home now, listening to an old version of "cold rain and snow" by molly tuttle. tony rice has another good version. i could listen to this song alone, all night, as it has everything i like - good bluegrass solos, a little minor key thrown in there, good lyrics, feeling sorry for yourself, all that kind of stuff. trying to work on my poetry and unwind at the same time.

subbing is like, well, babysitting when you don't quite know the rules. the main thing is to not let them catch the place on fire. sometimes it seems like anything else goes, though. today i had the bad kids, at the bad school, but they seemed very much like all the kids, at all the schools. maybe they had a history, had been through the wars, but how do you know that as a sub? they aren't going to tell that to a sub, generally.

a friend asked to report our most boring moment of the week, on facebook. i told her the most boring was when a class actually did what the teacher intended. but that was like one day out of maybe three weeks i've worked. in this one class, the students, all quite good, set to work on some project the teacher had set out...this isn't unusual, teachers print out stuff for students to do. what's unusual is when they do it. i guess it depends on the teacher. wise use of time would dictate that students would want that time to do what they have to do. no. sub means, socialize, go bonkers. that's what i've found.

the drive, straight down 6000 feet, not boring. the drive back up, not boring. rocks falling from the cliffs on the road, not boring. even alamo itself, a wide, dusty, sunny, plain little town with enormous mountains shading it from the morning sun, not boring. it's kind of a military (white sands), international town, but not a college town in any way. and it's thoroughly new mexico. i don't know what that means, exactly, but it's not on the border of no texas or colorado, that's for sure.

i have time at this job, and my mind is free. i've tried planning out some of my books, but that's quite hard. writing poetry, that's not so hard. i have to get into my groove, so i don't waste my time. i have to get them printed, for one thing, so i can edit them. that's not hard. then, i have to clear the space in my head. easy enough to say.

the mountain is cold, windy, starry, frozen - walks are iced over; the wind hits your face hard. down the hill, it's sunny, always dry, not much grass around. it's desert. people are used to it. they can leave stuff outside, and it stays there, not enough rain to really ruin it. we drive by with our cars all piled up with snow, but when we park, it all melts, and i can see them saying, if it wasn't for those folks from cloudcroft, we wouldn't get any at all. they come up here every once in a while, it's a perk of living there, you have access to the streams, the woods, the mountains - but they live completely out of it, in the desert. i'm getting to know their kids.

more later - it's a tough schedule, and i have to keep up with it.