Next Day Mop-Up

I hit the interstate at the usual time this morning and soon ran into a traffic slowdown. We began to crawl. I could see red flashing lights just ahead, but not much. I worried that I might be late for school, but OF COURSE my cell phone was dead. Fortunately, the traffic continued to move and I was on the accident site fairly quickly. Must have just happened because there was only one emergency vehicle there. What was it? A semi was jackknifed into the median--a deep ravine--with his HUGE trailer coming up out of the ravine and halfway into the passing lane. Once past that, the going was fine. I got to work on time...but figured if the accident had happened any earlier and more equipment was there, the roadway (maybe four lanes in both directions) would have been closed while they tried to drag him out of the median. Hope the driver was okay. He certainly had a bumpy ride for a second or two there... *The next thing that occurred was that the very first student who showed up for Success Period (before-school help) in my room looked like someone had hit him in the eye. Looked like pinkeye to me, so I walked him to the nurse. He got a quick ticket home. Pinkeye is highly contagious. *In short order, I began to look at the notes that yesterday's substitute left for me. I was not pleased! Apparently a number of students in one of my classes caused problems sufficient for her to send four of them to the office--something she has never had to do before. Three of them were girls! At the beginning of every school year, I promise my students that if they misbehave for a sub, they get after school detentions, no questions asked. Had to spend part of my day writing that up on the district software and filling out the appropriate forms. Time consuming, but necessary. *This evening went fairly smoothly. My grandchildren--particularly Robin--really like to play outside. On her brother's birthday last week, she did her homework after school so we could go out to dinner, but she burst into tears when she got done and I announced that it was time to go meet Mommy. "I wanted to play." I gave them ten minutes before we absolutely had to leave. That satisfied her. Yesterday and today, I let them play outside when we got home while I made supper. They played together, and they played well. Meg and I think Ryan is really making an effort to behave. He got to stay up later than usual tonight because he had "been good"...and we told him so. Twice tonight, he reminded me that old behavior (like wetting the bed) was over because "I'm five now." Please, God...let it be true!! *There are asterisks in my blog because, once again, the cursor disappears if I hit in order to create paragraphs. Either the blog is malfunctioning, or I'm doing something wrong. Oh, well!