(Scene: The school day is soon to begin. Elsa, our teacher protagonist, sits atop the Big Toy in the preschool playground, looking out at the trees that flank the schoolyard.)

Caw, caw, calls the crow as the morning happens around it. Robins, sparrows join in.

The sun suffuses the overcast sky, attempting a slow penetration.

Gray-green trees soak up what they can of small wind, small sunlight, small soil.

Spring break is here and we’re all itching to fly the coop. We want fresh air. We want lazy mornings at the ocean. We want the kids to get their ya-yas out and return to us mellow and compliant and pleasant.

Such are a teacher’s fantasies.

The tardy bell rings at the middle school across the way and I realize it’s time to start my own day.

(Scene: at home, the school day finished. Our heroine sits on the couch in the den, watching the graying sky.)

Here I go, days of unstructured time stretching before me, a delta of potential. There has to be a reason I am not yet drinking, given that I deal poorly with solitude. No plans! Eek!

It’s a bit hard to come down after the day before Spring Break. Oh, and after eating two pieces of Rock Island pizza with salad, and yes, their famous chipotle dressing. (Funny, Microsoft Word doesn’t know the word “chipotle”. Haha. All the better, more for me.)

I took down my milk crate full of cassette tapes, to pick some for my road trip to the Oregon Coast on Monday. I was surprised by how many titles were 70s and 80s groups. Yes, the medium was popular during those decades, but I also taped a lot of things retroactively, and damn skippy, if those titles don’t make me a man. A whole lot of complicated rock music that only autistic boys would listen to. Hold your tongues, I’m not on the spectrum yet.

Some things I found:, Pat Metheny, Rush, Yes, Deep Purple, Philip Glass, Dread Zeppelin, the Short Sisters, Suzanne Vega, The Doors, CSN, tons of mix tapes with show tunes, themed tapes like “She’s on the Bike” (dyke songs), and “The Music’s Over but the Power Remains” (Doors, Hendrix, etc.). I realized that most of what I have on tape isn’t stuff that my traveling companion and her 11-year-old daughter will want to hear.

So this is what they’ll get: Lenny Kravitz, Men at Work, Foreigner, Genesis, mix tapes of 70s and 80s hits, Rent, My Fair Lady, Van Morrison, Janis Ian, Judy Collins, Steely Dan, Hair, Joan Osborne, Jill Sobule. I couldn’t find Ricki Lee Jones, “Pop Pop”; maybe I gave that one away, though I don’t know why I would. There is nothing cuter than her singing “Up From The Skies” in that barely lubricated door hinge of a voice.

I am going to tie one on and listen to all my cassettes while I have the player here. I borrowed it from the OT/PT gals and I’m going to get some good time out of it.

(And . . . scene.)