Thursday, February 1, 2024
I’ve had a two-day sub job for a middle school orchestra director on my calendar since before winter break. I love subbing orchestra. Orchestra kids are the best. I popped into the office and chatted up the office coordinator then went to the orchestra room to look for sub plans on the desk. Instead, I found the orchestra director at his desk. He smiled and said, “Hello. How are you? Who are you subbing for?”
I said, “You.”
The look on his face was priceless. “Oh, no! I emailed about getting that cancelled.”
It seems he emailed the office coordinator about canceling and she took it out of the employee time off system, but assumed he would take it out of the sub system. He thought she would do both at the same time. Whoops.
Since we are leaving for California in two days and I haven’t packed, I figured it was an answer to a prayer that I hadn’t even known I’d made. I could use the time to get organized and packed. They apologized up and down and I practically skipped out of school – it felt like a snow day (but it was sunny and almost 50 degrees – first day of February and all).
I got in the car and was about to leave for home, when I thought I would check the sub system – just in case there was a good job for me. Afterall, I have tomorrow off now, so I could work today.
In two minutes, I was off to Armstrong Elementary – my favorite – to do special ed for kindergartners and first graders. Quite a different day than I was expecting.
I got the picture above from Keith mid-day. Custard tarts from Portugal found their way to our house! Can you believe those custard tarts? They were so fond of Keith they tracked him down and chased him home. I was totally not expecting that! Keith baked two of them and said they are perfect and delicious. After you bake them, you let them cool for 10 minutes or completely, depending on how you like to eat them. Keith said he managed to wait 5 minutes before he had the first one, and the 10-minute timer went off just as he finished the second one.
We went to see the play The Last Five Years tonight. I thought it was a play, but it turned out to be a musical. In fact, I guess you could say it was a sort of an opera because every bit of it was sung. There were only two characters, Cathy and Jamie, and it is the story of their relationship from start to end and from end to start. Cathy starts with their breakup and tells the story backwards through songs Jamie starts at the beginning and sings about it until they break up. They come together only during their wedding in the middle. It was a clever device that I really enjoyed. The songs were pretty simple and not very melodic. I thought the playwright was really onto something, but he needed to workshop it a bit and get it going. I came home and read about it, and they already made it into a movie, so I am guessing the author is pretty satisfied at this point.