We made it to Eden Canyon again yesterday, here's one from inside.

Today was spent entirely in my pajamas, and the sun spent the majority of its day behind the clouds occasionally flurrying snow on our lawn.
I decided to leave all of troubles and worries behind a shroud of tactical forgetfulness and sit around directing my children in their activities. I even got some reading in between the action and cleaned out several drawers, stuffing the unused or unwanted in bags to be sent off to another service.
January the fifteenth is a day that begs for this sort of behaviour, and luckily, this year it fell on a Sunday. I didn't feel like fixing any pipes, attending any meetings, fulfilling any mandates, heeding any calls, hawking any wares or gathering any offal. I just wanted to see if I could just be, and no more.
I think things went just fine. As my mind skimmed the surface of the day, searching for the fleeting break in the clouds and accompanying shafts of clear light outside, I didn't think of much else besides the walls around me, the fire in our stove and the dear people scurrying about me.
That's how today went.

Here we are in the merry month of January, and with such a huge gap of time betwixt entries, I could write much.
I could write of my layoff from the Academy, with its accompanying tears and notes of regret and support; of the frustration at dismantling my classroom and systems, and of the loss of benefits and income in the middle of the school year.
I could theorize upon the reasons for my dismissal beyond those expressed by the officials of both districts and further upon reasons for hobbling the entire program at Sanpete Academy.
But what's the use, there's so much more to talk about!
There's the climate of political suspicion and mistrust here in Springtowne- with councilmen saying one thing on record and doing quite another, and those politics spilling into the local church and causing further discord and dismay. Of off-the-record and secret meetings where who knows what is worked out and done, of non-elected mayors who weren't able to garner enough votes for a counsel seat but were approved by said secret meeting for a two-year term at mayor. But what's the use, that's no fun at all.
I've a new part-time teaching job at a girl's lock-down facility in Manti, teaching seventeen very sweet but very unruly girls English, Arts and Humanities and World Geography. Due to the mid-year departure from my previous job, chaotic circumstances, and my own lack of back ups, I've lost a couple of years of work on my school computer and am piecing things back together for the girls in Manti. More confusion for their lives of too much of that.
Drie and I have been talking much of changes for our family and of where and when to instigate those changes. Drie has been speaking about her feelings that change was imminent for quite a while now, and since I've lost about the only full time job suited to me that can remotely support a family of our size in this county, a change in venue might indeed be imminent. But where?
We've become very acclimatized to rural life, to the quiet and proximity to the mountains and desert that our location affords. We enjoy the absence of traffic, hustle, and indifference that city life engenders, but there are big drawbacks to our place, too.
Our home is too small, broken-down and organizationally challenged for our family and situation. We've very little irrigation water for our one acre plot of parched clay. And we feel a certain ambivalence from, and, in turn to the community at large. We are animals of a different color (and perhaps breed or species)from the overwhelming majority of those in rural Utah; on top of that, we are pretty introverted and unassuming. We have a hard time mixing, I reckon, so when those with whom we try to mix have very, very different views of basic ideas from ours, it becomes even harder. I can hardly conceive of a place where it would be much better, though, rural or not.
So, who knows. Prehaps we can keep our base here and figure out something more conducive to our ways, closer to family or loved places and better for our creative minds. I'm sure we can make some more lucre if we can become more ourselves more of the time. This undercover game kills a person slowly.
I was sicker than sick on top of sick as I cleaned out my classroom (that didn't help my computer situation, I'm sure) on the 23rd, so Christmas was spent in a certain type of delirium. I'm afraid that I didn't achieve Christmas Closure. I was looking forward to the holiday with a hope that can only be found in a person seeking solace from a life of rejection and uncertainly, so it was a blow indeed. Next Christmas will be here before we know it, so I'll survive, I'm sure.
We shot down to my parent's house in AZ a couple of days after Christmas, as soon as I could reasonably maintain focus on the road in front of me. Much of the time down there was spent recouping from the illness, but it also gave me a change of scenery stark enough to shake my outlook from the bleakness that it had taken on over the past few months. We were able to see my dear brother and sister and their families, spending much time together just doing silly things and talking from time to time about the changes we are all experiencing in life.
That was time well spent.
On our way home, Drie and I talked much about the changes our perspectives were able to undergo. Overall, we feel good about things. We feel some modicum of optimism about the future, although we've no idea where it is going come to fruition, and are looking actively for the answers to many questions. Who knows what the next while will bring?

Rely on the message of the teacher, not on his personality
Rely on the meaning, not just the words.
Rely on the real meaning, not on the provisional one.
Rely on your wisdom mind, not on your ordinary judgmental mind.
-The Teachings of Buddha

A day at home with the kids and Drie.
There is always much to do around this little house- we bought it originally with the intent of gutting and fixing it before we moved in, but Drie's unscheduled pregnancy with Hyrum lowered our workforce by one and hastened the move-in. We were only able to drag all of the unuseables out of the house, fix to a usable level the things that were unserviceable, hope for the best, and move in.
Once you have six, followed by seven, soon another eighth and finally a ninth person sharing a (scant) thirteen hundred square foot house with a large german shepherd, not much renovation happens.
We have been able to put up some drywall, redo some plumbing, upgrade some wiring and reglaze the odd window, but that isn't all that should have been done. The first clue on that subject is rain in the bathroom whenever a storm lasts longer than seven or eight minutes.
The projects I was able to do this summer leave us better off for this winter than ever, but we ought to figure out something better as this horde grows bigger individually even if the collective is at its largest point.

I felt sick this morning but went to work anyway. It didn't last very long.
Yesterday was a day of struggle as my co-workers fidgeted and worked on tentative plans for the new arrangements that are coming with the new year, so I was feeling left out and unneeded. No, it was more like rejected and unwanted, as they were discussing new directives of the superintentents that included my absence in the school and a directive to abandon my little room that I have worked so hard to make into an inviting and comfortable place for the students and I.
The teachers at our school are naturally an independet lot, each strong in a way that enables them to work with our little angry and sad children especially well. To see them discussing ways to submit to the blessed administrators who really don't know a thing about what we're doing makes me feel angry and sad myself.
But what is a person to do? The tune is set by these middle-level men and they sing the songs prescribed by the higher ups who politik and set agendas that look as good as they can on the surface without showing through for the fakery it really is.
It is all fairly pathetic, and pathetic is what I really feel as one low man in need of approbabtion and money so that I can keep my family fed and clothed.
It is hard for some people to walk in such a way to impress the people who have accumulated power and acclaim by impressing those who had power and acclaim before them, but that is how things work, that is the order of things.
Rewards are given for increasing the power, prestige and riches of those who already have them.
I went to work today, but I couldn't stay, so I went home for a while and then drove around to see things and listen to music.