Holy Toledo!
El Nino is back, I guess. They’ve been saying that El Nino was going to rear it’s nasty little head this year, but I hadn’t seen anything to prove that truth. Well, apparently he was just biding his time, wanting to really make an entrance.
Over in the L.A. and Long Beach areas, there’s been a ton of rain washing over the cities. Up here in the high desert, though, all we get is wind. A lot of wind. Crazy wind!
Today we were supposed to host our first cross-country invitational race. Since we became a K-8 school, our 7th and 8th grades have been participating in track and soccer and whatnot. This was to be our first race hosted at our school. The principal has been working with the kids, some of our classes went out and cleaned up the school grounds (wearing rubber gloves, don’t worry!), and schedules had been changed to make sure that the playground was available for the finish line.
And then the threats of a storm were predicted. It didn’t matter; the race must go on. Rain, we could have handled. However, the wind was something atrocious. I don’t know how fast it was actually blowing, but the others predicted it was about 60-70 miles an hour. Being a desert, with the wind comes a whole lot of sand! It was sandblasting our faces all day. It was awful. I have so much sand in my room that I could call it the Maggie Desert. Truly. Most of the surfaces in my room are covered with a sandy grit. It’s great. I can’t wait until Tuesday to really deal with that.
I have first-recess duty this month. I actually took my new winter coat (well, winter coat here, spring/fall coat back home in Wisconsin – heh!) to keep myself protected. It was the longest fifteen minutes! The wind whipped around and around. And all the while I am supposed to keep my eyes on the kids. Ay ay ay!
Friday is our day for computer lab. With the weather so crazy, which makes the kids crazy, our lab time scheduled for after lunch was not going to be an ideal time to actually utilize the computers for a lesson in Math or Language Arts. Free time was more to their capabilities this afternoon. On the way to the computer lab we walked across the playground while the 5th and 6th graders were at recess. We have to walk by one of the ball walls en route. It was unfortunate timing on my part. As we walked by, the ball was kicked, bounced against the wall with quite some force, bounced back and hit me right back in the hand. It hurt like the dickens! It also sent my keys flying behind me somewhere. I didn’t know where. The kids were a bit freaked because I was in pain, they saw something fly through the air, and then I had to turn around and look for my keys. Interestingly, they had flown through the air and up onto the canvas canopies above the recess tables. Heh. That was something! But my finger really hurt.
The weather was actually improving by the time we went to the computer lab. Afterwards, I noticed that the sun had actually come out and the wind had died down. No inclement weather was announced, so I sent the kids out to play. No one else came out. Only my students occupied the playground. I sent my 7th grade helper in to ask if inclement weather had been announced. It hadn’t. So, where was everyone then? I saw students dashing out of their rooms to the bathrooms, so I had an idea. Apparently it had been decided later that last recess would be an inclement-weather recess, meaning the kids would be kept inside. No one told me anything. I hate being the only one to not know things. How is that I am so often left out of the loop? I mean, really! So I run in really quickly to check the other two third grades, and peek my head in Katy’s room, asking her why I was the only one outside. She said that it was inclement weather. Frustrated, I said that it wasn’t inclement weather and left. Argh! The weather had improved 200% since first recess. Growl!
Well, the wind continued throughout the afternoon and about six minutes before the last bell, the lights went out. They flicked back on and then back off, then back on and back off again. No lights at the end of the day. It was an interesting way to end the week, to say the least. Heh. Since there was no electricity, there was no real reason to me staying at school, so I left a bit early. That made it a wonderful beginning to a long weekend. Yay for me!
Lucky and I spent the evening at home, listening to some music while I started on some more quilt squares. Then we sat and watched some television. The wind was howling outside, whipping around and through the branches of the trees outside. Every once and a while I would hear something outside that made me think that part of my neighbor’s shed was flying back over into my yard (like it does with every wind storm). At one point the sound was pretty close and a little bit different. I got up and checked out in the backyard to make sure the garage was still there.
It was still there, but in the darkness, I could see that the big tree back there was no longer standing. It had been blown over. Holy cow! My landlord went out of town this weekend, so I couldn’t call him. Fortunately, it fell away from the house instead of toward it. That would have been horrible!
Gee, wonder what the weekend will bring.
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