A Long Overdue Basement Missive—Summer Edition

Greetings and good evening from a basement out here in the middle of Minnesota. I hope this missive finds you and yours doing well, feeling hearty and hale, and enjoying the ever-loving heck out of the waning hours of your weekend. To use a well-traveled refrain on this blog, it’s been some time since I’d last thrown anything up on this blog, so I figured I’d better throw some words at the proverbial page. My last post detailed my journey down to Red Balloon in Saint Paul for the Max Brallier Q & A and book signing for his latest, The Last Comics on Earth, and much has transpired since.

Outside my window, a mid-August rainstorm blusters its way across the sky giving the plants a nightcap. The rain’s been a blessing this summer, and I’ve had to water our garden and trees far less frequently than last year. Heavy soakings from the rain coupled with hot days has emboldened our vegetables, flowers, and trees to surge and grow. Pippin, the maple we planted in the front yard two years ago, has easily added another two and half feet to his height this season. Audrey planted a handful of different veggies, and we’ve been enjoying the yield over the last month or so: cucumbers, carrots, peppers, green beans, and most recently jalapeños. Still waiting on the eggplant to make a showing.

A Visit From Pop

Pop was just out for a visit two weeks ago. It’d been a year since we’d seen him in person, and it was nice to have him out. Unfortunately, GRP came down with a virus right before my dad arrived, so he was sidelined—and because he only wanted Audrey while he was feeling under the weather, she was sidelined as well—for the first half of Pop’s visit. One of my favorite things to do with my dad when I was a kid was going to the movies, and during this visit my girls got to carry on the tradition. He took them to see Elemental at a theater just down the road a ways.

When GRP was feeling on the mend later in the week, we all traveled up to Duluth to take in the Great Lakes Aquarium and swim in Lake Superior. The aquarium featured a lot of fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds native to the Great Lakes region, and housed aquatic fauna found in other parts of the world as well. If you’re ever up in Duluth and get a chance to swing through, I’d recommend the aquarium. After, we grabbed some lunch at Thai by Thai. There aren’t exactly a lot of Thai restaurants within a stone’s throw of where we live, so this was a nice happenstance. I got the spicy drunken noodles, and they lived up to their moniker. Fortunately I had a tall glass of Thai Iced Tea to wash everything down.

Before calling it a day, we stopped at Park Point Beach for a dip in the lake. It was the first non-bone chilling swim I’d taken in Lake Superior, and my dad’s first ever swim in a Great Lake.

While Pop was out, I asked him to help me start putting a treehouse platform between two oak trunks in the back yard. I didn’t think we’d have time to put the whole thing together, but I figured if he could at least assist me with the frame, I could do the rest. We picked up the necessary lumber and hardware, and after a promising start, were soon thwarted by the mighty heartwood of the oak trunks. Even with the assistance of a borrowed impact drill, and an assortment of specialized drill bits, we just couldn’t get the timber locks to sink far enough into the trunk. We waved the white flag, and returned everything to Home Depot, with the exception of the 2 x 8 I’d drilled the holes into.

On Pop’s last night in town, we took him to D’ Smoke House as an early birthday celebration—the young feller turns 70 later this month. We recently discovered that GRP is quite the carnivore, and he was happy to learn the kids menu offered ribs as an option. ERP got walleye cakes, ALP got chicken tenders, Pop got beef ribs, and I got the half rack of pork ribs. There’s not a ton of vegetarian options at a smokehouse, but Audrey was able to get one of the biggest caprese salads I’ve ever seen.

Under, Over, Around, and Through the Proverbial Weather

For whatever reason, our family has been absolutely slammed by various illnesses this summer. After we came back from a camping trip in June, each of us—in succession—got a nasty cold. And the bug GRP came down with right before Pop’s visit, lay dormant until after he left, and then pounced first on ALP, then Audrey, and finally ERP. Everyone finally seems to be feeling better, and I’ve been spared thus far. Hoping this is not a preview of what fall and winter has in store for House Purdy.

A Summer’s Worth of Good Toil

Though the upcoming school year looms already on the horizon, and I’ve begun to meet, prep, and plan for the work 2023-24 entails, the transition this summer has carried a seamlessness with it, mainly due in part to the extra work I picked up in the district over summer break. Early June was equal parts putting a cap on the 22-23 school year, and planning for 23-24. Then I began working part time in the tech department, building chromebook carts and tv stands, and unassigning and cleaning the chromebooks of this year’s graduating class. This job will run right up to New Teacher week, with the final stretch of days focused on mounting several televisions in various spaces across the district. I’ve really enjoyed the job, as it a) has brought in extra funds to continue feeding and clothing the family (who knew this would get more expensive the older they got); and b) the simplicity of the tasks has afforded me the opportunity to both listen to more audiobooks/podcasts as well as throw sparing thoughts toward the book I’m still trying to write. If it’s still available next summer, I fully intend on continuing the work.

In addition to the tech job, I also taught one session of ELA summer school to middle school students. This was one of the most challenging teaching jobs I’ve engaged with in quite some time. I’ve been out of the classroom for about five years now, so I fully recognize and accept that I’m a tad rusty, but some of the students I worked with this summer gave me a run for my money. I was just as exhausted teaching a half day as I was teaching a full day of classes. In summer school, the sections ran the gamut of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and various stages of academic and emotional development with mixed skills abilities. All students needed academic support. That’s why they were there. But some of the students’ behaviors precluded the ability to provide the academic help to those who needed it most. I went back to basics with writing, presenting the goal of being able to craft a really good sentence by the time they left summer school. We read nonfiction articles about New Orleans & Jazz and the recycled orchestra of Cateura, Paraguay. Then we read picture books—Where Y’At? about Trombone Shorty and Ada’s Violin about the recycled orchestra, and I developed sentence exercises using the text from the books based on exercises in the The Writing Revolution. During our last few days, I taught the students about Dungeons & Dragons with resources found on the Wizards of the Coast educator resource page. We finally got to play on the last day, and for the most part, the students got into the flow of the game and made some interesting choices. This definitely made me want to figure out a way to bring tabletop rpgs into the classroom on a regular basis.

Though the three weeks were certainly challenging, there were a lot of growth moments for both the students and me. At the beginning of the summer I had wanted to teach both sessions of summer school, but now having taught one session, I’m glad everything shook out the way it did. Working the tech job and one round of summer school was a good balance.

Well I suppose I best close for now. It’s late, and I have another planning day tomorrow. I’d like to write on this thing more consistently, but my track record isn’t so great, so we’ll just have to see. I also finally updated my 2023 reading long. Go give it a gander if you’d like. So long for now. Be well. Take care of yourselves and each other. Thanks for reading.

As always, HUZZAH!

-Purdy