Kindergarten, selling the house and a strange dream...

Today I'm home. I let them know at the school that I wouldn't be coming in today - the prerogative of the substitute - and have had a blissful day of my sort of fun. I've been doing a few online programs - one the regular Sketchbook Skool klasses I adore, one a 'summit of sketchbook artists' and one an offshoot of that one - a sort of dreamy yoga-ish, new age-ish painting experience. This last one I'm enjoying but I do have my rather cynical glasses on at the same time. She has us closing our eyes and wandering across fields of wildflowers etc...something I've led hundreds of poor people on, but it is nice to be led and not do the leading and I'm happy with what I'm creating.

I had a very busy kindergarten week. Man oh man, those kids wear me out. They are deliciously funny and cute though. I told the fella that a couple of them said I was the best teacher ever. He pointed out that their experience was rather limited. What a party pooper! It is completely splendid to be responsible for getting little ones to read - a thrill. When they get it they are utterly intoxicated with it. How good is that!

Next week I will be back with the grade two's. I do enjoy the variety of being a sub. I simply can't get bored. I adore the grade two class - it is so much fun. We will make slime again - maybe this time with sparkles or even iron filings that I magnetize. That would be fun.

Now ... Ruby's house (where we live) is being sold. I think by this evening there will be an offer the siblings will accept. I sure hope so as I hate having to keep the place up for random visits. Bits of things are starting to go to new homes - china cups, framed stitchery, bedding, all sorts of things as the house starts to be dismantled. We, of course, still have to live here for almost three more months so there's lots here but it is being spoken for. And the fella and I are at least beginning to imagine how we will get our accumulation back to Nova Scotia. We have a station wagon and a pickup truck and may add a trailer to that. Some of the stuff we bought while here (a mattress set) or Ron made ( a beautiful bed) and some we've brought from home over the four years, and some we had shipped here at the beginning. We'll get rid of novels most likely but keep non-fiction and reference books (dharma, writing, drawing, history, memoirs). I have a lot of art and craft supplies - filled sketchbooks, oil paints, water colour paints, acrylic, canvasses, cloth, stuffing, wool and on and on - quilts and supplies. Frightening really. I'm going home with less clothes than I brought so that is good. This moving is such a good way to take stock of what is truly important - which ultimately is NONE OF THE STUFF - but we'll still pack it up and move it.

Now I just want to say that I had this crazy dream the other night and I'm going to phone my partners in writing musicals - Dawn Harwood-Jones and Malcolm Callaway and tell them we have to write it. Here's the title - The Valkyries Witness Protection Plan.  I love dreams. They are so demented and random. I think I can make this one work for me.

“The Dises” by Dorothy Hardy (1909)