Weather News, now with Homework addendum.

Well shoot.

Here I'm all thinking I'm on top of things, wearing my Merrill hiking boots, and packing my hiking sandals and water shoes (Mediterranean, baby!), and I just got back from the mall, where I snagged a great pair of white wedge sandals to wear with my dark purple wrap blouse and pale purple floral swishy crepe skirt (hello, bargain basement sale prices at Coldwater Creek!) (You never know if we might actually, you know, GO OUT to eat one night), and I just went onto my iGoogle, and looked at the Marseille weather.

Ouch.

It's going below freezing on Sunday.

Where's my beautiful Mediterranean climate? Where's my potential Mediterranean TAN?

But more to the point, WHERE am I going to pack this sudden pile of WINTER CLOTHES that I'm going to need to take?????

Right now, each kid has a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, and a bathing suit packed.

Oh man, they're going to see us TOURISTS coming a mile away, aren't they?


I'm half tempted to post a list of all the things that I ABSOLUTELY HAD TO DO today, and how almost all of them got done...

But I think there's a character limit on entries.


In other France-related news, I went by the schools today to pick up homework packages for Skip and Kelly. Kelly's was all ready. Skip's? Well, I've had ONE of his teachers respond to my letter that I had Skip hand-deliver early last week. And that was his band teacher. He's to take his trumpet mouthpiece along to France, and practice 'buzzing', so his lips don't get out of practice this close to the Disneyland trip (did I mention that I'm chaperoning the band trip to Disneyland almost immediately after we get back from France?).

Of the other teachers? Silence.

And the office was little help. "None of the teachers have said anything to us. Let's assume that they'll all hand Skip the assignments today, so he'll be able to organize them tonight"

Yes, let's all assume that, shall we?

Skip came home with assignments from two teachers. One, his English teacher (that I bribe heavily with classroom supplies and extra copies of the class-required reading materials), gave him a whopper of an assignment. FOUR pages of spelling words.

Yeah... that's all.

Skip was grinning like a fool, "Mom, I just looked at her with my mouth open and said "That's *IT*???" and she said "Yes, enjoy your trip" So I backed away slowly, just in case she might change her mind."

He just sat down at the dining room table and finished his WEEK's worth of English homework in 5 minutes.

*pumps fist in the air*

The other teacher? She put together a folder of pre-copied pages, and it's a "Journal of My Trip To France". It's already labelled, and described, and set up with a page for every day. I swear, she probably put more work into this that Skip will have to. There's areas for "memorabilia", and very truncated areas for "journal entries" (so he won't have to write until his fingers fall off. Whee!), and even suggestions for souvenirs and memorabilia that she'd like to see from him.

Four words: Walk. In. The. Park.

Two other teachers have said "You will get no homework from me. Just enjoy your time there with your family." And then there's Science and Algebra. His Algebra teacher thinks he's something else, so may just go easy on him, and his Science teacher is the Wild Card. I've sent in classroom supplies, which may work in our favour, but on the other hand, there's ALWAYS something...

I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

And? In other news, it's my mom's birthday today. Whoops. I guess I'll phone her tomorrow, and see how it went. I swear, I am always a day late and a dollar short.