my first Christmas Tree ever

Jim came out this morning and took me to a tree lot on 30th South and 7th East, where I bought my first very own Christmas Tree, ever. It is beautiful and fragrant. I'm glad I resisted my urge to invest in a nice fake tree. I love real trees. One of my students who is Dine (Navajo) said that her mom doesn't like to have a tree in the house---which makes sense in a sort of native american, love the earth, and don't kill living things sort of way. But I also think it's okay to support the tree farmers from Montana and to enjoy a beautiful evergreen in the house for one month. Christmas trees feel like a very pagan tradition, although maybe true pagans would also object to killing the tree for such selfish human desires.

Lisa will be here for the winter solstice, which is totally a pagan holiday. We ought to plan some sort of celebration, maybe with real egg nog.

Duncan's head is resting heavily on my left foot. The rice cooker just flipped off so I'm going to have some African style beef stew over rice.

My "special bus" student had his last day with my class, yesterday. What a relief it is to know he's gone. I feel like two weeks is the perfect amount of time that I need away from work, and I predict that when school resumes I'll be able to push myself to teach well and push those kids to read and learn, all the way until May.