Tuesday we got a taste of summer. When I got to my school yesterday the power wasn't doing so well. The lights in the classrooms were at 50%, the refrigerators in the cafeteria weren't working so the food had spoiled, the freezers were off so the food was almost completely thawed out, one stove worked, and periodically the lights would go off but come right back on. The cafeteria workers had to go to other schools to get milk, and the kids had dry cereal and milk for breakfast. Lunch was going to be iffy because of the limited stoves and food. But the energy company said we'd be up and running no earlier than 10:00 a.m., so school continued as usual.
At about 8:45 we got word that the power would be off all day, so we had to start calling parents and telling them the wonderful news. "45 minutes after dropping off the kids they'd have to come back to get them." Many of our sixth graders got permission to walk home, and so in no time I only had 3 kids left. A lot of the parents called parents they knew so I didn't have to call them, they just came and got their kids. There were a couple of instances where the parents wouldn't pick up the phone because they didn't recognize the numbers (we had to use our personal cell phones) so the kids were given permission to use theirs. That's how I got several of my parents. One of the teachers had to go to the student's house to tell the parent because the parent changed cell numbers and didn't tell the kids or the school. There were several district personnel here that ended up doing that.
Anyway, by 10:58 we had all of the kids gone. Jack and I were going to go get lunch as a special treat, and he voted we go get Caroline because, "It wouldn't be fair if I had the day off and she was in school." Nice thought, but remember when she was out of school a week and a half and never gave you a single thought? Apparently that never crossed his mind. We went and had lunch and then went home for the afternoon. The kids just hung around the house because the kids in our neighborhood were actually in school. That's when I took Jason's idea of taking the kids swimming at my sister's house. So we changed into our suits and headed out. They swam for a couple of hours and then we came home. Caroline got up the nerve to jump off the diving board and was so proud when she actually did it (she got up and down about 10 times). She was distraught beyond words when it was time to go, but as it turns out she came home and slept for 2 1/2 hours.
It was such a nice day. It of course threw off my entire week at school, but hey who cares? Not me! It was a nice taste of what's to come.
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