My children love each other enough to take a weekend (plus travel for Barbara and Nick) to make their own Christmas celebration, including some of the things they enjoyed growing up. I am grateful that they have each other.

Had our first night apart Friday night. First time apart in three + years. Not a big fraught crisis, but it reminds me how much I'd rather have her here. Funny thing is, in that situation you'd think "Well, do all the stuff you can't/don't do when she's home." Except that the whole list is "Eat Chinese" and I wasn't in the mood.

It is nice to work in a pleasant atmosphere again, without all the toxic fumes constantly at play.

I've been slacking.

Health. I forget lots of times that at my age, lots of folks are or have been struggling with one health issue or another. I'm overweight and probably prone to high blood pressure, but everything works and I am essentially healthy as all get out. That is no small thing, and one of the biggest pieces of flat-out blessed grace in my life.

This.

Open house can be slow and make a long day even longer. But my wife drove up here with a burrito from Sheetz and sat and ate with me, and that made the whole business better. These are the kind of small supports that keep me upright and energized.

It has been a beautiful bunch of days. Color in the leaves, air cool but not too cold-- just about perfect. I live in one of those sorts of places that people dream about vacationing to, except that I LIVE there!

To have Barbara and Nick here yesterday for just 7-8 hours of hanging out and talking was a great capper to a frantically hectic couple of weeks. Even the crazy race to Butler to eat with them at Red Lobster was worth it. It was so great to see them.

The evaluation system is not as horrifying as it might be. This seems like a pretty low bar for thankfulness, but I spend a lot of time these days fretting the world of my profession, so to find something that seems to include even a bit of sense is a relief.

Applefest with my wife not working allows for a full day of coming and going at will. Want to sit for a few minutes and listen to three cellos and a drummer play rock? Sure, we can do that. Way cool, and still one more day left.

Sarah and Sebastian are in the US. It was exciting to see them last evening, even if jet lag left him somewhat less than fully sociable.

Applefest is coming, and my wife has no work. For the first time in ever, Amanda has no work, no show, no nothing except the inevitable school prep stuff to do when the giant festering of appleness comes. We get to go all-in on the applosity.

It has been a hard few days what with the death and all, and going to Roland's funeral today was rough. But 1) I can be glad that I knew him and 2) I can be glad to have a wife who stands with me while we hold each other up. It's a shame I had to get to be fifty before I could start to really understand how this works, but it's a blessing that I at least finally started to grasp it.

I had a really good moment with a student today. I have no idea if it will be of lasting value, but at least today I was able to get both of us past his general obnoxiousness and find a place where we could agree about how to move him forward. Like I said, may not last. But it was nice to have that moment today.

Sunday was a good birthday day for Amanda. We walked around the Ross Park Mall, ate at a place called NOLA on the Square in Market Square in Pittsburgh. I got us lost walking around but we just handled it. I love this woman a lot. Anyway, the restaurant was delicious. Fried alligator bits came with the same creamy hot sauce that the Common used to have with calimari, there was a flatbread with crawfish and stuff that was delicious, and I had jambalaya which was hotter than hell but really, really tasty. Then we saw The Lion King at the Benedum, which is quite the spectacle. A great day, although yesterday we were fully exhausted.

Just extra great this morning to wake up in a world that is cool, and not hot and humid. The world feels nice today.

This song just never stops making me happy. I actually heard it in a store at the outlet mall while Amanda was trying on dresses. I wrote down enough lryic to look for it later and discovered this sassy Norse jazz singer. Very cool.

Sara Bareilles is totally white girl music at its Wonder Breadiest. Sometimes I can hear Karen Carpenter in her voice, just with a funkier back-up band. But when either of these songs comes up on the ipod when I'm biking, I get a little more mettle in my pedal

This morning I hit the bike and noticed, once again, that the produce stand at the corner was filled with stuff. The stock stays there every night, overnight, without a security guard or a camera or anything else, and even though it's beside a major road, it's also beside a bridge so you could grab and duck pretty quickly, but there never seems to be an issue because apparently we live in a place where that isn't an issue. Cool.

Daughter and son-in-law are in Hawaii with her mother this weekend, and to read the blog and see how happy it makes her is great. I confess to a twinge of jealousy now and then, but really, given the fact that they have sometimes they have had challenges, I am glad to see their bond so strong at this stage. Every woman should get to be close to her mother.

Cruising up the bike trail and feeling strong this morning, with a breeze in my face and the river beside me. It's going to get steamy later, but in the morning cool, it just feels so good!

A whole other day at work without anyone freaking out. I realize that's a small thing, but after you go almost a whole year without it, you appreciate it. Being able to walk through the halls or talk to co-workers without wondering what fresh hell lurks around every conversational corner. I can just do my work, and that's kind of great.

It was a great first day. And in the course of that day, my boss clarified a policy issue, received several respectfully dissenting opinions from staff, and by the end of the day had modified the policy to reflect the concerns staff had expressed to him. It's a nice thing to work for somebody who listens and responds.

A really good and uplifting in-service today, but in a good, realistic, on-this-planet way and not in a unicorns pooping rainbows way. Still had some time to get some things ready, and I'll have a little time to continue that process tomorrow. I'm excited to get things going, probably a little more than  usual because Amanda's excitement is leaking all over the house. It is so great that she is finally getting to do the work that she was born to do. Kids tomorrow for her.

There is something warming about driving with a loved one sleeping in the car. I don't know-- maybe it appeals to my caveman protective side. But it's a real privilege to be able to drive my daughter to the airport, before sunrise, sliding down the highway into the morning. And it's a real gift to make the whole trip with my wife beside me.

I'm behind, and as much as I was afraid of trying to meet my daughter's standard of three things, I may end up going there.

Wednesday night we were all up and out late, first sitting and cutting things out for Amanda's classroom. She is so pumped and so anxious but it is so cool to see all this stuff come together into a room that looks just like her. And then we wrapped up the day with some Just Dance, and I still suck, but it's fun to take turns flopping around the living room rhythmically with my wife and daughter.

Yesterday Barbara went shopping with me for shirts and ties. Then last night Barbara's date canceled so I went with her up to Erie to see Melissa in Legally Blonde. Melissa did really, really well. I also got to see Evan O'Polka, who was my Hamlet-in-the-park years ago. But mostly it was fun to see a show again with the woman long-ago dubbed The Critic because she has such a good eye for theater and what's working and what's not. It was a great evening.

There's nothing quite as exciting as an in-service that provides good information that you can actually use. The trainer for MBC was an actual classroom teacher, and the information she provided got me excited about some of the uses I can find for the program-- particularly nice because I have not been loving MBC and have been a little grumpy about having to give up moodle for it.

In other teacher new, it is also exciting to watch my wife get so cranked up for her first full year of full time employment in her own classroom. Elementary people have so much labor-intensive bit-work stuff to do for their rooms, and after a couple of decades of being able to just saunter in on day one, I get kind of cranked up to see how cranked up she is getting.

My daughter is home. Almost nothing warms my heart more than having one of my kids under the roof here. It's worth every trip to the airport, day or night.

Baking

Right now Amanda is baking zucchini bread. She bakes many good things, and it is a challenge to my desire to take some weight off, because whatever she makes, it's generally a 24-hour supply of it. I already ate one of the vegetarian stuffed peppers today. The steady steam of co-op food creates pressure on us to make things out of the better-than-storebought local produce (and meat) that comes into the house, but the baking is the best part. I can finally learn to love zucchini if it comes bread-shaped. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the philosophical differences between bread and cake. I would feel REALLY irresponsible if it were called zucchini cake.

Lisa Frank Jesus and My Daughter

There were lots of things to love this day, but by evening Amanda and I were sitting at Lisa Frank Jesus, the home of Mexicannish food near the Grove City outlets. Tonight we got to sit in one of the booths against the wall where the world's worst rendering of The Last Supper is plastered on the wall in colors that would have made Lisa Frank say, "Damn, man. Tone it down a bit."

But the colorization is only part of the beauty-- the rendering of human forms has never been so delightfully off. Right by my head was a foot on which the big toe extended several inches beyond everything else on the foot. Skulls are distorted as if the apostles had been squoze through God's own bowling ball polisher. It is huge and so earnestly awful that it makes me smile. Not even the Pope table at Buca de Beppo does it so well.

Also, this post "http://sunshineguerilla.blogspot.com/2013/08/final-thoughts-on-camp-galileo.html" from my daughter's blog I read today (there's a fine sentence construction). Her combination of strength and honesty continues to be amazing and awesome to me. It has been hard to watch her struggle these past few years and not be able to fix it, but it fills my heart to see her get into a marriage with an exceptional man and to spend the summer letting her own bright spirit find expression again.

My day starts

by waking up and looking out at a beautiful morning with the river stretching past blue and smooth. I have the use of my body, and I get to bike 11 or so miles up the trail and back, because it's just across the river, and though today it punched me in the legs, I pushed on through. The opportunity and ability are blessings that not everyone has.

This woman

We have spent hours in cars, in planes, in strange places far from home, and just generally around each other all summer. It never gets old, and it never gets difficult.