One of the wonderful things about blogs or journals is that you can go back in time and compare with today. I started mine in the spring of 2004 after my mother died. I can’t believe how much my life has changed during that time. I started in May of 2004 and it goes up to today May 6th, 2006.
I sat and read about Trey and Amanda moving into Mom’s house and how we worried about her being happy in the woods. She did come to enjoy the place, but I predict she will never leave a city again. Too many unusual things happened to her while staying there that leave a bad memory for her including losing everything she had to the flood.
School changed dramatically in these years. Back in May of 2004, we had teachers bickering and complaining about things and we had not even started the program of Reading First. It was unusual for Henry teachers, but we had so many new teachers. Now people are getting along great, and are very sad that they will be leaving each other. In fact, we will not be seeing some of them anymore. As Beverly said, teacher complained about Henry, but they didn’t realize how wonderful it was. Well, I did. I loved the place the first day I entered there. I was going back to my roots. I had great excitement with retiring at the place that my grandfather had attended. It was the location of the first high school in the parish!
There is also the great closeness of those that will be moving to a different school together. We are grateful and thankful to be with each other. We had become very close during the first year of Reading First, so that makes the separation even more painful. We succeeded so well with our children’s growth last year.
This year at Herod has seen our good kids become “pains”. I saw that what I had said my first year in Henry to the principal was absolutely true. These children were different in Henry. They were taken away from the “projects” and put somewhere where they could feel good if only for a few hours. Now they will be going to a school with 700 total population. They will once again feel like they are not special. One of the best things is that I will be seeing some children that I have become attached to next year. I do hope that they can continue to behave and will not change on me. But that is ridiculous.
As a school, we were able to go to New Orleans to attend a workshop. We were able to become even closer because of this. It also made a special memory of a place some of us (especially me) had not seen since our college days. Now I can read about the beautiful places and know that they are okay, but will never be the same after the storm. Some places that we did not get to see are damaged and have not been fixed to this day. Hope is that they will fix or at least clean them up. They, of course, are at the bottom of the priority list. This is where Louisiana is in the minds of our government especially the President. We have become a thorn in his side, and if he could forget us altogether he would really be happy.
Now we come to our life outside of the job. We are doing well with each other. Oh, of course, we fuss every now and then. But we did that before and will do that for years to come. But we both live in a state of uncertainty. Will it change after the hurricane season is over’ I refuse to predict what life will be like then. I am in a stage in my life where I do not predict past the month. I hope my summer will be fun and relaxing, because I do not want to think about August. We receive the worse storms from that time on.
We have fixed up the chateaux, but there are some special things left to do. Like curtains”’ Yesterday, we went for window covering ie..blinds, shade etc. We came back only with a table and chairs for outside. Talk about odd priorities now.
That’s what life is like in Louisiana today.