Plenty Better to Do Indeed, II

I'm making good on my blog title tonight.

What I need to do: iron clothes (biannual), mend clothes (annual), vacuum (weekly, so I'm not too far behind on that one), trim roses (ought to be more than biannual, but oh well), trade out for autumn clothes (huge bins of seasonal storage totally blocking the upstairs hall - Jay to be quite annoyed when he gets home...)

What I am doing / have done: blogging (self-evident), "What Not to Wear," Wendy's drive-through, cleaned kitchen (hurrah!!! give me some points!), dragged out the ironing board and arranged clothes to-be-ironed on nearby chair, found a clear corner in the bedroom to stack all autumn clothes and summer clothes and recently laundered clothes so that I can get into the bed tonight and put off the real work till tomorrow. I believe I'll turn in now, with earplugs, so I can't hear my husband groan when he gets home: I don't even want to count the various stacks of clothes "neatly" distributed across my house.
Oh, confession is good for the soul.

Calling for Hero Blogs, Year Two

OK, blog pals, here goes again for '08: If you'd care to write something about heroes or heroism over the next few days, I'd appreciate it. I assigned my sophomores their first paper today, a personal essay with the same guidelines. They have freedom to interpret the topic in any direction and with any tone they choose. Some of them are stumped (as expected). This year, I established a class website and I want to link some examples for them to read. Care to mentor today's youth via an insightful or humorous response to my prompt?! Leave me a comment so I'll know to check out your post. THANKS!!! Come on, you know you want to jump back into high school for a few minutes! This time, you don't get a grade.

By the way, here's the class site, if you're interested: http:\\kirkclass.blogspot.com.

First Day of School

Harper apparently woke up at 5:45 this morning. Of course, I was unconscious at the time. She dressed herself in her new Gymboree outfit, made her own lunch, and put Andy Griffith in the DVD player. She'd been watching TV for 2 hours by the time I was aware of anything this side of REM sleep.

She and her dad set out at 9:00 for their annual Father-Daughter First-Day-of-School trek. Since her school is being demolished and rebuilt this year, the students are being housed in a building right around the corner from our house (as opposed to the 12 minute drive of last year). In the picture, she sports her new duds, backpack, and lunch box.

Her first homework assignment was to write down three things she wants to learn this year. They are: 1) penmanship, 2) division, 3) how to burp the "Star Spangled Banner." Good stuff.