Last Few Days

 The weather here has been...cold and snowy and...well, wintery.  I remember several months ago celebrating the warmth and love and well-being of Summer.  Yeah, that's gone.  It's cold outside.

 You see how the rime (YES, that's what it's called) has formed on everything?  Yeah, that's because it's effing COLD outside!  The birds know it, and that's why they flock to our...um...bell.

and for some...well, a power line is enough for them.  This is a kingfisher.  A bird that I have wanted to capture on fil-...a Sandisk 8GB card...for a long time!  This morning (Back on Wednesday) I had to slow way down and took it out my truck window because (a.) I was late and (2.) it was cold outside and (III.) there was SNOW all over the road and I did not want to walk back in my semi-dress shoes.

 

 On the way home...well, back to get my flu shot (thank goodness for schools and programs like that) I took this!  Cool barn and Mack Truck, huh?  (Well, I'm pretty sure it was a Mack...well, not so much...maybe it's a GM)

 and this barn above was taken in the morning...I know...I would be a much better photographer if I would just take pictures that I set up and waited for...but that would totally NOT be me.  I shoot on the fly, baby!  Like a jet fighter pilot.  No time to hang around and wait for a moment, if I see it and want it...well, I take it and run!  Full burner! ...or that's how I imagine it, anyway.  Spur of the moment!

This orchard was the same way.  I was looking for "targets of opportunity."  Seems winter scared the crap out of the trees this year.  See?  They still have their leaves.  Didn't EVEN have time to drop 'em!

 and this is yet another installment of what Mr. H draws on the white board (this is for you Sis):

This is what happens when verbal threats just won't do.  If you can't read sideways, it says, "Fifth Grader NOT  doing their job." (over the skier) and "The Cliff of Mr. Huffman's Disappointment."  the sharper kids got the idea...the slower ones took a while, or their classmates had to explain it to them.

Today, I taught high school biology...or rather, told them what they were supposed to do and them watched them yak at each other when they were satisfied they had completed the task...if the teacher had left me other things to assign, I would have, instead I had to yell at them to be quiet when their yakking got too loud.  As usual, I faced the normal barrage of questions concerning the adoption...you can imagine how that has been these past few years, explaining the complicated and PAINFUL process of adoption to kids who shouldn't have to see the pain in my eyes...but they are quite the bunch.  Every group is slightly different, but they all seem to think that Mr. Huffman should get a kid.  And they all seem to think, no matter how mean I am, that I would be a good Dad...and you know...sometimes that's enough to bring tears to a guy's eyes.  But, I am a teacher.  I don't let their comments and quietly spoken opinions elicit emotion.  I am a man, too.

Still, those words, sometimes spoken to me, and sometimes spoken to each other without the knowledge that Mr. H can hear, well, they really touch my heart.  Which is something small that I try to keep hidden in the broken upper drawer of a disused desk in the basement of an abandoned school building...(thank you Douglas Adams)  The best part is those kids I have not seen in several months (because I work at several schools in several districts) that remember I am trying to adopt.  They really want to know how it's going.  Yes, I've shared my photos, because those mean so much to me.  (Everyone agrees, by the way, that Chloe is unimaginably cute, like I didn't know.)  The kids love to see those photos.

One girl said that she hoped I could get Chloe on her birthday.  I asked when her birthday was, she said January second...I said, there is a good chance it might be then!  She actually looked happy, and she said I would have to bring Chloe in.  Of course, every person at every school I work at has basically said as much.  Still, as a proud father, I intended to do as much anyway!  Invited or not!

Our agency sent our renewed homestudy on Monday and it arrived at USCIS on Tuesday.  We are going to give them a week before we start harassing USCIS for our change of country approval...yeah, that's gonna be hard, but our agency (ptooey [ever seen Fiddler on the Roof?]) says to give them that long to check it over and approve it.  We will see.