Back to School, but Insert Hurricane Irene

It's back to school time.

As a teacher, Friday was the beginning of my 19th year with my 19th "Back to School" first-day-of-teachers'-meetings.  It would have been my 20th, but a cross country move and a baby sort of got in the way.  My new crop of 3rd graders start up Thursday, first of September.

In the normal set up time, I'd be changing up bulletin board paper, laminating nametags, getting my ducks in a row. 

Satellite of Hurricane Irene, projected

to run North Carolina to Maine

and into Canada

Yet insert Hurricane Irene.  Given a river-side campus and a potential storm surge up the Chesapeake Bay, battening down the hatches and getting my classroom/the school hunker-down-ready takes precedence.  All bookshelves under the windows, rather than being lined witth a tidy row of books, now lie empty.  All items off the floor. The plan when I left yesterday was for sandbags to be placed by the doors. The weekend school picnic was canceled.  The entire school looked more like a wrecking zone than a school ready for starting up next week.  Necessary evil when there's the potential for flooding.  Just can't do much about it.

So we're home.  Waiting.  Waiting for the rain and the wind (which is starting to stir it up, out there).Waiting to see how exactly the hurricane tracks.  Waiting (and hoping) that we've done everything we could to come out as dry and intact as possible.  What more can you do, really, but chill out, hang out, watch movies, nap, and read books after gettin everything all into place?  There's nothing more you can truly do...but relax. 

During a normal year, sometimes you wind up pushing yourself like crazy that last weekend before going back.  Amazing how something as menacing as a hovering hurricane can help to change the perspective!  Even hurricanes come with silver-linings sometimes!

Back to school pic: http://twinpossible.com/preparing-for-back-to-school-in-every-way-the-earlier-the-better; Satellite map from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2030447/Hurricane-Irene-path-2011-Latest-travel-advice-Brits-visiting-US-East-Coast.html; The Gift of Time pic from https://boundaryinterfaces.wordpress.com/2009/12/25/