Tropically Depressed

The main road below us, and many of the little streets in town, are awash with becks, streams, and small rivers from the rain which started Saturday night and has continued intermittently ever since. TS Patricia is now off in the Pacific and heading towards us, destined to reach us at about midnight Tuesday. I didn't know these transsexuals could be so temperamental, with rainy eyes, writing sorrow on the bosom of the earth. We set off for school this morning, however, since we had not heard otherwise, and discovered that only four teachers had showed up, not counting Profe Baxter, the Dickens scholar. Sort of like "what if they gave a war but nobody came?". Elsa, the owner, was standing outside saying school was on while one of the primary school teachers, whose principal function appears to be to squirt chemicals on the kids' hands as they arrive, was waving off the cars and saying there was no school. Rosie, the English coordinator, who might have been expected to be involved in this, was texting the other English teacher to see whether school was on, and there was no sign of Laura, the coordinator of secondary Spanish. So here we are at home, looking out of the window at an unusual sky with masses of clouds but the sun shining through, and since the storm is heading towards us, it might be Thursday before we go back. Not exactly Minneapolis Public Schools standard. We'll just have to find something to do at home. We love Mexico, and how green is our valley.
It may be a lot of fun, getting back into teaching literature and writing, depending on whether they are actually going to do the work. I had to fire a warning shot across their bow last week because they had not read what they were committed to reading, and I reminded them that they had made a contract. Last week, however, was their exam week in Spanish, so perhaps my Expectations were too Great. Now I have to study that monument to American formalism, the diagrammed sentence: I have been aware of it over the years but have never had to confront it up close and personal. On the other hand, I've long ago forgotten the British way of doing it, though its effects remain with me.
Mexican mosquitoes are a sneaky lot. They appear to have some adaptive mechanism here which keeps them low to the ground, perhaps for warmth when the desert cools at night. They're very fast and small, and only attack your ankles -- or rather my ankles, since they don't seem to want to bite Jeanne at all. I can't understand that myself.