warning exhausted grammar ahead - but hey it's an actual entry on the first day of school (ok night)
We stayed there until seven, it was very pleasant, and there were five of us teachers (so there was a lot of shop talk, but not too much thankfully 'cause, well, it's the first day of school and we'd had enough of that), no two from the same school (so we don't see each other often, so it was great to see them all), except for T - my teaching partner, and I. One offered the house, VERY good munchies (blue corn chips and home made guacamole and homegrown cherry tomatoes and good cheese and fresh beans and mmmmm) and brought out her pictures (and interesting stories!) of her month in Spain :) One brought her dog (and her pregnant belly - that would be T), another one brought her three month old baby (and thus commenced the labor stories), and, after an attempt to drop her off at the Boys and Girls club that didn't work out (because apparently they are closed for the first two weeks of school! -- what ARE those people thinking?) and I brought my kid (who got her first period yesterday -and thus commenced the menarch stories!) She went from warning me not to tell, right before we got out of the car, to coming over to me several times to insist "it was OK" if I did, and that "she wouldn't mind". It was so funny and transparent and cute the way she wanted us to talk about it but wouldn't say that. Finally when it came up, she actually lost interest and happily alternated between bouncing on the trampoline and playing with the dog! (Laura has a huge backyard with a treehouse, several apple trees that right now are as bountiful as your plums were last month, vegetables and god knows what else back there, all growing in lush organic semi-neglected wildness - it's great!) So even though her younger daughter (an eleven year old that used to be in one of my first grade classes a few years back) wasn't home, and even though I had "taken away the privilege" for K to go there after she was disrespectul this morning (I won't go into detail about that here), thinking I would relax more if she wasn't there and I didn't have to watch what I said in front of her, it was all very good and there was talk of doing it more regularly or at least once again in the next several months (last time was about 2 years ago if I recall correctly).