Going through the last rotation of the school year, I like to try to do some really fun things, organized things of course, but things that aren’t going to be assessed either formatively or summatively.  Like today for instance with 4th grade as we watched a YouTube video of a class in Kentucky doing a parachute routine and then worked to do it ourselves.

Oh sure, we were still learning things.  Like moving on the beat, feeling phrases and tempos but most of all working on collaboration and teamwork.  The kids we saw in the video were able to pull off some really cool effects by working together, so that was the lesson today.  See what you can do by working together.

“Life should be like this every day!” exclaimed one student with a broad smile on her face.  This was big because while I believe she very quietly likes music, she tends to be pretty stoic about most things much of the time.  Yet here she was, with that big grin expressing how she felt about time in my class.  Music through teamwork can do that to a person.

These same kids were given their recorders to take home over the summer.  I purposefully gave them the recorders at the end of class, assuming they would line up and go out the door with them.  I should have known better.  The second they were in their hands, they were in their mouths making noises – I mean sounds.  Nope, put them away and I’ll see you guys as 5th graders next year.

Later that afternoon during after school duty, I’m walking along the sidewalk and you can tell the kids are feeling the end of the school year.  It’s a bright, beautiful, extremely warm spring afternoon and all of a sudden I’m hearing music.  I tend to hear music in my head constantly so this wasn’t THAT unusual, but it was more than that.  Little renditions of “hot cross buns” were floating with the warm breezes.  Sure enough, the minute the kids hit the outdoors, the recorders came out, one boy playing for his grandfather as they walked out to the car together.  Sorry parents, but I do tend to tell the kids to take them home and have fun making you crazy over the summer.  At least you don’t have to hear 20-25 of them all at once….

So yes, there are only four more teaching days left and we’re still making music.  I hope that’s not unusual.  After all, music is meant to be made for a lifetime.  The last four days certainly shouldn’t be without music.  Let’s go back to my student’s exclamation – “Life should be like this every day!”.  Would she say that about each day she learns and makes music in my classroom?  If not, should I be concerned?  Have I lost the reason why I’m teaching music in the first place? It’s certainly something to think about.  Music, while a difficult academic subject should also be a time of joyful music making.  When a teacher drops them off with me and says “have fun”, I hope they do, and at the same time develop a deeper understanding of this organic subject matter, that subject each of us is born with.  The ultimate goal for me is that with music, life will be better for my students every day.

 

Ah, there’s nothing like spring in Nebraska.  When it finally gets here.   There’s something magical watching little girls at recess in their summer dresses and sandals, running through the grass, chasing butterflies, with bows bouncing in their hair.  There’s a sweet innocence about the scene, laughter, squeals, yelling and shouting to each other as they play.

Over on the soccer field there were thirteen boys and one girl.  The first kick was a doozy, landing squarely in the girls face.  I walked over to see if she was ok, watching as she kept licking her lip and touching her tongue to see if she was bleeding.  I looked at her face which was red but not bruising or swelling and I said, “well kiddo, there’s no blood or guts.  Are you ok?”  (Sorry – I raised boys). Never shedding a tear, she quietly said, “I’m ok” and ran off at full speed to play soccer again.  I’ve always wanted to be that girl but honestly I’m a weeny butt.  I mean, I wouldn’t have tried to play soccer in the first place.

Left to their own devices, kids will figure out how to play together.  They create a line and a list of rules to shoot basketball.  Not just in the basketball goal but also in the cart that holds all the balls AND the crate that holds the soccer shirts. They of course never use the playground equipment as it was intended by whoever builds this stuff.  They never expect kids to jump from place to to place on the merry go round instead of sitting on it or expect some little boy to take a rolly polly bug and get it stuck in the middle of the merry go round. (When the boys panicked I told him the bug would figure it out – “nature finds a way”). They also don’t expect kids to sit on top of the monkey bars instead of swinging from them or jumping off of the climbing wall instead of climbing up.  Balls are used on the slides, both up and down.  We have a group of kids right now who have opened their own little massage parlor under the playground equipment where friends can come by and get their shoulders massaged and their backs pounded, never thinking twice about whether or not this is a weird thing to do, and I’m certainly not going to make it weird.  But is IS weird, isn’t it?  Kids.

Yep, there’s nothing like recess duty at an elementary school, and nothing like recess duty to remind you of recesses when you were a kid many years ago.  All the girls in my school having to wear those cute little dresses because we weren’t allowed to wear pants to school. There’s a huge difference for girls today who can choose to wear dresses because they want to and not because they have to.  Things have changed. Some for the better of course.  I mean, thank goodness the kids don’t know anything about Red Rover or Dodgeball anymore. And I’m afraid of soccer balls.  I would rather stick with bows and butterflies myself.

 

 

 

According to research, did you know that on average, teachers make 1000 – 1500 decisions (@1 every 4 minutes) during the school day?  This is more than a brain surgeon makes in a day.  Personally, I don’t like that it’s called decision making.  That makes it sound like I’ve made a decision and everything is fixed and finished when in reality, I’m still making edits and changes as I go, so I prefer to call it tweaking instead.

Tweaking is a learned skill, something that goes right along with pacing and sequential lesson planning.  Let me give you an example of what I would refer to as tweaking.  A class walks in.  I observe HOW they walk in behaviorally.  I can tell if they have a substitute teacher, if there’s a storm on the way, a full moon or a holiday just by the behavior.  I immediately begin tweaking in my head how I will run transitions in the classroom.  After all, as teachers we are the kings and queens of differentiation – some classes can handle more leniency and others need more boundaries, depending on what’s going on and it’s never the same.  I would dare anyone who has not taught in a classroom to just come and observe one day.  Better yet, give it a try.  You might prefer to train to be a brain surgeon.

Then there is the lesson plan.  As a young teacher, I wrote down every detail.  Now I sketch an outline because most of it is in my head.  Lessons that I’ve taught for years that have stood the test of time.  And then you have that one class that gives you the deer in the headlights look.  They don’t get a thing you’re saying or understand the directions you’re giving.  Time to tweak.  Tweaking means you have enough tools in your bag, enough knowledge about your subject matter, enough analogies that you can teach something you’ve taught the same way for years in a completely different way because these kids need it taught differently.  I can slow the pace, I can use different materials, I can have kids peer teach – with more experience comes more ways to tweak and the tweaking gets faster and faster.

The one thing nobody ever tells you, and something I really should confess to my student teachers, is that the better your ability to tweak, the more exhausted you will become.  I’m convinced it’s not an age thing at all.  As more research tells us, what happens is that as we gain more experience, the more patterns we recognize and the more quickly and efficiently we can make decisions.  This. Is. Exhausting.  It’s like your brain is on overdrive for hours, a lot like being in flight or fight mode.  And if you’re like me, you find yourself tweaking everything else in your life because you just can’t stop when the school day ends.

This could be why people who retire from teaching look so much younger and refreshed.  They aren’t having to tweak a million times a day.  It’s also why I believe some people really miss teaching – the adrenaline rush isn’t the same as it was.  I often refer to teaching some of my more “active” classes as playing whack-a-mole.  It’s a challenge to see if I can keep up, get everything done I need to get done AND manage to keep all the kids engaged.  And then I wonder why I come home and crash. Even a simple question like “what do you want for dinner’ is one more decision too many.

As a music teacher, tweaking takes on a whole different look.  I tweak what I see and what I hear, tweaking pitches, rhythms, dynamics, tempos, and so much more.  At one point I may be tweaking a particular phrase in the music and then have to tweak some misbehavior going on on the other end of the choir, still maintaining my focus on the whole choir.  It’s a lot like an experienced conductor who can maintain the basic beat and still create the nuances needed to make great music.  In my classroom, my lesson plan is the basic beat, but my tweaking takes that lesson and turns it into something living, something the students absorb and take with them.  Every student is the goal and only by tweaking for each student can I be assured of that.

I have six more days of tweaking – I mean teaching –  for this year.  Then a summer of trying not to tweak so that I can jump refreshed into another year.  Another year of  observing, listening, watching, differentiating and tweaking.

 

“Behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something”.  

So, today I had the opportunity to watch the new Avengers movie, the movie that everyone has either seen or is talking about.  No secrets will be told here, but it was the usual group of hunky guys, end of the world, good versus evil kind of thing.  It was an amazing array of super powers, weapons and violence.  Characters were shot, stabbed, blown up, beheaded, burned, thrown from cliffs, crushed and turned to dust. Oh sure, there were little dabs of blood on their foreheads and on their cheeks, but nothing graphic.  Which I guess is what makes the violence alright.

Since the movie came out, kids, both boys and girls have been playing Avengers.   After all, there is one particularly memorable scene where all the women work together as a team to beat the bad guy – very awe inspiring for a young girl.  You might say, well this is just how young children play.  Sure, I played “Batman” with friends, you know, the 1966 version, and army men with my younger brother and shot at him with those smelly cap guns, but I never tried to actually hurt HIM.  I believe there are kids today who honestly don’t know the difference between real and pretend violence.  That’s because violence is violence.

At one point during the movie, which is very entertaining by the way and seems to go much faster than its three hours would dictate, I found myself tearing up.  Not because the movie was so moving, but because for one section of the movie, the combination of visual violence, sound and music almost became like physical blows to me.  It was too much.  I knew it wasn’t real and yet it was even too much for me as an adult. It concerns me even more in thinking that kids have maybe become numb to the violence. Before someone categorizes me as some kind of overly sensitive woman, I will let you know that two of my favorite shows right now are Killing Eve and Blacklist, neither of which would I ever allow a child to see.

In the last few weeks, there has been a lot in the news about violence, especially as it relates to schools.  Everything from school shootings to students committing suicide to Florida legislation giving teachers the right to have guns in the classroom.  Caring adults everywhere are questioning gun laws, school security and trying to find solutions.  Teachers are leaving the profession, one the reasons being that practicing hiding children from an active shooter was not something that was taught in their methods classes.  Nobody seems to have any answers.

So, let’s go back to this movie.  Three hours of nothing but violence in a theater where half the people in the audience were children.  Like kids pretending to be the Avengers and imitating the action they’ve seen.  Perhaps some of the same kids who play violent video games where they actually get to be the person who kills.  Did you know that someone is trying to make a video game where you get to be the shooter in a school?   Who in their right mind would think this was ok?  And yet, if this happens, there will be kids playing this, again perhaps not completely understanding that death is final.  This is where the danger is.

My question is, to all the caring adults in the world, the ones who are rightfully concerned about violence in schools, why is any violence for children condoned?  Violence is violence whether it’s real or depicted on a screen.  Don’t be fooled into thinking kids are more mature than they are – child development research will tel you differently.  Perhaps it would be better to be safe than sorry and not allow kids to be exposed to more violence than they already are.

It just makes me wonder, of the more than 2 billion dollars spent to see this movie, how much of it was to buy tickets for children?  How does that multiply into number of hours of violence shown to how many children?  I don’t mean for this to sound like a remake of 1970’s parents being afraid of their kids listening to evil heavy metal music, after all, these are nothing but comic book stories, right? But if there’s even a small chance that watching violence will affect how kids think and/or develop, shouldn’t we take a closer look?  After all, violence is violence is violence.

 

Not so long ago, things were so simple.  Breakfast was breakfast.  It was bacon and eggs or French toast and sausage.  Lunch was soup and sandwich, dinner was meat, potatoes and a veggie.  Life was so simple

Now we’re doing strange things.  Burritos with salsa for breakfast.  Power bars for lunch.  Breakfast for dinner.  What the heck is going on?  There are so many options now, nothing is homogeneous, anything goes.  Eclectic is the new thing and those who are not following the trend are, well, behind the times.

Not so long ago, education was simple, or so it seemed.  Children were separated like breakfast, lunch and dinner, sometimes by race, sometimes by disability, sometimes by behavior.  Children who didn’t fit the mold were isolated in other classrooms or sent to other schools leaving homogenous groups that could be managed in the regular classroom.  But just like our food is an amalgamation of different cultures and ingredients, some more spicy than others, our classrooms are now full of the same.

No longer conveniently separated to make things simple or keep things comfortable, our children are lumped together, different cultures, more special needs, various behavioral issues, 25-30 distinct little (or big) personalities with different backgrounds and needs, all demanding our attention at the same time and yet our well meaning system of education is still trying to put a square peg into a round hole.

The public school system isn’t broken, it isn’t full of uncaring, unqualified teachers, and kids haven’t changed.  The same ingredients that were always there are still there, we’re just mixing things up a little by having burritos and salsa for breakfast and breakfast for dinner.  And just like it takes opening your mind and stomach to new combinations, it is going to take open minds and hearts to reconfigure our schools.  It’s going to take a different thought process to prepare our teachers.  It’s going to take less testing, less rigid curriculum, and more relationship building. In an age where information is at a child’s fingertips, it will be more important than ever to teach kids how to learn, to think for themselves and outside the box.

Are private or charter schools the answer?  Perhaps, if we want to keep things simple. The truth is, parents have the right to choose what they believe is best for their children.  However, these schools can continue to separate children based on things children have no control over  Public schools on the other hand, are public schools because we believe EVERY child, no matter who they are, where they come from, what they or their families believe or what their income is, has the right to a great education.  The diversity we see in public education today is the spice added to what in the past was pretty bland eats,

While there are some days when it’s been a struggle at school and I wish things could be more simple, I think of those great kids who bring a different culture into my classroom, the kids who struggle with behaviors who then turn around and ask for hugs, the kids who struggle in their classroom academics but flourish in the arts because we’re a public school and we offer those things.  Then I think, perhaps I should continue to open up my mind and heart just a little more and enjoy something a little more spicy on my educational plate.

Not that I’m counting, but I have ten more days with children.  This is not a good or bad thing, it just is.  The end of my 28th year of teaching. I have wanted to teach since I was 8 years old and forced my younger brother to sit and do math for me on my real live chalkboard.  I have loved books and learning as long as I can remember but like everything in life, sometimes you need a break.

The Friday crash is real but lately it’s also been the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night crash as well.  While I believe veteran teachers like myself have a lot of wisdom and experience to share, sometimes I believe that the act of teaching, especially teaching elementary children, is a young person’s game.  I watch my student teachers with my kids and there is so much energy and excitement compared to what has been  described to me as my “calm” demeanor.  They may not have all the answers but they sure have the enthusiasm.

That’s why I love working with young teachers – they energize my mind if not my body.  I love working with them to make them the best teacher they can be, not by changing who they are but by enhancing who they are through their teaching.  It’s a blast.  It will be one thing I will miss when this adventure is over someday.

And I have to admit, I love the summers.  Yes, I have some professional development and curriculum work and travel for meetings, but I love the (mostly) lack of agendas, the quiet of the mornings, the slower pace, the ability to use the restroom whenever I need to. It doesn’t take much.  I embrace the idea that my life is not locked into a rigid time schedule for just a short time, enough to get my energy back and begin thinking about a new year.

Ah, but the question is, how much longer?  I attended a retirement workshop tonight to start getting some answers and you know, this could be a great idea.  I mean, the ability to use the bathroom whenever I want to is an exciting thing.  But the freedom to begin a new adventure is an intriguing thought as I’m still relatively young – unless you talk to one of my kids at school of course. And life is too short not to have adventures.

At one point in my life I felt I had completely screwed up and would never be able to get back to college, much less actually teach for a living and here we are, so many years. later.  If I could work hard enough to do that, I can work hard enough to do something else.  Oh, I still love education and will do all I can to fight for great music education and educators but in terms of being in the classroom, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  Just like I’m seeing the light of summer in just over 10 days.  And I can do anything for ten days.

 

Ever tried tossing and catching a beanbag with six year olds?  I’ve been doing this for all of two days and I’m sore.  Really sore.  Sure, some of it is related to age and not being in  great shape, but most of it is related to the truly unique tossing styles of these wonderful Kinders.

It’s all for a reason of course.  We’re supposed to be tossing on the beat to a poem:

Froggies are green, froggies are red

Froggies are yellow and blue it’s true

Froggies are fun for everyone

Unless they land on you!

It’s hard of course to actually say it in rhythm when three quarters of the kids either can’t catch or toss the beanbag consistently.  You have little ones who just know they can’t catch it and blink every time it comes in their direction.  You have the kids who don’t know their own strength and I have to reach way over my head to try and grab it.  Then there are the big personalities that have to do “trick” tosses.  There’s the wind up, the wild body contortions, the determined face and then the bean bag goes – well, just about anywhere.  Hence the reason I’m sore.  You just can’t anticipate that kind of thing.

I’m sure that the people who write these kinds of things for kids have experience doing it with, you know, actual KIDS, right?  Have they actually stood in the middle of the circle they describe and tried to toss the bean bag to 6 year olds?  Maybe they handpicked the 6 year olds.  Maybe they put those 6 year olds through a rigorous underhand tossing course before playing the game.  All I know is that it’s a lot harder than the impression given in the book.

This is very similar to elementary methods classes.  You do an activity intended for a certain age of child with college students and don’t allow them to behave like children and voila!  The activity looks so fun and easy.  It can also be taught and implemented in 10 minutes.  This would be compared to the 20 minutes it takes with my 6 year olds.  Then practicum students and student teachers wonder why things don’t go the way they think they should when they work with real kids.

I’m sure that’s the way the general public thinks as well.  After all, we’re just playing a game with a beanbag, right?  They don’t think about the fact that the kids have to memorize a poem, feel the beat of the poem to toss and catch the beanbag, use large motor skills they haven’t necessarily used much before and then do all of this simultaneously.  Nope, it’s just a game.

Well, there are going to be three more days of this fun activity so I’ll be using some Tylenol for the aches to come and look forward to more froggies and trick tosses.

 

 

I’m evil.  I admit it.  Today I asked a child, a kindergartner, to sit in a safer spot (because I can’t call it a safe seat) because she was, well….hugging me too much.  I know.  I must be the worst human being ever.  Little people hug me all the time and once in a while, I’ll actually get a little sideways hug from one of the older kids.  So, here was this adorable, all dressed in the beautiful twirly ballerina style skirt, big brown eyed kid and all she wanted to do was hug me.

Ok, granted, it was every two minutes while I was trying to teach class.  And there was never any warning.  I could be doing an activity with the rest of the class and all of a sudden there would be this attack hug.  At first I would very kindly say “thank you” and ask her to go back to her dot, but after a while, quite frankly, it became quite the distraction and just a tad bit annoying.  I mean, there are 20 other little bodies in there that I need to take care of so I can’t just focus on one child the whole time.

Of course, the look on her face when I asked her to move should have made me feel bad but it was actually a bit of a relief.  Maybe I could actually give the directions to an activity or teach a song without being attacked several times.  That sounds harsh, doesn’t it?  But unless you’ve been tackled by a kindergartner, and by the way, they’re bigger than we used to be at that age, you really don’t know, do you?

Hugs are wonderful things of course.  I was reading the other day that people crave hugs 13 times a day and that a certain length of time in a hug can reduce blood pressure and anxiety.  I understand the importance of a hug.  I also understand that there are kids that really need hugs and I usually have no problem with that.  That’s why I’m questioning whether or not I’m evil.

So after school, as I was getting ready to leave, another hugger stopped me in the hall.  “Hug Mrs. Bush!” and she snuggled up against me.  We made a deal a couple of years ago when she was struggling a bit behaviorally that she could come get a hug whenever she needed it.  Now I think she just likes the hugs.  Over and over again.  I should be more patient.  “One more hug Mrs. Bush!”  and a minute later as I turn towards my room to get my stuff, “one more hug Mrs. Bush!”.  Oh, and a minute later as I’m trying to move away gracefully, “one more hug Mrs. Bush!”.  I think I made it maybe a foot towards my door.  By the fourth hug, I finally convinced her that I needed to get going.  I didn’t really, but I’m pretty sure she would have kept it up until her parents came to pick her up from after school care.

I was one of those kids who didn’t get hugs growing up and I certainly never asked one of my teachers for one.  I just assumed that most grown-ups didn’t hug and the ones who did made me feel uncomfortable.  Probably because I wasn’t used to them. Knowing what I know now about hugs, maybe they would have alleviated the anxiety I grew up with and still deal with all these years later.  Now that I can get hugs whenever I want, I ask for them often.  They’re a wonderful thing.

So, it’s not like I’m going to just stop giving kids hugs – we all need them.  I never thought I would have to teach kids when and how to hug, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing.  Maybe then I won’t have to discipline kids for hugging anymore.

 

You know, I never appreciated John Lennon until I got older and really began listening to his music.  “Let me take you down cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields – nothing is real”.

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me

More and more of us are living with eyes closed.  There are things we don’t want to see or know about.  We are more comfortable with misconceptions and our own perceptions than reality, whatever that may be.  So then, how do we know what reality is?  Unless you’re in the middle of something, really being mindful, do we really experience the reality of a situation, organization,  institution, philosophy or even a person?

For years now, I’ve come to the realization that we don’t understand reality until we’re right in the middle of it.  Staying on the periphery or watching from the sideline is not the same.  You may observe or have an intellectual understanding of what is happening but you are not experiencing it.  Case in point, I served on a board as an appointed member where I observed the presidents and executive committees giving reports and making speeches and assumed I knew what it was all about.  Until I became president of that same board and the reality changed drastically.  My perceptions were not complete as I didn’t have all the info – I wasn’t in the middle of it.  The more I allow myself to be involved in things, the more I realize my perceptions were incomplete and my perspective changes each time.

I think this realization makes me more aware of the possibilities of what might be going on behind the scenes in other areas of life. Our culture today is beautifully described in the lyrics; “life is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see”.  We see life as we believe it to be, as we observe it to be but not as it is because we’re not engaged in it.  Everything is second and third hand information, based on others perceptions and belief systems and sometimes very little of it is based on fact, reality or truth.  And misunderstanding can lead to hate and distrust and as the song says, it’s all we see.

Sometimes perceptions are manipulated because we want people to believe something that isn’t real to put on our best face.  It’s easy to do because very few people want to get involved enough to see for themselves what the reality really is.  Sometimes perceptions are manipulated because we want people to believe things are better than they really are.  We believe it puts us or our organizations or institutions in a better light to those outside our circle.  The problem is that when the truth comes out, and it will eventually , it breeds more distrust and misperceptions.  It is better to come clean when things aren’t “hunky dory” as my dad used to say, and reach out for help or advice to make things better.  Nothing is perfect and the sooner we understand that, the less misunderstanding there will be.

It doesn’t take much.  One person with a platform in a position of authority can create all kinds of misunderstandings, misconceptions and misperceptions for those who aren’t in the middle of whatever is happening. That’s when things like labeling and categorizing begin, creating the “us versus them” mentality and spewing hatred at anyone who is “them”.  “It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out – it doesn’t matter much to me”.  But it should matter.  It’s time for all of us to be somebody, to immerse ourselves in those things we are passionate about, to not just assume that things are always going to be a certain way.  The only way to make things real again is to become a part of the realness, to become engaged and stop living with eyes closed. It’s much harder to keep that “us versus them” mentality when reality shows you who they really are and that you may have more in common than you think.

In New York City’s Central Park, near the Dakota where John Lennon was shot and killed, there is an area called Strawberry Fields.  In the middle of this tree sheltered area is a tiled mosaic that says “Imagine”.  I would love to imagine a world where we were real with each other, where misunderstandings could be worked out and we begin living with our eyes wide open.

 

 

 

An empty school can be a wonderful thing.  Quiet, nobody interrupting me, and I can talk to myself and nobody is there to wonder if I’m slightly crazy.  So this afternoon, I decide to work at school because I no longer have a student teacher and I actually have to create lesson plans.  There were storm clouds in the distance and we were under a watch but I wouldn’t be gone that long.

The lesson plans were finished and I was entering grades when the sirens started.  Seriously?  I check the weather on the laptop and all it says is Severe Thunderstorm Warning.  So I call home.  No answer – my better half is taking a nap of course.  Finally I get word that it’s a Tornado Warning and I’m at school.  Well, what would I normally do?  I would go to the band room.  So I grab my stuff and go next door to the smaller room and get under the desk.  My first thought was, I wonder if I can get back up?  It’s a legitimate question.  My knees don’t cooperate like they used to which is why I don’t get on the floor with Kinders anymore.  I could see the headlines – Music Teacher Gets Stuck Under Desk During Tornado.  It’s Lincoln after all. Could be embarrassing.

But go under the desk I did for a little while, still searching the web for more details.  Then the lights went out.  The question was, had I been too still for too long and the sensor just missed me or did we lose power?  I would have to get up from under the desk to see.  So…..let’s just say it took longer than it should have and it was not pretty but once the sensor saw me, the lights came back on.  This is why I like to go to school when nobody else is around.

The noise on the roof was ridiculous and my only thought was for my little humbrd, sitting out beside the building.  I parked it as close as I could to the building in the loading dock and hoped it would shield it in case of hail.  Pretty sure I was more concerned for my car than I was for myself.  Good news – no hail damage! In the meantime, I find out that my better half, the one who might have slept through the whole thing, was having a tornado watch party in the underground garage with the rest of our neighbors, peeking out the doors just to see what was up.  It was the perfect introvert/extrovert scenario.  I was alone and he was with his people.

Today we were fortunate.  To see the swirling storm on the radar was pretty surreal and we’re lucky it wasn’t any worse.  I have lived in Nebraska for almost 20 years now and I have yet to see a tornado and I’m ok with that.  Hopefully our tornado season won’t be as intense as our winter was.  Otherwise I might have to get used to doing things like hiding under desks.