Well, let's see. . .

26 - 14 equals 12. Twelve days it's been since I found the time to get here. Yeah, sorry about that. The last few weeks have been crazy, and that's on the good days. Things at school haven't really seemed to slow down yet. We're in the middle of all of our beginning of the year assessments, and that means I have to find time during the day to sit down with each of my lovely children individually and listen to them read while I try to juggle a clipboard, a stopwatch, and a pencil. Plus, I have to be able to send out the silent death glare to any of my other children who aren't sitting there reading quietly like the county thinks they should be able to one week into school. So, teaching? I'm getting a little bit done since we have to keep up with the county calendars, but I feel like I'm just rushing through things. Plus, we have benchmarks. Don't get me started on benchmarks, or the steam will begin to rise. I'm sure they will be very helpful throughout the year, but trying to give a math pretest that takes about two hours and a language arts pretest that also takes two hours during the second week of school does not add up to fun. We're surviving, though. And that's usually the goal for the first month of school. Survive and advance. (Sounds like the NCAA tournament.)

Right now we're attempting to keep our selves from going underwater. I know, it sounds weird for someone in a drought, but Tropical Storm Fay has decided to stop by Atlanta! We've got to be the only people in the southeast who are thrilled to see a tropical storm! I'm sure Florida was more than happy to see her go. Fay has been generous with us. In some places, like the Lake Lanier watershed, she's dropped close to eight inches of rain! Yesterday, the lake had already risen about 3 inches which means an increase of 1.4 billion gallons. As I type, it's continuing to rain. Hopefully, we'll get another inch or two before Fay heads off somewhere else. And, there's another hurricane in the Carribbean which could bring us more rain in the next couple of days. I don't feel quite as guilty taking a bath now. :)

So that's about it for our lives right now. Jeremy's hours were cut back a little at work. He's going in at 5 pm now, so Andrew doesn't need to go to daycare. Hopefully, the money that he's losing in his paycheck will be offset by the money we don't have to pay for daycare. We'll see. They've also cut back on their Saturday schedule, so for right now he's not scheduled to work any weekends. While I'm not happy about the cut in hours, I can't complain about the Saturdays. I don't know how long this will last. Hopefully only for a few months at least.

Oh, and for those of you who were wondering. My student who had his adventure in the bathroom was back to school a week ago Monday. His arm is bandaged up still, but it seems to be doing OK. I think I've had enough blood for the year, although with this group, I have a feeling more accidents are in my future. They have a tendency to act before they think. I'll just make sure my insurance premiums are paid up!