the school district...

...requires everyone who thinks they would like to have the thankless job of being a substitute teacher to attend a training session in the middle of summer. I went today, along with about 799 other people who seem to think they would like to have an opportunity to take on the thankless position as well. We were actually divided alphabetically, with A-L meeting early in the morning, and M-Z coming in after the first half left.

It was an absolutely-positively-required meeting, as the email a couple of weeks ago stated. You had to print forms to sign and turn in, as well as put your signature on a sheet to document attendance. Then spend nearly two hours going over policy and procedures, as well as get a lesson in how the new program that finds classroom replacements will work when schools start up in a few weeks. The old program is obsolete, discontinued by the company that bought it out, and updated, to the program we will have to acclimate ourselves to. Technology will drag us into the future kicking and screaming, but plopped down in that electronics-generated world regardless of our tantrums.

I am profoundly ambivalent (is that an oxymoron?) about sub. teaching. I don't know if I want to do it, and find that when I do accept a job, by mid-morning I am wondering: why? I often think it does not pay enough to make it worth the time/effort. But today we were told that the pay in our local school district is higher than average for the state, and surprisingly more than is found in some bigger systems, with greater populations. Plus I expect that inner city schools have a serious problem with finding day labor/substitutes for replacing teachers who call out due to mental exhaustion/frayed nerves. No amount of money would  lure me into that type situation, in a place where I would think I should be wearing body armor to work.

But I did attend the meeting, mostly thinking, in the same vein as one believing 'it is easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission'. That it is easier to stay on the list than it would be to get on the list.
Pretty much the same theory I was apparently using when I sent in my $20 money order to apply for teaching re-certification. Knowing it is a whole lot easier to keep in good standing than to go through the process of searching out, paying for continuing ed., attending classes and re-applying if it should lapse. But sadly not sufficiently motivated to aggressively seek out the teaching positions that would provide the maximum pay rate for sub. work in the classroom. It does not seem worth the effort....

today i cooked...

...about nine pounds of salmon. It was the really expensive kind but since it is on sale for nearly half-price in the newspaper adv. this week, I think I did my part to sell quite a bit. I did not eat it, could not make myself insert even a taste in my mouth. It has such a strong fishy smell, when I would unwrap another package to lay it out in the pan, it was all I could do to control myself.

All the passers-by who tasted reported it was very good. I kind of suspect that the topping was so interesting, it really didn't taste like salmon, so it might have been tolerable. A remarkably simple recipe - you don't even need a recipe to do it. Just lay the skinned salmon on the pay (or on foil if you want to keep dish washing to a minimum), sprinkle with salt and pepper. Mix up basil pesto sauce, Dijon mustard and the juice from half of a lemon. Spread it on the fish, and bake at 375 for about fifteen  minutes. Total time: less than twenty minutes from opening the package till you are sitting down to eat.

You should take your salmon back to the meat guys and ask them to skin if for you. They will, if you ask, and then you don't have to do it yourself. Saves time, prevents a whopping big mess in your kitchen, and makes it so easy to just flop the fillets in the pan, season, bake, eat.

The other thing on the recipe card was a quinoa salad with kale. I could have eaten the whole bowl by myself. That good. Leave off the cheese, and pass me a spoon.

holy (hot) cow...

... is what I was thinking when I was painting at the shelter this morning. I have been doing some yard work in recent weeks, and it gets pretty dang hot out there... but I can come in and flop down on the cool kitchen tile floor and soon recover from potential heat stroke.  Generally speaking, I am not a sweaty person, and rarely get to the point of 'smelly', but I confessed to the young girls who were painting walls in that small room with me today, that it was pretty obvious that my deodorant had already quit for the day. It was unbelievably hot and sticky, with the strong aroma of paint, lots of dust roiling through the building from the people using belt sanders.

That building, at least a hundred years old, with probably twenty coats of paint in places, made of brick, with mortar coming off the walls in chunks, was miserable. Apparently there has been so much dry-walling, putting up sheetrock to divide a big space into smaller rooms, along with mudding the joints/seams and sanding it all smooth, the AC has taken a hit. The manager called the HVAC guy who said: 'of course it isn't cooling, you have all the windows and doors open.' But we did that for survival: it must have been 95 degrees in there when we arrived at 9:00 a.m.

Lots of floor fans, lots of window/box fans, stirring up the dust as well as a semi-breeze, making the paint dry faster, if not actually cooling the worker-bees off. I never meant to devote my whole day to it, but have already volunteered to go back another day. I don't mind doing more of the tedious small stuff, painting around edges, trimming out woodwork, door frames, corners that won't get done with rollers. The building was a warehouse of sorts, storage for Habitat for Humanity, so probably would not ever be really habitable by picky standards, but as my mom loved to say: "You can cover up a multitude of sins with a bucket of paint". When you roller and brush on enough layers of fresh new paint, it will do well to provide a safe haven for women and families in distress.

volunteering...

...today. A group of co-workers are going to do some work with United Way. I'm not sure what the actual work will be, but has to do with a shelter that needs some free labor. I have my paint brush ready, and hope I am remembering the need is for some walls and trim to be painted. I will tell them I am a Trained Professional, and they will look at me with a 'huh?' expression.

I called the person who is doing the recruiting/coordination for the workers who are going to meet at 8:30, hoping to get  more info. about what we will be doing. I'm definitely going to be an inside worker. If there is a need for hole digging or planting or anything to do with landscaping, I will try my best to keep my mouth shut. Plenty of that to do right here, at my house, plus too dang hot to be out there in the miserable heat, sweating and rooting around in the dirt.

yesterday...

... I drove to south GA. And loaded my car up with boxes full of kitchen furnishings. All the things a person would acquire over sixty years of living in the same place, cooking for a family, making a welcoming home. I actually could not get all the boxes in my car, and will have to make another trip to get the rest of the stuff. Pots and pans, place mats and napkin holders, plates and bowls. Drinking glasses and coffee mugs. Coffee pots and pitchers. Refrigerator containers and wooden salad bowls. Paring knives and wooden spoons. Can openers and a vast assortment of flotsam and jetsam that accumulates in the course of living in one place for over fifty years.

It's still in my car. Loaded to the gills. I might be able to squeeze a toothpick in there sideways. But otherwise, it is jam-packed full. I am going to start calling around this morning to try to find a place to unload it. So desperate to get it out of  my life, I already have the numbers written down and ready to call as soon as the hour gets decent enough  to be pestering people about taking it off my hands and out of my life.

This stuff has been weighing me down for quite some time, I know I need to move on, let it go. I just don't know precisely what to do with it. The kind of stuff you wish someone would walk up, appear from thin air and say: Let me help you with that. So I am sincerely hoping that one of the places I plan to call, a women's shelter, and a place that helps recently released inmates get on their feet again, will be interested in the kinds of things I have to offer. The little things you acquire over time, that individually don't take up any space at all, but cumulatively can fill up a dozen boxes in a matter of minutes.

I spent about the same amount of time driving there and back, as I spent loading. I made a list of all the stuff, as it went into boxes, to use when I donate, get a receipt. Otherwise it would have been one of those days when I devoted more time to the going and coming than the being there. Foolish me, I had also loaded up my weed spraying goods, expecting to have time to do a bit of yard work while I was there. But it was easily 99 degrees in the shade by early afternoon, so that was not an option. Just going and coming, and listening to public radio...

google'd snake...

.. to try to get an id..makes me think that the one I saw out in the yard is a rat snake. Or it could be a Queen snake, though I have never even heard of that one before. Both of which are classified as 'helpful' or 'friendly'.  I don't believe it was deadly, in the sense that if I had been bit, I would be dead instead of typing. I do not think it was one that is venomous. And likely about 95% harmless, as they serve a definite purpose in the food chain. But there is that other 5%, which would mean there is a chance it could be out there waiting, lurking, looking for me to consume.

According to googling there are only six in the state that are venomous. And I know this one did not have the little noisemakers on the back end. So I am pretty sure the one that was scootching around in the leaf mulch was part of the 95%. That his job is specifically to keep the smaller undesirables under control. I am led to believe if that one I backed away from had been dispensed with, the one that would likely jump into that gap in the food chain might not be so 'friendly', in a manner of speaking. My grandpa, a believer in various old wives' tales and superstitions passed down from one generation to the next: would likely decapitate with a hoe and hang on the fence, hoping it would bring rain on his corn field.

when I was out puttering...

... in the yard, earlier in the week, I was approached by a humming bird. Trimming the blooms on the butterfly bush, to encourage it to make more flowers, long draping blooms with lots of tiny individual flowers on the end of each stem. Something that would obviously be attractive to pollinators with lots of opportunities for a tiny little probe to be inserted, to draw out nectar. Bees, butterflies and hummers with needle-like beak all love it. I was cutting lots of spent blooms off to encourage the plants to make more and continue to invite the wildlife until frost.

I've seen photos of people who hold hummingbird feeders and the birds come up and literally eat out of their hands. But I had never been so close to one of the birds, except on the opposite side of a window. I was out there with my clippers, trimming every other lavender bloom, and a hummer came whizzing up. Hovering about two feet away from me. It was an amazing encounter. Me, barely breathing, and the wee little bird with wings beating so fast you could hear the 'hum', waiting for my next move.

So I immediately went to the garden shop and bought a dozen red salvia plants. I have been planting them around the house for years, and know the hummers find them Very Attractive. But I was trying to not buy/plant annuals, making my investment/focus on things that would re-bloom once established and come back year after year. But when that little bird stared me down: I knew I was remiss in not planting salvia for them to enjoy until cold weather. So I am going out, right now, to plant the salvia, along the edge of the driveway. Putting them in the ground near the butterfly bush and wait for the hummingbirds to find it and squeak out a 'thank you'.