two weeks

It's amazing what can happen in two weeks. It's amazing what can happen in just 24 hours! In two weeks the entire focus of my life changed. I was hired as an art teacher at a local college, and suddenly my life is consumed by lesson planning, trying to figure out the best way to tackle my classes, overcoming all sorts of inherent problems from huge class size (for art classes!) to why the heck there are no working pencil sharpeners in the rooms??? That's the major current of change. A "minor" one is a trip I want to take to see a very good friend, that seemed all but impossible two weeks ago. I had pretty much given up due to circumstances beyond the control of both of us. And now, his letters and phone calls, our mutual interests in the arts and desire to keep in contact til one of us is worm food will have the context of a face to face meeting, which I had greatly looked forward to for a time and thought was lost. Incredibly the date I picked falls within the time I'd be off from classes for Columbus Day.

I know I am tremendously blessed. My friend reminds me of this when the overwhelm of planning and the limitations of a classroom make me feel I simply cannot do this. I am being paid to do something I love and pass on that passion to the next generation. I am in awe of this responsibility. Another "minor" current of change is that my younger daughter is now high school senior and a college student at the same time. She is in a dual enrollment program at the college where I teach. Again, incredibly, our schedules coincide, so I can at least take her home the days I teach. So she is madly trying to plan to juggle an AP English and art classes at her high school, art history and psychology at the college and plans for a two person art show in the spring for her senior project. Last night after I came home from class at 6:00 and she was on the couch trying to stuff The Odyssey into her head, we just sort of looked at each other and gave the mutual "whew!"

Thank God for Labor Day weekend???