Just reflection

It's been kind of a chaotic week for us. No classes/school/work on Monday, but still the week felt interminable, probably because we were waiting to get paid on Thursday. Classes started Tuesday, and it was immediate chaos because my mom freaks out about stuff and she managed to inconveniently take two morning (9-12) classes, so that allows her to bully the kids into a bad mood trying to get them up and out the door to school before we leave in the mornings. Sheridan has a morning class every day, so she's got to be out the door by 8:30, but if we leave before 8;30 she has to stand around and wait for the class to start/building to open. So that was Tuesday. I didn't have any classes to teach on Tuesday, so I stayed home in the morning with Jilly so she wouldn't be home alone.

Wednesday I teach three classes, 9-10:30; 10:30-12; and 7-10PM, which effectively makes my day last way longer than I like. My morning classes went really well. So did the evening class, but we had to end class halfway through because the temperature had dropped alarmingly and all the bus drivers were ready to take the students home by 8 PM (I guess all the other evening classes let out early and I was the hold out).
 I stayed home Weds. afternoon with Jilly because Alan and Sheridan have classes all day, so nobody would have been home with her. Thursday, again, stayed home all morning because nobody home with Jilly.

Thursday afternoon I went grocery shopping by myself (which has not happened in about a year or more. I usually have to take the whole crowd with me). Friday I figured out that I had locked my office keys in my office and nobody was there who had a key, so I stayed home again. I'll be surprised if my boss doesn't freak out on Monday. Plus, no way to get in to do any lesson plans for Monday. I'm going to have to wing it.

In knitting, I'm working on my February Lady Sweater. I love the yarn I'm using. It's called Berocco Ultra and it's in a yummy shade of wine red, or maybe it's crimson. All I know is it is soft, soft, soft and it knits beautifully and the body of the sweater is nearly done. Then it's just sleeves and finding buttons and weaving in ends. I am a lover of the color red. You wouldn't know it from what I knit. Usually I knit blues and greens and pinks and purples, but this yarn I bought a few years ago and I've been working on knitting it up about that long, too. I started kind of a free-form sweater with the yarn after I bought it, but I ended up frogging that because lack of a pattern and lack of knitting sweater experience kind of doomed that sweater.

 Anyway, it's nearly done. Not done well. I get distracted while I'm knitting and forget which row of the lace I'm on and I'm sure I displaced two rows of the lace section so it's off a bit, but I'm not going to rip back because it's kind of a bitch to get garter stitch back on the needles and I've been working on this sweater since, like, September 2011. (Not continuously, of course, there were several other projects in between). After I finish this sweater I'm working on the Brownstone I started in September also.

In reading, I've kind of become obsessed with reading princess novels and fairy tales. I don't know why. It's a departure for me. I was on a long science fiction kick, then into some fantasy novels, then some crime novels, and then a long period of dystopian lit. But now it's retold fairy tales, specifically stories with strong, modern princesses who are placed in fakey, historically-inaccurate medieval-Regency periods. Go figure.

What I've read/am reading:
Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George
Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George
A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith
Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

I've read another Shannon Hale book and remembered it only after I'd bought Princess Academy. I wasn't impressed with Austinland (the Hale book I read previously), so I'm not holding out great hope for Princess Academy,which was why I bought Posse of Princesses to read before I do the Hale book.

The Jessica Day George books are okay, but she seems to get to a point where she stops storytelling and starts rushing to the end. Or maybe I just don't like action in my fairy tales, but it seems too rushed and before you know it the book is over and the lovely "once upon a time" feeling is gone.

Anyway, these books go fast, they were all written for Grade 5-8 level, so I've read them all in the past week. I'm thinking of going back and re-reading the Karen Marie Moning books about fairies invading Dublin (Dreamfevre series?) after I finish the Princess books. I know, my mind is taking me to strange places. Maybe it's because of the weird weather.