Sunday, October 01, 2017

A pumpkin-spiced grading break



Some weekends are made for grading papers, prepping classes, and getting caught up on the laundry, but this was not one of those weekends. On Friday I told my students that I probably wouldn't be grading their papers over the weekend unless my visiting grandkids were willing to help. My granddaughter would have been happy to draw a pumpkin on someone's paper, but I don't know how to translate a pumpkin into a grade.

We saw a few pumpkins at Sweetapple Farm, but apparently the local crop isn't particularly abundant this year. We hiked through a corn maze in flawless fall weather, hugged a straw-bale minion and picked a million paw-paws (or maybe slightly fewer), ate chili and went to church and read not quite a million Shel Silverstein poems. We watched our grandson turn salt-shakers into percussion instruments, attempt to eat his weight in Kool-Whip, and practice stepping up onto the hearth and back down again, each time uttering a close approximation of "up!" and "down!" and then pausing for applause.

Now they're gone and the house is quiet. The papers still need grading and I probably ought to think about laundry and dishes and tomorrow's classes, but frankly, I'd rather hug a minion--but since I don't have a minion nearby, I think I'll just chuckle at the memory.









No comments: