Now it's February... and I'm still reading Don Quixote. Not exactly with great resolve, though, so I am almost through part one, but there is part two awaiting.

Roseanne started last week, as an auxilliary art teacher. I hope it works out. This week we did Tuesday and half of Thursday -- next week I take Tuesday and Roseanne takes all day Thursday. That still means some switching, but not as much as trying to fit everyone into Tuesday.

I despaired of trying to get all the kids changed to Tuesday, so I did what Brenda (vp) suggested as a possibility and put Roseanne on Thursday -- but I'm still trying to heft some kids over to her as I have 11 and she has 7 plus an un-named Second grader. My problem is I get so tired I can't deal with trying to fix things. My other problem is I am starting the yearbook and I don't have access to the Thursday kids now. I originally thought everyone would work on Tuesday, but the madhouse factor has changed my mind. In my room on Tuesdays there's speech therapising in one tiny room, plus tons of visitor-kids to Skunky, who is Performance, and has as his office the other tiny room. We can ignore people -- but some children are too easily distracted to function in a madhouse environment. It would've been workable (easily) before this room (which was my fall-back position after losing my artroom) became a share-for-all deal. Our movie studio, for video animation, was a huge loss to the children -- they talk about it a lot. The other room was computers -- and was nice to contain the wandering-paper effect. My piles stayed put. The truth is that I can't deal with STUFF, so I never recovered from moving from my artroom where things had a spot -- to this room, and now into part of this room where crap has been piled up from the small rooms and not put away. Things that have been put away, have been put in the most ridiculous places entirely inaccessible to me, and other things are just GONE -- maybe they exist but??? I don't think Roseanne knows any of this -- she just thinks I'm a #@%$#, most likely -- but actually we have done incredible and varied things -- then my program got trashed by my health and the moving


I have the yearbook to do, which is a full-color student-made 2-pages-per-class+team, staff, board pages, etc. We do it on the computer with Photoshop, using digital photographs and computer graphics, and print on our laser printer. I usually have Samantha collate, and get someone like Office Max to add an acetate top cover, a back cover, and coil bind. Skyla has begun work on an exciting 6th grade page -- but now she's a Thursday student and how can I see her? Christy is doing 8th, Mercedes is doing Pre-K (and I'm thinking she'll go on to do 1 and 2). We have Pre-K, K, 1-8. It's getting to be a somewhat daunting project. We formerly had combined grades, so it wasn't so huge. I should say trhat this is my project I've been doing for 14 years -- I arrived here and immediatedly started a yearbook for some unknown reason. The first two were xeroxed, free-wheeling, fun and informal books. Then I made formal ones that were printed by a real printing company in black and white. Then we went to color, printed at school on inkjet printers. Then I requested a laser printer. It's a way our art program can benefit the entire school.

Change is Afoot
Next week I am slated to begin my Tuesdays-only work life. On Wednesday Looper shared her helper with me -- Reynolds came over and we cleaned (mostly her but I'd already halfway killed myself before she got here). Things get closer and closer, tighter and tighter. Ugh.

www.tiger-swallowtail.com
Forcing myself to look for good things: a newspaperwoman emailed me about my "memorial websites" website.
She emailed: I'm a reporter at the St. Joseph News-Press in St. Joseph, Mo. We are working on a group of stories about innovative ways to remember and pay tribute to lost family members/friends, and I recently came across your web site. Please let me know as soon as you can if you would be willing to talk to me for this story. You can reach me at this e-mail address.

I replied:I'd be happy to email with you about this. I have a site for my mother (http://www.ncplus.net/~ekendall/joan.html), but I stopped working on it -- but I should add more stuff (it's good therapy!). I've always read obituaries because I am interested in the lives of real people. People are amazing and get up to so much in a lifetime! Memorial websites are a chance to keep the information around longer -- plus around here the newspapers charge a huge amount for obituaries. With a memorial website you can have
lots of text and photos, and list the website address in the newspaper obituary -- and have a guestbook, too, so eople can leave their thoughts.

Hi, Jim

KGF was going to visit, but she postponed until things settle a bit. Just writing that makes me think, "What, am I crazy? How're things going to settle?" But things do settle, even for a woman who has been traumatised by the unexpected and untimely death of her husband.

Marilee is coming tomorrow, also SWMNBMIMB.

Looper and I went to see Bubba Ho Tep last Saturday at the Capitol Theater. Reynolds has a particular fondness for the B-movie actor who starred, so we discussed it a wee bit. I said that for what they were trying to accomplish, they did it very well -- but they weren't trying to accomplish much. My home-movie-viewing has been interrupted because two films have yet to arrive -- "Red" and something-something. The library said they were overdue so I renewed them -- fervent in my belief they would arrive at any moment. I have no idea where they are or what happened to them -- hope they turn up before the library police come to investigate. The nice library rule about sending things to me is almost the only opposite I have experienced to what I call "the cripple tax." If I have to buy, say SaranWrap, instead of cheap food service film, because SaranWrap is THICKER and the box is easy to handle -- then I call the price difference (about 2 dollars?) the cripple tax. Or if I have to buy something nearby that is expensive instead of picking and choosing -- yep, it's the cripple tax again.