Mondays are always hard because we don't get home until after 6:00 and that puts me in a rush to get supper on the table and clean up and make Lizzie's lunch and make parent phone calls and iron clothes and work on school things. But today there was an envelope in the mailbox that made this Monday a good one. From the president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and he is pleased to inform me that I have recertified--for ten more years. I'm glad it's over. I wasn't expecting the letter this early in October--the National Board is always always always late with every single thing.
Anyway, we celebrated, and that put me behind on everything. I still haven't ironed, and I didn't get around to figuring out how to use my new digital camera, an item left over from yesterday's list. I got the battery charged and the software loaded though, so I'm closer than I was before. If this works out, it'll be really nice not to have to go to Wal-Mart every time I need photos for my website. I was in there today--stood in line for 28 full minutes, Red Cross debit cards everywhere. Looks to me like they'd have all that figured out by now, how to ring them up, etc. They don't, though. Course, if you ask me, Wal-Mart cashiers aren't the best and brightest of today's youth. Or maybe they are, which is a real scary thought.
I read some more of A Patchwork Planet, looking for excerpts to use in the Trait-Based writing study group. There are some really good paragraphs for sentence fluency, which is mainly what I'm looking for. The book cracks me up, too, because the main character is a lot like me: a snoop. I used to tell myself--and others--that I'm always doing research, just being an observer of human nature, etc. But really I'm just a snoop. I should be embarrassed, but I don't think I am.
I also spent some time trying to figure out how to put a chat room on the SMWP forum; I think it would really help when we get into the swing of things in our online course. It would definitely help out just with talking to one another; Kim sent me 57 e-mails today (not really, I just pulled that number out of the sky), and she was sending e-mails at the same time I was checking, which means we were online at the same time. Dane, too. While Dane and I were e-mailing back and forth is when I got the idea for the chat room on the forum. We could've just gone over there and had a conversation. It would save time. Anyway, I found a couple of places that offer free chat rooms, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes and just make that decision myself so I didn't add one tonight, even though I wanted to try it out. It just occurred to me that I could've added one to atwoodforum. I don't need permission to do that.
Lizzie is asleep. She read her book earlier tonight; it had a four marked on it, but I think Carrye has her books leveled wrong. It's a book I have, and I leveled it a 6. Oh, well. Carrye is doing a really good job. Today in Wal-Mart, we were in the produce section and Lizzie started telling me the names of all the apples. That's a Granny Smith. That's a Golden Delicious. That's a Red Delicious. That's a Gala. She's still a baby to me, yet she's reading first grade books and classifying apples. They grow up fast. She and Katelyn tried to dig up the devil today on the playground. Katelyn has decided he lives in a hole under a tree out there. Personally, I think they should just leave him alone.
