All posts by Karen J. McLean

Slice of Life

September Eve

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Tomorrow is the first day of September.  I’m still waiting for the email confirming that my substitute teaching paperwork has been processed, but I am already in “school year mode.”  Yep, you guessed it: I’ve been hoarding loose-leaf and scouting new pens, and looking up principals’ names, and trying to find my “good shoes.”

I spent much of today setting up a new notebook, to use for the coming year.  I counted pages, and put in monthly tabs, and tested my pens on a back page to see what — if anything — bled through.

Am I excited to go back to school?  Yes.  I haven’t been in a classroom since the 2018-2019 school year.  (Thanks, COVID.)  Am I afraid to go back to school?  Also yes.

Although I’m fully-Pfizered, my autoimmune disease means we have no idea just how much of an effect the vaccine has had, and being a substitute teacher means I travel from school to school where other substitute teachers are also travelling from school to school.  The teachers went back today; the students start next week.

I’m very, very nervous.

But maybe by the time the paperwork is ready, I will be ready too.

This post was created as part of Two Writing Teachers’ Slice of Life Challenge. 

You can view other writers’ contributions via the comments here.

Slice of Life

For Science.

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“I don’t know about this,” my friend said, as she stood in line to order a sub.

My gaze followed hers, down to a nearby bin.  I blinked a couple of times, reminding myself I need to wear my glasses.

“Does that say …?”

M. nodded.  “It does.”

I just shook my head in disbelief.

Because I wasn’t ordering, and because this was still the Time of COVID, I felt like I was in the way, so I told my friend I was going to look around the convenience store a bit.

I was wandering the various displays of junk food — pondering several bags of Doritos, eventually choosing none of them — and rounded a corner.

There it was.  Again.

I stood on tip-toe to see if M. had picked one up — she hadn’t — and so I gave in to impulse.  A nano-moment later, I put it on the counter, before I changed my mind.

Some things one just has to do — for science.

A little while later, as we resumed our road trip along Route 8 up to Miramichi, I pulled it out of my cooler bag.

“I did it,” I confessed.  “Are you in?”

M. — with an expression of curiosity, skepticism, and horror which I was certain mirrored my own — agreed.  Sink or swim, we were in this together.

I opened the package carefully, and broke the contents into four pieces.  Two trials each.  I handed M. her first portion, and simultaneously we put the pieces in our mouths.

Silent, thoughtful, and confused chewing ensued.

“What do you think?” I asked M.

“I … don’t know,” came the uncertain response.

“Me either. … Want to try again?”

Even after the second trial, we remained mystified and befuddled.  Besides not being able to parse our reactions, we both had the same, unspoken question hurtling in our heads.

Who thinks to put a thin layer of popcorn in a chocolate bar?!

We may need to do more trials to decide whether it was a good idea or not.

For science.

This post was created as part of Two Writing Teachers’ Slice of Life Challenge. 

You can view other writers’ contributions via the comments here.

Books, Slice of Life, Thoreau

Nose in a Book

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“Karen can often be found with her nose in a book” was a frequent comment in my childhood report cards.  I smile now, remembering, because that is exactly how I am sitting now — with my nose buried in a book.

I live in a small city on the east coast of Canada, and I am well-known in several circles as a fervent Thoreauvian — one who is more than just a mere fan of Henry David Thoreau, but practically an evangelist.  My Facebook is as decorated with Thoreau as the back of my car is with Thoreauvian bumper stickers.  In short, people know.

So when a friend had come into his possession a copy of a Thoreau ex-libris volume dated 1882, he knew I’d be interested.  “Interested” was putting it mildly.  So he dropped it off at my husband’s computer shop, and my husband brought it in to me just as my online writing group settled in to weave with words.

I rest my nose against the edges of the pages, and there is that heavenly old book smell — of old tables, of ancient church choir rooms, and of vanilla.  (My friend, a museum conservator, told me that the chemicals that break down in old paper are closely related to the chemical composition of vanilla.  I believe her.)

The first thing I did was open it up to see the library markings.  Some people loathe such things, but I am delighted by them.  Like marginalia, these relics show the journey of a book.  How many people had read it along the way to me?  The fact that it is marked “St. John” and not “Saint John” tells me that it was probably withdrawn before 1950 or so.  Where did it go after that?  How did my friend find it?

I now see the Introduction was written by Henry’s friend (yes, we are on a first-name basis) H. G. O. Blake, and I feel the warmth of recognition.

Then I realize the book was published thirty years after the date of the first entry, and twenty years after Henry died.  Suddenly this tome feels all the more precious — an intimate link between me and the man himself.

Last week another friend saw a hard-to-find two-volume set of Henry’s journals in a local used book store, and snatched them up for me, saying I could pick them up and pay him when convenient.

I am blessed and grateful for my friends, who not only know how much Thoreau books mean to me, but go out of their way to put them into my hands.

Henry would approve, I think.

This post was created as part of Two Writing Teachers’ Slice of Life Challenge. 

You can view other writers’ contributions via the comments here.