MY "JUST IN CASE" BEACH CHAIRS

Winter has been reasonably tame up here, but Spring has sprung, and summer is wafting in the air.

The shovel came out maybe two or three times. School was (questionably) cancelled once. The snowshoes were never used (that's two winters in a row). The car windshield hasn't needed to be defrosted or scraped in the morning for a couple of weeks. 

It's only March, so we still have a decent four weeks of possible blizzard activity coming our way, but, right now anyway, we are experiencing April/May weather. I don't know whether to enjoy it or start packing for the apocalypse.

The snow tools remain in the car. I mean, I'm not a complete blithering idiot. The beach chairs, however, inch closer and closer to the front door. The kayak, waiting patiently on my porch, calls to me. I inch the heat up inside the apartment on occasion to walk freely around in shorts and a tank top. The windows have actually been open several times.

I'm ready.

I'm ready for the summer. I'm ready to be done with this school year. I'm ready to be one step closer to having endless summers (even when it's not summer). I'm ready to sit out on my porch with a good (or even a bad) book. I'm ready for my neighbor to put the engine back into his race car and start that bad boy up so the whole complex hears the roar of the weather change.

Maybe I'll put the beach chairs into the car just because I can. No harm in that, even if it snows. The scraper and brush can stay right where they are -- it's not like they'll occupy the same space as the chairs.

In reality, I don't want anyone pointing accusatory fingers at me next week if/when it snows two feet and blaming me for cursing us all as we eat canned food and hope our refrigerators stay cool during the power outage. 

Maybe the beach chairs should stay right where they are for another week or two or three. You know -- just in case.

THE BIG TRUNK

I grew up outside in the woods. Not literally. I mean, our house was surrounded by woods. Actually, my first house was across the street from the Garden in the Woods, then we moved to New Hampshire to a house nestled into three acres of woods in a neighborhood surrounded by even more woods. When we moved back to Massachusetts, we lived in a town with an abundance of -- you guessed it -- woods and trees and trails.

I'm a country girl at heart, one who, despite growing up surrounded by hanging tree limbs and umbrellas of leaves, never managed to get a single tick on me, nor did I get stung by a bee until I was well into my thirties. No, I didn't wear hats or special clothing or anti-tick sprays. I got plenty of May fly bites and black fly bites and deer fly bites and horse fly bites and enough mosquito bites to have itched-over scars on my shins to prove it. 

I never, ever managed to get poison ivy, oak, or sumac. Crazy, considering we often cut through the woods to get to each others' homes, to the sand pits (that we were forbidden to be at but went to anyway), to school, to the small pond, and to our grandparents' house. 

Tress fascinate me. Particularly, dead ones. The ones that are weathered and gnarled and all bony on the ground and lying against other trees and rocks become campfire wood and whittling chunks and fort bases and art projects and pretend (or real) weapons. They house animals and insects and the scars of the forest dwellers who use the broken-down trees for scratching or as cabinets to be smashed open for creepy-crawly snacks.

Every one tells its own story, no matter how big or how small. Decades ago lightning took down a massive tree in our yard. Anyone seeing its remains today would think it just got too old or its roots grew too weak to uphold its height, but we know its tale. We were nearby when it happened, and it was frightening, fascinating, and impressive.

This brings me back to Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte does have some woodsy areas, but it is a city, an expansive one with many different facets. I meet the family in a busy urban area with outdoor brick malls and charming parking lots surrounded by smatterings of trees. There are several places to park, including a garage, and I see a fully-packed lot where I can turn around and access a different lot that may have more spaces. Just as I come up the lane, a space opens, so I park the rental SUV and hope the tall pine trees don't drop too many needles while I'm at lunch.

I exit the car, which is now parked close to a multi-lane roadway with speed limits of fifty miles per hour -- not what I would consider a country road -- and encounter a piece of dead tree. Not just any piece, though. I am looking directly at the trunk of a large tree. It is just the bottom portion of it, maybe about six feet in length, but the diameter is as wide as a garage door. The portion of tree is seriously the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

The coolest part is that it's hollow. Yup, hollow enough that children could run through it standing straight up and never hit their foreheads.

I am fascinated with this tree. I fumble with my phone because I need to get a picture. Meanwhile, people are trying to back up all over the parking lot, and it's momentary mayhem as I maneuver around drivers and vehicles. Eventually, the world stops moving for a moment, and I am able to snap a picture. 

Without anything for perspective, it just looks like a chunk of dead tree.

But, I know what I see, and I save the picture anyway, even though it looks pretty tame-sized in the snapshot.  Trust me. This is an impressive piece of nature, so impressive that I am about ten minutes behind everyone else for lunch. I hope they'll forgive me. It has been a long while since this country girl has gotten a good, long look at such a tree-mendous specimen, and I have the photo to remember it.

A LITTLE SHROVE TUESDAY WITH SYRUP

A friend recently commented that she thinks I have a strange relationship with religion. She's right, of course.

I was raised by an agnostic and an atheist. My maternal grandmother, a Scot, was a Protestant daughter of an original practitioner of Mary Baker Eddy's Church of Christ Scientist, and this same grandmother was also married to an Irish Catholic who denounced his religion. She was the only one of my relatives to actively attend church for religion's sake. My father's family I'm pretty sure erred on the side of Protestantism, as well. 

I'm not sure I'm any purer in my intent: I started attending church as a teenager because the youth group was crackerjack. They went places and saw things and did community service and had fun and lots of the kids from school with whom I sang attended this one particular UCC church. It all seemed relatively tame to me, though it went over like a cement-filled lead balloon when my parents found out I had signed on.

I've had an on-again/off-again relationship with the church. But, I'm also a creature of tradition. Despite being anti-religion, Christmas was always a huge deal in my house growing up. We even had several creche set ups, a few that were rather elaborate. Thinking on that, I'm not so sure my parents were as big nonbelievers as they presented. I also remember going to a Protestant church once when I was very young, but I tried to throw a boy out a window at Sunday school, so we were probably asked to find another pew.

Some of it stuck. 

I enjoy the whole Advent tradition and go to great lengths to make sure I have the correct colors of candles. I don't actively practice Lent (but probably should as I could use a break from several bad habits), nor do I get ashes on Wednesday, and I vaguely remember my mother mentioning Maundy Thursday in passing. I take advantage of the school's early release on Good Friday, but I don't practice any good church behavior because of it. 

However, and this is where my friend's confusion comes from: I am a huge fan of Shrove Tuesday. Huge fan. Like, go out of my way to make sure I have the correct ingredients for it and everything, which is ironic since the point of Shrove Tuesday is to use up all of those ingredients. 

For those out of the know, Shrove Tuesday is Fat Tuesday. It's Mardi Gras. It's the day when we get to eat up all of the things our ancestors traditionally did not eat during Lent. Things like eggs, butter, sugar, fat, and other rich, tasty foods. Basically, it's pancake night in my house. Pancakes represent all of those things I am supposed to be giving up (if I lived centuries ago), and pancakes are circular, which is actually a pagan symbol of the sun returning for Spring.

Oh, sure, I'm also supposed to examine all the things wrong with me and what I should repent. That would take more than one evening and forty-odd days. But, there isn't anything so wrong with me at the moment that a good old pancake dinner won't cure. Besides, this whole Shrove Tuesday thing was unknown to me before -- you guessed it -- church youth group. 

So, yes, I do, indeed, have a strange relationship with religion, and that's okay by me. Are there other times that I eat pancakes for dinner? Absolutely. There's just something anticipatory about the whole Shrove Tuesday event for me, even though I make pancakes just for myself. It's a little like lighting the Advent candles even if I'm only having a plate of microwaved nachos for dinner. My intent may be a little sketchy, and my execution may lack flair, but the end result makes me happy without causing harm. 

That's probably about as close to heavenly behavior as I'll ever hope to achieve.

YETI PIZZA - THE REALLY BIG CHEESE

While visiting North Carolina recently, I encounter the Yeti of pizzas. That's right. I am witness to the biggest pizza and pizza box that I have ever seen up close and in person - outside of square tray pizza in the school cafeteria.

The pizza boxes arrive at the house: two large boxes, and one box that looks like it will serve the beanstalk giant. This humongous box measures about two feet by two feet. My brain tells me that this magnifico pizza must be sliced like school lunch pizzas: it probably has crosswise cuts, rendering some slices crust-less. 

However, when the box top opens (and opens . . . and opens), the pizza is cut as if it were a normal size, into a typical pinwheel pattern, except that each slice is larger than a dinner plate. Every slice of this behemoth pizza is roughly the size of three regular "large" pizza slices. Each slice could easily feed a couple of people.

It is positively astounding, and I am mesmerized.

I cut a piece in half, and, even then, it's a lot of pizza. And it is soooo good. A regular plain cheese pizza, which is great because if it had toppings, each slice might topple over like the tower of Pisa. We have other pizza, too, like sausage and pepperoni, in the usual, normally-sized version of a large pizza. And it's all really, really good.

All in all, though, the Bigfoot of Pizza wins. Not only is it yummy, it's downright epic, and worth every single of a thousand bites.

TAKING A BREATH NOW

I know, I know. Everyone thinks I have the cushiest job in the world because I teach middle school and get "so many vacations." Again, let me remind you: I do not get paid for Thanksgiving break, December break, February break, April break, federal holidays, nor snow days. Nope. I get paid to work 184 days, and that's it. 

The rest of it? Unpaid labor. Please, do not tell me how wonderful my life is for all of the time I am on vacation. This is unpaid vacation, fyi.

So, I have to laugh when people ask me how I am spending my February vacation. That's easy! I'm spending it grading papers, reading essays, editing a student's creative writing that is above and beyond class activities, and creating curriculum for an upcoming absence that I hesitate to take only because it means more work for me. 

Oh, sure, this week I managed to grab two lunches with friends and read a couple of mass-market fiction novels. I caught up on my sleep after being sick for about ten weeks. I even managed a doctor's appointment so it wouldn't impact my school schedule.

The good news is that I could just assign something online for when I'm out and call it a day. Let the sub worry about whether or not the kids are accessing inappropriate or illegal websites. Let the sub police their Google connections with each other, passing gossip and other questionable information between classmates, teammates, and others via the internet in real time. Let the sub monitor the bathroom sign-out online to see who is creating mayhem that constantly forces admin to shut down the toilet facilities. Let the sub worry about technology failures or the fact that my room, and only my room, is the Blue Tooth Black Hole from Hell where internet access can only be re-established if you're standing in the windowsill on a sunny day and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

The bad news is that my co-teacher and paraprofessional now have more new stuff to add to my over-crowded curriculum. The phrase, "You're redoing this unit yet again?" has become a running joke over the years because nothing is ever perfect, and I don't have the same students sitting in front of me year after year. 

Yeah, I've had some days off this past week. Whoopie! It has allowed me to lesson-plan at my own kitchen table instead of sitting at my school desk being constantly interrupted by staff, students, useless emails, and even more useless announcements. The food is plentiful, the tea and coffee are fresh, and, best of all, I can pee whenever I need to. No worries about bladder infections this week, that's for dang sure.

The best part of this week (I'm not going to lie) is the retirement seminar I attend online. It's in real-time, with questions and answers and a slew of information, much of which I already knew, but enough to provide me with specific questions for my upcoming retirement consultation in March. I can almost see and smell the end of this 184 day "vacation" so many people berate me about, my cushy job, my summers off, my extra breaks during the year, my snow days, my holidays. 

Yes, I can almost envision what a true vacation will look like, one without emails and updates, without essays and Google forms, one without data, data, and more data. I'm still a few years out, but, if I can drag my sorry self to the finish line, I might just be able to enjoy a year or two of solace and sanity.

Okay, back to work. I'll take a breath now because the next one won't be until mid-April. Hold me a (toilet) seat until then!

VALENTINE'S SENTIMENT

Valentine's Day -- The day when singles like me get reminded how great it is to control the TV remote, choose what we want to eat for dinner, eat as much ice cream as we can stomach, and save money on over-priced cards, gifts, and flowers. 

I did receive a couple of unexpected gifts: a co-worker gave me a small nylon bag full of chocolate, and one of my last-class students gave me an expensive chocolate bar. The best surprise, though, came from a student who is not even mine but has a locker right outside of my room. Oh, sure, he gave out chocolate and candy to a lot of people, but I'm not even his teacher, so it was a really sweet gesture.

I will also admit that the Valentine  attached to the small chocolate bar is probably the best, most heartfelt, most honest sentiment I've ever received. This kid totally "gets" it. If only more adults could figure this out, then we might have some sanity in this world.

SHOPPING FOR MORSELS

I have been careless with my grocery shopping.

To be honest, I despise shopping of any kind. I once went to the mall with a girl who loved shopping. Me? I know what I want and can be in and out of a store in mere seconds. This ex-friend of mine? Painfully slow and meticulous and flighty to the point that a forty-five minute shopping excursion turned into four hours. Four. Painful. Agonizing. Hours. I passed the time imagining ways to dispose of her body on the trip home. 

But, I digress. Grocery shopping is painful because it's annoying (follow the list, check the dates, get irritated if the items aren't in stock, etc.), and there are people -- always people -- blocking aisles or jockeying for a check-out line or ramming their carts into my body parts. I avoid grocery shopping as much as I can when, to be smart, I should go every couple of days and just buy the few things I need and go through the express line.

But, no. Denial always leaves me with a four-to-six grocery bag extravaganza.

The problem with me is that I don't always pay attention to what I'm buying. I have often come home with one-ply toilet paper (is there even a point to this idiocy?) or diet something-or-other or fat-free feta cheese or some other product that has zero business being in my home.

The other day, I purchased semi-sweet chocolate morsels. Yes, they're for baking, but I also just snack on them by the handful. I know I should've gotten the Nestle brand, but they're kind of soft-ish and creamy (great for baking, but a little weird for snacking), so I purchased the store brand. Usually, that's all right by me. Except . . . 

Except I didn't read beyond the "semi-sweet morsels" part of the package. I did not see the word "mini" in small, cursive script. Mini, as in miniscule. These things are smaller than baby boogers.

I tried snacking on them, but I have to shoot about a dozen at a time, and the darn things often escape, making them nearly impossible to find on the floor, the table, down the sleeve or front of my shirt, or they just vanish. Poof! Like magic, they disappear everywhere but into my stomach.

I have a snow day from school, so I decide to make pumpkin muffins. I mean, why not, right? As I'm about to put them into the oven, I think, "You know what these muffins need? Miniature chocolate chips!" I grab the bag out of the cabinet and drop handfuls of mini-morsels into six of the twelve muffins. I use a fork to stir them, churning some morsels into the bottom of the batter.

Twenty minutes later, I take the muffins out of the oven and notice that it is easy to tell the chipped muffins from the pure ones because the morsels all floated to the top of the batter as soon as I put the tin in to bake. Seriously, like art deco or pop art designs, the six chocolate-laden muffins have speckled patterns on them.

Dagnabbit! The mini-morsels are so miniature that they migrate to the top like soda bubbles in tonic.

Oh, of course I'll eat those muffins. I'm not a purist. However, I certainly will be much more careful shopping from now on. Hahahahahaha. Who am I kidding? I'll screw something up again. Just watch me. But I doubt it will be the semi-sweet chocolates for baking. 

I've learned my lesson on that one. Deliciously; but learned it, just as well.