June 10, 2010
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The Daily News
1 The mad race to get the remaining papers graded continues into today.
2 Yesterday afternoon Caitlin came home from work, and my head was buried in grading papers.
3 I wanted them done because there was a bit of a YB party at O.J.'s last night, and I was honored to have been invited. I wanted to get there, so I stepped up grading to the point that my head focused on that small stack I still had left to do.
4 The Giants' game was my lava lamp, and the afternoon was pretty normal. Caitlin mentioned something about having to go the the storage place for boxes, and I just sorta looked up.
5 She left; I kept grading papers. I wasn't frantic, it's just that it is a time-consuming chore. Time has been important to me the past three years because I would much rather spend it doing other things. I sometimes think a target would be best. I used to want to put one up in the Performing Arts office at YB:
6 After a fashion, the front door opened, and about six boxes sailed into the room.
7 It was then it hit me.
8 Moving.
9 Boxes.
10 Moving doesn't really come into reality until you see the boxes appear. This is probably a busy time of year for the box industry.
11 Each time someone tells me they're moving, I always hallucinate a roomful of boxes. They flash, appear, then disappear, like something on that teevee show Medium.
12 Nearly any time someone mentions moving, I flash on boxes for a brief sec, and then the world behaves and stabilizes.
13 Boxes.
14 They really represent that nothing ever stays the same. Life moves on, whether we want it to or not.
15 Change is usually fairly gradual, but when boxes arrive, it's time. This isn't an ordinary move though. My baby is leaving home to get married. Grading papers instantly became irrelevant.
16 Well, I decided to take a break from all of that grading and make some dinner. I had something cooking in the oven, so it wasn't too hard. I wrote a couple of emails to keep things stable, but I knew. I had to walk around, or something, dunno what.
17 I got back to grading while Caitlin put boxes together. Soon there was a stack of three, and a few more kicking around the room. Helene came home, and we all talked about everything and nothing, as always.
18 The Giants kept stranding runners because they swing bats like a red-headed stepchild swatting at quick, tiny flies.
19 Finally, Caitlin said, "Daddy let's sing!"
20 She does that, and I love it every time, because she has a voice that would entertain the angels.
21 I immediately hooked up the amp, the mic, but didn't have my mic stand, which was left at the school.
22 I noticed that the boxes were just about five feet up, so I cranked the mic and placed it on top of the boxes. It worked perfectly.
23 I started some songs, but for whatever reason, songs I've been working on nobody else really knows. So Le Vie en Rose and Sister Golden Hair went out the window.
24 I quickly pulled out the big guns, which is always Godspell tunes. I strummed the first few chords of Save the People, and we jumped all over it. I popped some champagne, and we all continued. I messed up the chords, and had a bad guitar day.
25 Know how you have bad hair days?
26 I don't get those. I have bad guitar days, when I can't remember chords to songs, even songs I've played in my sleep.
27 Earlier yesterday my third period class coaxed me into singing, and I absolutely nailed Your Song for them, singing it to them, voice spot on, and ending exactly when the bell rang. I blew a kiss to them, and it was magic!
28 For some reason though, I couldn't find an e-flat if it smashed me in the face last night.
29 Didn't matter. We had fun. I pulled the Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand out of my ear, and we nailed a three-part harmony on "I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hiiiiiiiiiiiiide" (Some people claim they say "I get high". Whatever.).
30 We sang In My Life, followed immediately by Wait from Rubber Soul, which is how they appear on the American album. Lotta fun. I honestly don't know which order we did all these songs, but Caitlin called Wait, which I also butchered.
31 Didn't matter. It was a singin' night, and I knew that not only wasn't I going to get to the YB party at Joe's, but that I wasn't going to finish grading papers.
32 It just didn't matter. The boxes never got filled either.
33 Didn't matter.
34 Nothing really matters.
35 We ate a delicious dinner, put on Glee!, continued singing and I finally conked out at around 9.
36 I woke up at 4, beating ol' 4:20 to the punch, and hammered out this DN.
37 Amazing night, and now the deadline looms. I still have about a half inch of papers left to grade, down from around twelve feet three weeks ago. I have passed every paper back to my students. Some read them, some just threw the entire folder into the trash. I suggested yesterday on the microphone that we have a huge party at Twin Lakes, the beach that is right in between Santa Cruz and Capitola, and that they bring all their papers for a bonfire. That has always been a sort of interesting concept I've thought of over the years, and not out of my realm of possibilities.
38 I DO stuff like that, only I have calmed it down considerably up at the Chill.
39 Moving on: It's dark; it's just around 5 a.m. I can't see the boxes anymore, nor the mic on top of them, but I know they're there. The dishes are sort of done, but some wine glasses are floating in a tub in the sink. Teevee trays are still set up, making it tough to walk around, but the quiet is a nice, peaceful one.
40 I lifted the papers, and they are still heavy enough to be challenging (they MUST be done by 10:30 this morning, so I'll have only two hours to get that done), and as always, it was a race to the last day. I'm going somewhere very important immediately after school, so there is little room for error. And then tomorrow I come in to close it all out.
41 Mama Mia, let me go.
42 And then the boxes become reality.
43 I still have miles to go before I sleep.
44 Miles to go before I sleep.
45 You have a grand day, willya?
46 Peace.
~H~
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