Claire's Believe-it-Or-Not

After six straight days of rain and cloudiness, I felt I could relate a little bit to what Noah and his family must have felt upon the morning of the forty first day of their voyage. Or how Puddleglum, Jill and what's-his-name must have felt upon seeing the sun after they emerged from their underground stay. I know- they first came out at night...but...when they did see the sun, it must have been like, " YEAH! We were RIGHT! The sun wasn't just a myth!!"

When I went to get my car registered with the little old lady on Wednesday, I felt like I had stepped into a time warp. The people, furnishings, decorations- all caused me to think that I was in a Norman Rockwell painting of an Amish farm house from the 1950's. Extremely spartan. These people had definitely not fallen into the trap of materialism. Lois, the little old lady seemed old and fragile in some ways, but her skin looked strangely young; in fact, she looked otherworldly. She talked so quietly and gently that I had to ask her to repeat herself. Her husband sat nearby, reading a paper. Maybe they are aliens.

Yesterday I received the check I had written her for the state fee in the mail. I was bewildered. I called her and she said I had to take it down to the DMV so they would stamp my registration and give me my little license plate decals. ( I had wondered about where those decals were going to come from...) DUH. Well, WHY DID YOU TAKE IT FROM ME? WHY didn't you tell me that when I gave it to you?! I am annoyed. I try to avoid the DMV at all costs. And the only time they're open is on Tuesday afternoon...They close at 4:15. I think I might JUST be able to make it after work. Great. The last day of May. Try as I may, I am being time-CRUNCHED again. RRRRGH.

Quite a lot has been going on at the Shelter. The whole back of the house got destroyed this week. I looked out the window of the classroom one morning and saw they had taken off the back shed/overhang thingy...and fifteen minutes later, the whole barn/extension was just a munga pile of rubble. Amazing. We had lunch brought over to us in the trailer that day because the whole house was shaking violently at one point during the destruction. Hmmm. So we have these big old machines digging around in the back...and at the same time, for some reason unknown to me, huge machines from the town are digging up the sidewalk in front of our house. So...we have to take this circuitous route over to the classroom. All the girls and the staff have to cross the street on the crosswalks, walk about half a block, and then cross the street again. It almost made me laugh yesterday. I felt like we were a parade... traffic was stopped and everything. Sometimes we are carrying things like bags of trash ( the dumpster is now located by the trailer) or a bowl of fruit- for snacktime- which makes me feel all the more bizarre. Yes! Here we are! The Trash and Fruit Parade! All we need now are band instruments, a baton twirler, and some of those Shriner guys on the mini cars.

To get to the classroom, we have to cross a field of mud...a wide swath of dirt left from the town's earlier vain endeavor to locate the sewer pipe. Some people have gotten seriously mired this week as the rain made this place a horrible mess. I was successful in finding safe passage through the mud, until yesterday when I chose my route badly, and my foot suddenly sank down, down, down...and my little felty-clog shoe looked like a mud monster had tried to eat it.

One of the girls was telling me about how desparate she feels after going two weeks without seeing any boys her age. She proceeded to tell me that on one trip over to the classroom ( when I hadn't been with them), a small fleet of buses drove by them, populated entirely with boys. It must have been a magical moment as all the girls looked up and beheld a steady stream of boys gazing down upon them from the buses. I think some pointing and waving ensued and this girl's day was made. I smiled.

I was helping another girl do a worksheet on Africa, which was our theme this week. One of the questions had something to do with religion, and the answer involved the concept of ancestor worship. As I feebly tried to explain the idea, and she began to write it down, I noticed with huge amusement ( which I successfully hid) that her misspelling of the word 'ancestor' was one of the funniest things I'd seen all week. " Ant-sister." " Oops, " she said. " I forgot the 'u'." She plugged it in to make the word spell " aunt-sister." I said nothing. I thought that was quite creative, in fact.

Okay- one more story. I was driving home from work, saw a sign for a yard sale at the Sullivan Fire Department, and decided to check it out. It was pretty much a huge fire department-garage full of junk, but I did manage to find a few books. Of course. Always books. Anyway, while there, I heard some people talking about this other yardsale on a nearby road. So after finishing up, I drove off to find this other place, which was reputed to be an old lady who was selling everything in the house. An El-Dorado for yardsalers, if there ever was one. I should have known better than to trust the rumors of promise about another little old lady. Two in one week! I never found the yardsale but I had fun driving around old, dirt back-roads. It seems the farther you drive away from Route 9, the more civilization recedes. The absolute nadir came when I found a bonified Red-Neck Compound. I saw a yard with several old trucks and junky farming stuff...and one of the trucks, a lurid combination of rust and wild painting, had these words emblazoned in black on the top of the windshield: "The Beast From the East." WOW. I kid you not. Even after I found that the road eventually came out in a familiar place, I actually turned around to come back and look at the truck again. Yes, it was still there. It still said the same thing. Who knew that it lived in Sullivan.