Sounds like a bad soap opera, doesn’t it?
As The Sun Sets. An afternoon drama about the loves and lives of astrologers and astronomers living on a hippie commune found on the 13th floor of a high-rise in Minneapolis. Will James and Dixie Moon Child find true love? Or will they be thwarted by the plotting of Gigi and her band of trained poodles? Find out on the next episode of As The Sun Sets!
Or something like that. I’d flesh out that drama scenario with increasingly more absurd situations, full of analogies and true comic fun, but my brain is drained. Brain drain. Drained brained. The lights are on, someone is home, but said someone is staring out into space through half-closed eyes because said lights are flickering and said door to the home is jiggling in the jamb and making an annoying racket and there’s a breeze coming from somewhere and what the hell is that smell?
CoronaLearning is going just fine, thanks for asking.
No, it’s not.
Yes, it really is, it’s fine.
Really?
Yeah, really. Because I’m actually having a great time working with my students, even though the limitations of the technology suck. I’m just…
Uh-huh, here it comes.
I’m mentally and emotionally done when school is over. 1:55 pm is when I throw the 8th graders out the metaphorical door to the metaphorical bus, and by the time I get to 3:00 (because grading and meetings and paperwork and planning and all the things) I understand zombies in a way I never anticipated.
WHAT?
Brrrraaaaaiiiinnnnsssss….gimme your braiiiiinnnnssss…because mine is jello. Grey, gooey, totally exhausted jello.
We’re done here.
Quite.
And then tonight the sun set early. Or, rather, the sun swan-dived over the horizon at its usual universal moment, it’s just that we humans dinked around with our time-monitoring devices while we slept and now it’s unreasonably dark for this hour of the day. My seasonal depression has the 🤨 face. I remember several years ago, watching the sun go down the day we turned the clock back. My god, I remember this far too clearly. I was making our bed, and stopped to watch the glowing orb dip down behind the Front Range. And I remember saying a silent prayer that I’d get through the long dark winter ahead. Then I pulled the sheets up tight, fluffed the pillows, and kept on keeping on.
I have no great parting message here. My writing skills are rusty from lack of use and please see the description of my brain above. This evening I sat and did some school stuff in front of the window as the sun sat, and I remembered that day long ago when I was making the bed. I made it through those dark days and I expect I’ll make it through the dark days ahead. And lordy lord, there are some challenging days ahead, regardless of the election results on Tuesday.
So wear a mask, vote like your life depends on it, and be kind to teachers. They’re one step from zombies.
Braaaaaiiiiinnnnssssss…..