Public Answers

To address my sister's comment:

- Yes! You can come to the reading. You can all come to the reading! It's on Sunday, though, so you have to face some Mormon guilt. But! It also means we can still go shopping on Saturday. And it would be nice if said shopping including a run down south so I can gets me some more garments.

-I don't know if the kids were inspired by seeing the show. I get little comments here and there ("They didn't use any microphones, did they Ms. Waterhouse?") that tell me a) they paid attention to some of the performance details and b) they're still thinking about it. But they're not at the place yet where those ideas can transfer into their performance. There's a big gap between seeing it and creating it. Sadly. But we're taking the first steps of getting there.

- I went to my old ward. I haven't woken up early enough to get to the family ward (9:00). Maybe this Sunday. And yes, maybe sleeping in is only part of the issue and I'm still dealing with the whole "I don't fit in anywhere now that I've flunked the singles ward" feeling.

-What kind of mountain kid doesn't pack his coat?
A 15-year-old boy. That's who. :)

And now my question:
When do I get to see my nephew again? Could I babysit him on Friday?

P.S. The rainstorm I drove to work in became a snowstorm during 2nd period today. Which, of course, put one of my favorite poems running through my mind the rest of the day:

Undivided attention
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,
tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's
birthday gift to the insane -
is gently nudged without its legs
out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street.

It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane,
Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares
and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last
note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,
the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and
I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?
All the greatest common factors are delivered by
long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks
or come through everything, even air.
Like snow.

See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year
my students rush to the window
as if snow were more interesting than math,
which, of course, it is.

So please.

Let me teach like a Steinway,
spinning slowly in April air,
so almost-falling, so hinderingly
dangling from the neck of the movers' crane.
So on the edge of losing everything.

Let me teach like the first snow, falling.

Oh, Taylor Mali. I do love your poetry.