I love traveling, but I don’t love flying although I have logged more than 40,000 miles on planes this year. One reason I probably don’t enjoy the going and coming is because I fly economy which means I sit in the “no class section” of the plane.  Not only am I packed in like a salted sardine, the food is bad, the drinks are slow arriving and the people next to me are usually not any happier about being in this part of the plane as I am.

I know the little kids aren’t because they are crying, drooling and otherwise fretting.  I want to join them, but I know others would not be as patient with me. But at least now I have acquired so many points that I have an elite status which means I can now sit in rows where I can see people in first class.  They are just different you know–a little more composed, relaxed, smug.

On a recent trip from Peru I had my first experience actually sitting in that section because my friend Gayle, who is a classy gal, pulled some strings or used points or something for me to sit with her.  The only problem was because of the train ride to and from Machu Picchu, coupled with the high altitude in Cusco and the food poisoning in Lima, I was left a bit spent and unable to enjoy the amenities as much as I know I could on another occasion.

Also, although I will be eternally grateful to my friend, I have curmudgeon tendencies so I kept thinking, why couldn’t this pleasure been used on my almost 14 hour trip from Houston to Tokyo or on the long, boring trips to Europe or Egypt. Destinations in South America don’t usually require the long hours or cause the dreaded jet lag that others do. But it was, nonetheless, long enough to get me accustomed to a better mode of transport, and I will have a difficult time returning to my tiny seat BEHIND THE CURTAIN.

Often times between school accreditation visits and consulting I forget what it is like to get up by an alarm clock! Geez, 5:30 a.m. is the middle of the night! Now, nothing, absolutely nothing, except a couple of breakfast diners and the fishing piers are open before 10:00 a.m. on this island, so why don’t the area schools get smart and run on the same schedule??

There are some lessons here, lessons that we learn in retirement, although I think I knew it years ago, but didn’t have the research to support the findings.  People are a lot fresher, more amenable, just plain sweeter in temperament at 10:00 in the morning. I am one of those people, although I do rise much earlier; I simply do not shine. I think just the screech of the alarm clock, shocking a person from a nice, drooly sleep has something to do with it, and although I can’t substantiate that one, I can vouch for it.

But aside from getting up early, the worst, the very worst part of the whole preparation for a day of work is the pantyhose deal.  I vowed when I retired, not to ever, ever wear pantyhose again except in the event of a funeral. Heck, down here you don’t even need them for a wedding.  Barefoot is acceptable although I haven’t quite adapted to that way of thinking; a person should at least wear flip-flops to a solemn occasion where two people make promises “til death do they part”.  But as a professional educator I simply feel the need to fit the expected role and with that comes the wearing of pantyhose and high heels (now there is a whole different blog).

I hate pantyhose; I have always hated them and I see no reason to change my feelings in this stage of my life. There is just something radically wrong with stuffing one’s lower body into a tiny sliver of stretch nylon that in 100 degree weather sticks to the skin like cellophane wrap.  I think if they had made the terrorist prisoners at Gitmo wear pantyhose for one month and then given them the choice between wearing pantyhose or being water boarded they would have gladly chosen the later; I know I would.

And one more thing, have you seen those women with pantyhose and shorts—together?  What in the world are they thinking? It is like those old men who wear Bermuda (do they still call them that?) shorts and knee high socks.  Unless they have a medical reason that their knees need to breathe, it just doesn’t seem right. But I digress.

Once I am up and dressed and in the school I am good to go. After all, it is a good gig.  I get to feel good about sharing my educational expertise and best practices of instructional effectiveness to teachers, and then I learn so much more about emerging trends and fashions from students. What is good about life in a school today is that there is no way one can tell the rich from the poor—they all look poor in their torn, worn out jeans and faded t-shirts, wrinkled and frayed to style. Everybody needs haircuts so nobody notices the kid who can’t afford it.  And vocabulary—what better place to learn how verbs become adjectives and adverbs before my very ears.  I never knew some words could do that—amazing!

And I love to go out in the halls during passing periods (for all you non-educators that is the “very long adult five minutes” and “never enough time for  students” period that occurs between classes way too many times a day), when kids are passing…..God knows what! But it is, indeed, an educational experience. But I am sounding like I did 30 years ago and repeating what I heard my teachers say years before that. It is true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Surely there is another book in all this somewhere!

I don’t want this to be a job, to take over my life.  Maybe if I were as successful as Nora Roberts I would feel differently.  Maybe if I were rich and famous I would hole up at my desk all day and crank out those novels coming and going.  But I’m none of the above, so there are things I have to stop and do.

For example, the other day it rained, which this year was somewhat of a phenomenon since we are in a drought.  It was so refreshing and cool that I decided I needed to change out my closets so that my fall and winter clothes will be close at hand. Not that we have fall or winter here, but remember I go places where one must have those kinds of clothes.

The big problem with changing out clothes here is that I live in a house built for the island, which means that no matter how large the house, the closets are small because most places are second homes for people who spend weekends or a month or so at the most.  But this is where I live so back when I moved here I had to make a plan and that was to fix a place in the attic to store out of season clothes. This is a big endeavor, and remember attics in South Texas are HOT.

Anyway, the moving up of summer clothes and moving down of heavier items for chilly weather was no small task, and to make it worse I couldn’t find my favorite jeans. I have lots of jeans, but these are my favorite so it became an obsession to find these jeans!!! So when I should have been editing, I was searching and searching and searching. Yep, somehow I had put them in the wrong stack and they were in the attic!

I tell you this because I simply can’t be a writer all day!! There are flowers to water, a yard to mow, not to mention, furniture to dust and floors to mop. And raccoons to attend to! As of 4:00 a.m. Raccoon #5 was securely in his trap. I looked into his EYES! He was there! As of 7:15 a.m. he was gone, vanished, out-of there!! The trap was locked and he was gone.  Now, I am concerned.  There are several scenarios to consider: He is either Houdini Raccooni, or his friends and family came back to spring him from confinement, or there is a serial coonnapper on the loose. This is a true mystery, not a “wild” tale!!!