the buds of winter

It's easy to tell that winter will be upon us soon, here in the Northwest.  To my understanding, parts of the country, such as Colorado and the Northeast, have already received a fair deal of snowstorms.  It's forecasted to snow here as well, though I would be tremendously surprised if anything stuck.  High today is 48˚ though, which is pretty chilly.  I'm totally welcoming to it, except that my house just becomes so cold inside, particularly the downstairs where my bedroom is.  I intend to buy a space heater so that I can control my own temperature this winter.  I keep saying that and not actually doing it.  Hopefully it is not too expensive.

Well, I did not succumb to any form of food poisoning after eating my delicious pumpkin bread, nor did any of the number of people with whom I shared it.  I shall probably make some more this weekend.  It goes so quickly when you're generous! I usually take a few slices to work to share with co-workers or water aerobics students, and then that's one loaf down already.  The next gets dealt up among myself and visiting friends or roommates.  Anyway, my mom's recipe ended up being 10x better than the original I tried, as was reflected on everyone's face after their first bite.  That's a nice feeling : )

Things are going a bit better at work lately.  Mary and I are going to work together on created the next swim session, so it will get done twice as quickly.  Karen was also very nice today.  A few things happened where I had done everything totally correctly and she was the one who fudged things up, so it was nice not to be at all to blame.
During my first two years of working at the Aquatic Center, I never wanted to teach swim lessons.  The hours are too inflexible and I've never been particularly big on children.  As I am now the Swim Lessons Coordinator, I have been teaching lessons this entire semester.  Sometimes it's very frustrating and I find myself getting aggravated when kids can't perform one of my drills correctly because they did not listen to directions or when one of them is arguing with me that they can't do something, when I saw them do it the week before.  I'm not especially fond of my Tuesday/Thursday evening group (although next week is my last week with them, so that's ok) but I have taught the same group of kids 2 sessions in a row now on Monday/Wednesday mornings.  I've watched them grow and helped them develop to that next step.  I know each of their strengths and weaknesses.  There are kids in this world who are excellent backstrokers or can swim front crawl with perfect bilateral side-breathing because I taught it to them.  Ultimately, the feeling is very gratifying.