NO SCHOOL AGAIN!!!!! aaaaaaaahhh!!!!

- we had to cancel shenanigan's yesterday due to the weather! dang it!!! and now school's cancelled!
when i worked in bakosfield, i woulda loved all these school cancellations. this is the 6th snow/wind/weather cancellation this year!  not that i didn't like the kids in backwardsland, but i didn't love my job then like i love it now, teaching on the mountain. i know now how mama felt all those yrs. i could never understand why she'd stay so late at school, grading papers, arranging her room. she had the most beautiful room. she was a super teacher. she devoted herself 200% to school, as she does everything. mama is a lover & a doer, a creator, a leader. i'm certainly not in that caliber or ever will be, but i really enjoy now staying after school in the quiet, prepping everything just so for the next day. it's comforting, energizing: it feels right, like playing the pianny or talking to another woman drunk or listening to good music or running or watching a great movie or kids or animals at play or homo sapiens being kind to one another... anyways...
 it helps to be rid of the distraction of always trying to be glamorous, yes, it helps being older (not really wiser, tho). i love the kids kinda like a grandma would, i think (gadzooks! i'm their near-grammy age!), plus i get to be creative at this school, so i get that "mama" feeling in that way. at this school, the boss lets us come up w/ideas & try them out, so now i'm doing drumline, color guard, art class, book room, library in addition to 6th grade class. yay! now she'll likely let me have meditation time for the kids who want it, tho likely under a different moniker so parents fundamentalist or otherwise won't freak out. we have a lot of traumatized &/or wigged out kids at our school: i think correctly planned, this could help the ones who want it.
wow! it's really coming down out the wihnder! they cancelled school, i think, bc of high winds/rain, the latest storm. altho it's been in the 30s & 40s, relatively warm compared to january, we're sposed to have more snow tonight. i read an interesting bit about rain/snow conversion on our local weather website, w/which i'm obsessed. living in this elemental place can cultivate obsession even in the most normal, i'd think, & weather-mania is a healthy direction to point craving feelings. here's the website, maintained by a golden local, god bless him for being so meticulous: www.fpweather.com
- this might be only interesting to me, but maybe you, if you're interested in such things: i downloaded an android altimeter app (called simply "altimeter") & discovered the following: long beach ca, where most of our music gigs are, is at 13 ft elevation. poo! whatever! however, our house is at 5040 feet. i like that! now come the big contrasts: downtown frazier park, just 1 mile below our home, is near-400 ft lower. no wonder it's so hard to chug up that road on foot! our exit from the interstate, 5 miles down the road, is 1200 ft lower. my school is 1800 ft lower. the entrance to the san joaquin valley, the rd to bakerspatch, is 3800 ft lower than our home!! i hope our blood is becoming super-rich from all the elevation changes we experience daily. :)
- anyways, back to today: when dad fell off a 5-foot ladder some months back, indomitable, hyperbolic aunty rita called cousin tushi in tx & told her "uncle gil fell off the roof!" aunty rita's a member of the same mutant race james is. (he, too,'s been known to shuck facts in favor of a rollicking tall tale: maybe it's a trait connected to the superhuman metabolism of such folks?) she called this a.m. at butt-crack-thirty to tell me "you gotta get off that mountain. they're saying on the news the winds are gonna be blowin' 90 mph. you & james gotta get down to bakersfield NOW." merde! i got back in bed, somewhat troubled, clutching james's warmly sleeping hulk for comfort. soon after, a gust blasted the house, shaking its timbers & ripping across the roof like god's gigantic comb. ah! we just lost the roof! thought i. how much is THAT gonna cost?!?!
no more sleeping now.
but the weather says the gusts only will be 65 mph.
i think we'll be ok. :) we've had 70, & no one here blew away to oz.
at this rate, tho, we'll never get to play shenanigan's on a thursday night til winter is completely over. va fan! this has been a heckuva winter, tho i know pallid by past-decade standards.... cacahuates! now it's snowing again! how is that posssible when it's 37 degrees?!? time for more coffee.