A walk in the woods

We climbed Overlook Mountain today.


Nukah made it almost all the way up to the top. Check out those swinging ears!


Then we descended.


As always, Joe took the beautiful nature photography.


One of Nukah's grandmothers, Joe's mom gave Nukah a doggy-treat kit for Hanukah.




He's a very happy (and spoiled) pup.

Adrift

Cornelius' Memorial at Saugerties Lighthouse

I can't resist.

This is Nukah after a very long day. I took him to school in the afternoon to run around with the students and tire himself out. It's a trick, so he'll sleep through the night.

Because of complications with book ordering, my seventh grade English class is now reading Life of Pi, which I've never read, meaning that along with keeping a few chapters ahead in Moby-Dick, I'm also going to have to race forward with Life of Pi. I like to make work for myself.

I've asked my boss if next year I can teach a cultural literacy class and she said yes. I'm thinking of drafting a list of (reasonable) demands for my second year.

Gotta hit the books before the three-day weekend.

Rage against the whatever

I'm bored with my blog. I've been lazy about posting anything substantial, probably because I'm tired by the end of the day and the last thing I want to do is articulate myself.

Tomorrow I'm teaching about wrath in art to my Seven Deadly Sins class. I love thinking about anger, an active, fueling feeling. This class will be the opposite of an anger management support group.

I'll introduce them to The Guerrilla Girls, Lydia Lunch, the rise of Riot Grrrl culture, and Bikini Kill. I'm mostly familiar with anger/wrath in feminist and queer art, so it will be interesting to see what the seniors come up with when asked to list things that they're angry about and how they would express their anger through art. It shouldn't be very hard to get a group of high school students to locate their inner rage.

While researching tomorrow's class, I found a new fabulous blog worth following.

Maybe I should add a daily filling-me-with-rage-at-the-moment item to my blog.
Something I'm angry about right now:
I asked another group of my students, who are reading Moby-Dick to find excerpts in a series of chapters that are important to the book as a whole and explain why they chose these excerpts. One of my students wrote:
"Sadly, once again this chapter fails to deliver even the slightest morsel of plot development or character development but indulges instead in a gluttonous feast of philosophical treatise of the most tangential kind rather like The Da Vinci Code."

Nukah takes the catwalk

Nukah's photographer is back in town.


Joseph arrived this afternoon to hugs and kisses from his woman and puppy-friend. I took a series of not-so-great photographs like this one. Joseph took the other four on this post.


We played in the snowy field behind the library.


Joseph is building a portfolio of photographs for Nukah's modeling career.


Plus, we had our second two-hour delay at school, so today was absolutely wondrous.

Have I mentioned that I have a new puppy?

I've promised myself that I won't become that blogger, who writes endlessly about her puppy and posts pictures of her dog in each and every adorable pose. I've promised Riva that I won't dress up Nukah in stupid outfits. I think I still am allowed a few more days of obnoxious canine posts before I need to reign it in.

(While typing this, Nukah woke up and rolled off my bed and onto the floor. He quickly recovered. He's so deliciously clumsy!)

Winter break ended today, and after I had finished teaching for the day, I picked up Nukah from home and brought him to school to meet the students. He was so excited to meet (and smell) everyone and everything. By the time I drove him home, he was ready for bed.


Before


After

Cornelius' last morning

Firsts and lasts

Today is Cornelius' last day with us. She snuggled with me and even allowed Nukah to get close. I can't write more about her right now.


Joseph gave Nukah his very first bath.


He was a shiny puppy until we took him for a walk. Because his body is so low to the ground, he managed to acquire a thick layer of dirty snow across his belly and on his paws.

Nukah comes home!

We drove five hours in a snowstorm to pick up beautiful Nukah in Pennsylvania.


He was very excited and overstimulated when we began the ride home. After an hour, he slept on and off for most of the trip.


As soon as we arrived home, Nukah investigated Cornelius.








Joseph, Cornelius, Nukah, and I celebrated New Year's together.


We were all exhausted from a long, but happy day.




At first, Nukah cried and groaned when we left him in his crate, but we stayed strong and he slept in his crate through the night. We're so proud of our puppy!

Animals, present tense

Joseph and I are going to pick up Nukah tomorrow. Above is his most recent picture. Look closely; he's aged a lot. In two weeks, he's already grown into an old fellow.

After Riva and I returned from the vet last night, we snuggled with Cornelius; ate lots of comfort food; fed Cornelius baby food; and watched Party of Five, a bad television drama from the nineties.



Cornelius stayed tucked inside my armpit as we slept through the night. I'm glad we have these last few days together. Cornelius has had nine lives; she's lived in nine different houses since I adopted her: two in San Francisco, two in Minneapolis, one in Boston, three in New York, and now upstate. This cat has seen the world.