Happy December

Monday, December 1, 2025

I started a weeklong sub job for my friend and neighbor, Maren, today. She is in Costa Rica. Yay for a December trip with friends and not kids. She has left wonderful sub plans, with easy to access smartboard slides. That is heaven for a sub. She also left five cherry dum dums. Five days of my favorite flavor. How thoughtful is that? I’ll tell you – I beamed when I saw it. Nothing better than someone knows you.

I was giving her a hard time because her seating chart is upside down. Of course, I said it to the kids, and her advisory class jumped to her defense! They told me she is usually at the back of the room at the white board, not up front by the smart board, so her chart is not upside down. Phew.

She told me, and they told me, that she has been talking about me. That actually made me nervous. I was surprised, but I wasn’t sure how to be …. what were the expectations. I think it went okay – I had a fun day. Third hour talked too much (as warned) and sixth hour had sixth hour syndrome (“we are done with school earlier than you wanted us to be”), but really not bad at all. I did have to give them the You-are-welcome-to-leave-if-you-want-to-go-to-the-office-and-tell-them-you-can’t-function-with-a-sub speech. They gave me the big-eyed attention due to someone who just entirely flipped on them. OoOoOoO she’s not always nice. We weren’t expecting that. It blasted through the talking and we were on to Language Arts. Win.

I got home and Keith was ready for a nap. He is still driving me around, so he was up and showered and ready to go at 7 this morning. He had a rehearsal he needed to leave for at 5. I said I was going to read a little and putter around instead of nap and get to bed early. When his 30-minute alarm went off I was asleep in the blue chair. He inadvertently woke me up. He purposefully woke me up when dinner was ready at 4:40. We ate, he left, I sat down to read a bit more of my book I am very enjoying (Theo of Golden) and I woke up at 8:10. Um. I entirely missed my home alone time. C’MON! He got home and we started the first day of Advent Calendars.

I have been making Advent calendars for people the past few years. I don’t have a lifelong history of advent calendars, but thought they seemed fun for adults. Kids get enough stuff. For the first time, Keith got me advent calendars! Three of them! I am so excited. One is of tiny little sea glass “trees” (piled up glass with a little topper). I love it. The other two are activity based. One is an activity/day. Today’s was rated “Easy”. I did not win, so was it easy? I don’t think so. We got a bunch of stuff to make an obstacle course for each of us to try to roll or push an ornament through with a plastic candy cane we held in our mouths. We had a minute. I had mine pretty stuck under the toe kick of the cabinet when my time ran out. Keith was done in 50 seconds after a mighty push that rolled to just the right place. We could have done it again, but my knees where killing me. I think carpet would have been a nice addition to the directions…but the thing wouldn’t have rolled well. But knees….!

The last one if from the EXIT The Game people, so we are on a 24-day quest to win a galactic race to decide who runs Christmas. We had to read our intro story today, then do some figuring with clues from behind Day 1. I figured it out!! I never figure it out. I win. Yay.