. Kids are great - most of the time!