October snapshots

It helps to remind myself that I love this time of year -- October, with its crunchy fall leaves and darker skies and rain, with its annual trip to the pumpkin patch. I love the transition to sweaters and hoodies. I love pumpkin spice lattes (even though I almost never get them) and all the other cozy seasonal drinks. I love Halloween decorations and Thanksgiving decorations and, yes, even Christmas decorations, even though Christmas isn't for a hundred more months. I love all my caramel and vanilla and pumpkin-scented candles and lotions. I love hot buttered rum. I love bundling my children into coats and boots and playing outside in the crisp fall air; I love collecting leaves with Suzannah so we can do leaf rubbings at home.

I remind myself of these things in order to stay grateful in the midst of what always seems to be massive amounts of stress. I don't know if I'm more stressed out now than I was at this time last year; after all, this year, my husband is at least gainfully employed in a new job he likes. That's actually pretty huge. Our life, as it stands, is pretty wonderful. The kids are well-adjusted and happy, and I enjoy all the daily stuff -- finding interesting new recipes to try (giving up meat has, interestingly, led me to try so many more things that I otherwise might), playing with Suzannah and Isaac in the afternoons, heading out for weekend adventures as a family, curling up on the couch in the evenings and pretending to grade papers while I'm really just zoning out in front of Twin Peaks (because it is also that time of year).

I haven't been writing much here, mostly because I'm just trying to stay sane. However, not writing never keeps me sane, ever, so here I sit on a Saturday night, with my Netflix and my gin-and-tonic and my laptop. I don't really know what I can say, since I have this flimsy little no-writing-about-school policy and school has been pretty consuming lately. I'm finally settling into some sort of rhythm with my new junior classes -- which, thank heavens, seem to have stabilized, so I can start teaching actual stuff now. I'm excited for the freedom to teach basically whatever I want in my regular junior classes, so I'm planning a bunch of revolutionary literature. Literature of Change! Yes!

(Also, I don't think I mentioned this ever? Two of my brand-new language & lit classes were "flipped" a couple of weeks into the school year, meaning I learned on a Sunday night that I would be teaching something totally different, with totally different kids, on Monday. Thank you, Broken Master Schedule. However, I wasn't actually all that upset, because I still have my junior IB lit class, which I can teach in my sleep, and my senior IB class, which I love, and teaching "regular" juniors means I have a tremendous amount of freedom in what I get to do, and that's always fun. Surely I get some credit for my relentlessly positive attitude, right?)

I have a really interesting bunch of kids in my two new classes. They frustrate the heck out of me. They make me angry. They break my heart. They're going to force me to really look at how I teach them and find different ways to help them be successful. It means I'm busy and exhausted and kind of pissed off some days, but still, when I stop and breathe, I usually manage to remember that I have exactly the job, and the life, that I want.

The kids are doing so well. Suzannah still loves (loves, loves, loves) kindergarten and my heart cannot even take the way she is just such a kid, a kid who skips across the playground and waves at all the people she knows and chatters about the games she played in music class and the book she picked out in the library. Isaac is becoming more and more his own little joyful self who just seems to love everything about being almost-two. (Suzannah didn't enjoy this age quite so much, as I recall; or maybe it's just that she hated sleeping at this age, and she resented me for trying to make her do it every night.) The kids love each other, know all the ways to torture each other like no one else ever will, and make sure to give each other lots of hugs before bedtime. They delight me every single day, even when they insist on soundly trouncing my self-esteem. (Last week, on our way to someplace or another, I happened to be singing at the top of my lungs when Suzannah said, "Mommy, your singing is hurting my ears. You can try again tomorrow." When I told her that her leftover noisemaker from some birthday party -- WHY was that even in the car? -- was hurting my ears, she simply replied, "But I like it.")

In between all of my Sunday blues and paper-grading (which provides me no end of absurdity to read aloud to my husband, which, actually, is one of the perks of being a teacher) and school drama and laundry and toys all over the floor and runny noses and running out of the one ingredient I need to make the dinner I wanted, there are the things that will make me remember these days more fondly: waffles on Saturday morning, trips to the Seattle Children's Museum and Discovery Park, dinner at the Elliott Bay Brewery and stopping by Easy Street Records and Cupcake Royale afterwards, family shopping trips at Trader Joe's, the annual trip to the pumpkin patch, going for runs in the crisp fall air, and realizing again that it is such a deep blessing to share this house, these moments, this life, with people whose company I enjoy so much.