Friday visits

I made the dinner tonight that I had planned to make last night: a Dutch baby and chicken sausages. It was very tasty and easy and everyone enjoyed it. CB is off to Montreal this weekend so it was just Goodie and Locket and DH and I and we polished it off in short order, before going upstairs to watch "Mrs. Brown" with Judi Dench. I fear that I look more and more like Judi Dench -- I only hope I'm a smart as she appears to be.

I came home from a somewhat frustrating day as a substitute teacher at the high school. I had three sections of English, two of which were reading "Our Town" out loud. Oh My God the agony. Their oral reading is so awkward and dis-fluent that I could hardly bear to listen. Of course, the only way for their oral reading to get fluent is to practice which means someone has to make them do it. If it were my class I would have them read chorally and then have them practice particular speeches over and over, but I'm only the sub, so I did what I was told to do. I did manage a good discussion with one of the groups so it wasn't a totally wasted day.

Once I got home from school I rushed around doing the tidying up I had planned to do on Thursday night (when instead I was trapped at Starbucks) in advance of my Friday gathering. On Friday afternoons a group of women meet at my house for handwork and talk -- it's the high point of my week. This week the talk was all about schools and teaching and dogs -- the group is just getting to know each other so talking about our dogs is a regular feature. And of course my dogs are underfoot so they're a natural topic. My brother says, and I think he's right, that dogs are the universal topic: you can talk dogs to anyone.