There goes my license to grumble about other people's purchasing habits for another year. Kids at St. Joe's will recognize the wrapping paper from their fundraiser. I keep claiming not to have a teaching blog, but I keep losing my license for calling it other than that.

Last night I dreamed that I was a new teacher at a Scottish boarding school. My information packet had been partially shredded so I didn't know important things like what time the classes were and what I was supposed to be teaching. The new teacher who moved in next to me - we lived in dorm accomodations on campus - saved her poop in paper bags wrapped in white cloth towels. What the heck was this about?

After a week of normal walking I'm back to the gimp crumple and a tad peeved about it. Blah blah blah. I watched my mother at Christmas, broadcasting her discomfort, never able to keep one tiny feeling to herself, physical or emotional, and I know where this can lead so that's it for that.

I've got bills to pay and the pantry partly cast upon the counter and table tops downstairs. I've got a workroom that needs my attention to organize and clothes to wash, dry and fold. I have poems to write and revise and send out and student books to collate. I have too a family holiday letter to compose to go under the above photo. The rest of the family is counting on it so I'll do it.

In 2007 Shawna went from a job she hated in Boise to a job she loves in Seattle, reporting for the oldest continuously publishing daily newspaper in Seattle, the Daily Journal of Commerce. Her beat is architecture and city government. Since he is a web designer and graphic artist, Todd is able to work anywhere, which now includes downstairs, right next to where Jim works. They've sold their house in Boise, but yet found a place over here.

Julia has moved from Seattle to Miami Beach, where she is the Assistant Women's Rowing Coach for the University of Miami Hurricanes. She loves her place on Miami Beach, four blocks from the U of Miami boathouse on the bay side and four blocks from the beach on the Atlantic Ocean.

Jim and Laura went to Greece in April where they fell in love with the island of Crete.

Etc.