One day last April, I went to Kroger to buy some food in the late afternoon. Leaving the store, no doubt musing over the new oyster scratches that day's crew practice had given the rowing shells, I found myself loading the groceries into the back of my car. In one hand, I held a single grapefruit; in the other, a green pepper. I put them in the back of my car, and it occurred to me that they would just roll around if I actually went anywhere. This puzzled me. I had bought both of these things many times before and yet never had this thought. How did I normally prevent my produce from rolling all over the back of my car? Ah, I realized - typically, I put them into bags.

This posed another puzzle. Why were my grapefruit and green pepper not in a bag? I looked back at the cart, and saw, to my alarm, that none of my groceries were in bags. Now, I was profoundly confused. Where were my grocery bags? How, after hundreds of grocery trips, had my unbroken streak of leaving with bags ended?

It was at this point that I realized I hadn't paid for my groceries. I'd just loaded up my cart and walked out of the store. Hurriedly, I loaded my cart up again, walked back into the store, and paid. Just as no one noticed me leaving the grocery store without paying, no one seemed to notice that I was walking into a grocery store with a loaded cart of groceries.

Now I recognize that I have made foolish mistakes before, and to the loyal reader, this may not seem hugely out of character. To me, however, it was highly alarming - akin to the time I tried to set up a camp stove while hypothermic. I had set up the stove many, many times before, but what was once a trivial task suddenly seemed impossible.

I blame April for this incident. April is an intense period in the school calendar, filled with grading, advisory comments, and the peak of crew season. I had spent so much of my mental energy on these things, that I had apparently used up my reserves to such a degree that I had nothing left to remember to pay for my groceries. Thinking about it, I realized I had been wearing my glasses and watch into the shower at an unusually high rate. The week before, I had come within seconds of wearing my socks. What would I forget next? What if I forgot to wear pants to work?

This April has been no exception. The crew schedule has been hectic (though rewarding - I am proud to announce that we placed 10th of 14 in the last regatta. We are now firmly mediocre, which is an immense improvement on previous years). Also, this year, I added the Outdoor Leadership Series, described in my earlier post "9th Graders in the Woods".

I returned from the most recent trip last Sunday, sunburned, dead tired, and covered in bug bites. The bug bites were particularly bad, as they were centered on my face and neck, and looked remarkably like acne. As one of my 9th graders said yesterday, "Wow, Mr. Gris, now you really look like one of us." Thanks for that, kid. Also, in an attempt to make them go down, I have been pretty much continuously consuming benadryl for the last 36 hours, which has made me feel very sleepy and weird. Yesterday, during crew practice, I attempted to dock the launch and ended up having to fend myself off a number of very large poles on the wrong side of the dock. Also, according to my students, my jokes in class were even more incomprehensible than normal. As such, I am glad that I am taking the day off today.

The trip was great, in the way that only cold, windy and exhausting trips can be. I had a great April, overall, but my goodness am I glad that it's over. Oh and more more thing - while I was on my trip, Megan determined that the cats had been pooping, apparently for months, in the box where we had been keeping our landlord's mail. Hopefully there wasn't anything important in there. Here are some pictures (of the trip, not of the poop-covered mail):