Weekend Journal

At around seven this morning, we woke up to pleasant sounds of Ian chirping to himself in the boy's bedroom. He was happily talking about the credits to his favorite movies or reciting television commercials or singing his songs. They he climbed up to Jonah's bunk to wake him up. Luck for us, Jonah is too good natured to care too much about this rude awaking. Besides, he wanted to see if the snow came over night. It had.

We were grounded for most of the morning. No CCD or church, because the snow plows didn't make it down our road until the afternoon. Being snowed in with no responsibilities is one of life's sweet pleasures.

We celebrated with bacon and eggs for breakfast. The boys played outside until the neighbor urchins broke the toboggan and shovel. Steve yelled. Then we just puttered around the house doing our separate activities. Jonah and one of the calmer neighborhood kids huddled on the sofa sharing Jonah's DS. Ian watched Ratatouille and then returned to his favorite task of painstakingly writing out some of his favorite words. "Mom. How do you spell Activision?" Steve paid the bills and read the paper. Aimless puttering.

I had some grading to do, but kept postponing the pain by playing around with YouTube. I got sucked into it after watching AOL's top videos of 2007. The highlights were Pearl the Landlord and the guy who won England's American Idol. Then I got sucked into watching Amy Winehouse videos. Rehab is the best singles to come out this year. Too bad that Winehouse is a junky.

For those in the New York City area, Steve and the boys gave five stars to the train exhibit at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. They checked it out on Saturday. It's in the greenhouse this year, so no walking around in the cold.

Comments

[anonymous]

Why is grading so painful? Do you have any tips on finally getting down to it? I, too, will do anything to avoid getting to work.

[WendyW]

We had a similarly slothful day yesterday. My daughter went to a friend's house for a playdate, our son took turns snuggling up to my husband watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy on tv, and me as I watched Samantha Who episodes on the computer. I made soup, read the paper, and took a nap, too. It was great.

Grading is painful because the students write the same things over and over and make the same mistakes over and over. It's simply boring, I think. Last night I graded 13 papers, 3 of which I simply could not grade because of lack of quality.

My tip is to grade the weakest/"hardest" papers first. Put your sure A papers at the bottom. When you have the least amount of energy, you'll have the papers that are easiest to read.