boooooooooks

When you are sore from moving boxes, a morning epsom bath with coffee and book is really nice. 


Our district is starting a new **Curriculum** and the ELA materials arrives a few weeks ago. That's 19 pallets' worth; 1200 boxes of books.  we have 10 schools this year, not counting the high school, which means of the Bulk Order of books my coworker had to say things like, for 1st grade, 125 go to A, 100 to B, and 75 to C.  Which means if you get 2 boxes of   100, you have to split a box so B and C can get what they need.

Each grade level has 4 'modules' and each module in the lower grades has like 7 or 8 books.


Also.  They mostly shipped us the quantities we needed, so that means sometimes they had to break up boxes on their end and do 'mixed label' boxes to top up quantities. And it could have like 1 of 1 book and 25 of another and 13 of another in there.  (*At least one or two books they mixed up '1 per classroom' and '1 per student.' My coworker was seeing red!!)

The boxes were already sorted by grade, thank god - i think my coworker and her son did this on the weekend - and she had asked for help with sorting, and friday I was mentally fried, so I went over to see what she needed and discovered all of the above!  So on Friday, we did math and labeled boxes and moved boxes and packed boxes.  Occasionally we said 'that is a good book.'   My knees are bruised.  It's easier for me to move around than my coworker so I did most of the grunt work.

You probably know this but a box of books usually weighs 30 pounds!

We didn't finish up on Friday and I helped a bit more yesterday, but I had some meetings I needed to get to. I bet she finished them all up!

k-8 ela books, baby.

And I only helped with k-3, so I'm very impressed with my coworker and her son!

Memorable books:
- A color of his own, leo leonni
- museum abcs by the Met
- Owl at Home
- 2 things by Tomie De Paola, i forget what
- the story of ruby bridges
--

cool 'units' -
- cinderella (several versions of cinderella stories - korean, mexican, bigfoot, navajo?)
- fall
- farm animals
- undersea life
- world of books
- civil rights heroes
- the american west 
- The continents
-America Then and Now

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I remembered a few things from Reading Rainbow and saw some new cool things. 

 

All this is to say, 
- I haven't been in my office since thursday, hope I didn't miss anything vital
- had much self doubt about doing all this, but i don't THINK i missed anything vital, and coworker needed the help (there is a time limit on this too!)
- my body hurts
- if we ever do that again i recommend a clipboard and aprons because the sharpies, tape, and boxcutters got adhd'd all over the place (it's behind you, alice)

parenting and wifing

today the heat wave begins, dan left the house at  6:30 to hit the good mountains by 8:30 am (the White Mountains pres range, including Washington).   He's a cautious person, so I'm not toooo concerned about him in the heat -  I think when it gets really hot he'll be Up Top where it's cooler and breezier, and the issue will be when it's time to come back down - he'll be tired and hot then.   But. he prepares very well for this sort of thing.  So while something MAY go wrong, it's not super likely to.

Since we have a split-level and some of our house is underground, the basements stays pretty cool.  we don't have AC though (except me, ha).  The kids are home alone, but they're 11 and 16.  I didn't come up with a very good schedule for them to try to follow but guess what, meg and i texted this morning and she made her own schedule and sent it to me.   They CAN fix food for themselves. They WILL get bored.  I will tell them no swimming (at first i said 'not alone, you need each other as buddies,' but honestly they should have an adult).   

 I work 20 minutes away and I THINK they'll be just fine. 
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I'm having a bit of an anxiety about everyone being okay.

 i'm thinking about my mom a lot, and I think I just want to be a border collie and keep my little herd together and safe. and be with them.  I'm also having an anxiety about the dumb work project but i know i can handle that. most of my coworkers have summer vacation starting thursday (we don't get Juneteenth till next year), and I'm trying to balance that 'everyone needs quiet relaxation time' vibe with 'stupid work project.'  Ultimately I end up with this:  I tried to take a vacation in February with palm trees and i ended up turning 90 degrees and falling down a plinko board - bumping into every pin on the way and ultimately into a weird place of grief. 


--Update ---
* Coincidentally Ty sent a gif of a character in a plinko board! 
* Kids were okay but bored, so in the evening we went to hobby lobby together. ty has some Social Drama happening that would take too long to explain (according to him) so he was feeling kinda vulnerable; so spending time together playing with toys and looking for Activities was a good thing.

* Dan made it! But he forgot sunscreen.  Everything else was awesome.