Changes

I am a total morning person. Given my choice I am up at 5:00 and at work at 6:30 for my morning "coffee klatch" with the school custodians. I've been doing it, every school day, for the past 16 years. (Dear God, can I be old enough to have been doing something that long? It doesn't seem possible.) So after 16 years, it's what you'd call "my routine." Well, it came to a screeching hault this fall.

This year I've been going to work much later because I'm taking my son, S (and his friend T,) down the hill every morning for preschool. Preschool starts at 8:15, so morning coffee has become a thing of the past. I'm still working on building a "new" routine, but it is hard to change after 16 years. Probably the hardest thing about it is the loss of prep time in the mornings. I use to have about an hour every day - before school - to make copies, organize, plan, etc. Now I feel like I'm scrambling just to have things ready for the kids in my class. And I'm taking a lot more work home with me. But I am trying to focus on the positive things in my life... I love getting to see my son every morning, and getting down the hill a bit later in the morning means S, T and I have gotten to enjoy a beautiful sunrise or two.

We even got to see the freight boat before S's first day of school. (Though I must admit I took this picture earlier in August - the first day of preschool was overcast.) Every morning, all season long, the freight boat brings these two trucks over to the island. (Rather funny that they ride together because Sysco and GFS are big competitors.) Since motorized vehicles are illegal in the city and the State Park the trucks just sit on the dock - which is private property, engines running to power the refrigeration units. The trucks are unloaded, the supplies loaded onto horse-drawn drays, and then everything gets delivered to the island businesses.