I know, I know. I’ve been awfully neglectful of the one and a half people in my regular audience. Sorry, gentle readers! I didn’t mean to make you click and click and click, only to be confronted with the same five photographs of the New England fall (fast becoming the New England winter. We’ve had some 24 degree nights here, people).

In the interest of easing back into more consistent writing here, I’m going to try to make short entries that come more frequently. I’m also going to try not to write about work, since it makes me very sad. I think I can sum up the state of my school by telling you two things:

1) I don’t think anyone (else — we lost a teacher a month into school who just got replaced) will actually leave, but based on conversations with my colleagues I would estimate that at least half of the staff regularly fantasizes about quitting. And this is not a whiney group of people — this is a team of incredibly resilient professionals.

2) My boss (who, I guess, isn’t really my boss any more since he’s about to lose his title as headmaster) just emailed the minutes of a meeting he had with two administrators yesterday afternoon, and one of the items was “We discussed the viability of the school as an institution,” given the issues we’re having. My boss, who founded this school, whose vision this all is, does not know whether or not we will survive. That is heavy.

The kids are still funny. Scary, and funny. Scary: A boy in the other 5th grade Humanities class attempted to attack one of his classmates with a chair on Tuesday. Funny: Out of the blue the other day, one of my girls handed me an enormous manila envelope full of printed out Greek myths. I think she intended it as a present, not as extra credit work. I have to write her a thank you note. :-)

In non-school news, last night I had the enormous pleasure of listening to AAM squeal, gurgle, giggle, and scream on the phone. He was very talkative; I think Gabriel was monkeying around to make him laugh. It was one of the sweetest (and loudest!) sounds I have heard in a very long time. Hooray for gurgly babies! He sounds like he’s becoming a lot of fun (apart from the chronic constipation followed by explosive pooping. That part’s probably not so much fun. Although it’s very amusing for me to hear about).