Skip to main content

The Little Things

 


I slept very late this morning, which was delightful. But let me tell you some good things about yesterday:

The River Hill High School graduation went without a hitch and my husband got to celebrate with his students and school community. He followed this up by going to the ballgame and the Orioles won.

I don’t know how I can top that.

I did manage a bit of venturing out myself, taking a bag of old jeans to the denim recycling drive at Mom’s Organic Market.  I will have to go back soon because they have totally redone that store since the last time I was there and it is gorgeous. (Yes, that shopping center counts as being “on the other side of town” for me.) 

But my real reason for being there was to have my first “noodling around” adventure at the Dollar Tree, post-vaccination. I honestly don’t spend a ton of money there. Well, I guess that’s the point. Let me rephrase that. I don’t usually buy a ton of items there. I just enjoy doing what my mother called “noodling around.” I guess other people classify that as “browsing.” Considering my health over the last year, noodling around now counts as legitimate exercise. I spent about eleven dollars on mostly useful things, got a idea for a craft, and saw a man walking a tiny white dog whose paws, ears, and tail had been colored a pale shade of pink.

I’d say that was a pretty successful work-out.

The day ended with my daughter and I ordering dinner from our neighborhood reliable standby: PizzaMan. (They deliver.) Probably the high point for me was briefly registering an oxygen level of 97, although visiting Dollar Tree was a close second.

It’s the little things.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...