Today of All Days

I had a bad day. From the moment I woke up until right now, I have not wanted to be awake. I haven't wanted to talk to anyone. Unfortunately, I didn't get my way. Not only did I have to work, it took me an hour to get there. Then the first thing that happened when my kids arrived was that 2 of them started pushing each other in the hallway and hurt an innocent bystander. My kids were nuts all day. Then, after school, I had to host a book club meeting (more work) and then run errands, one of which included entering The World's Stupidest and Most Frustrating Parking Lot. It also doesn't help that I have had a headache for like 2 days. Oh, and it REALLY doesn't help that I came home to about 8 piles of cat puke that I had to clean up while my Chinese food got cold.

Aaaanyway, the last period of the day today, my kids had art. Yay, art! Yay, last period of the day! Usually the art teacher comes in (we don't have an art room. The art teacher travels to every room using a cart to transport her supplies...sad, I know, and VERY common), explains the project, hands out materials, and the kids work relatively quietly for 30 minutes. I work at my desk and nobody bothers me (yeah, right...I'm bothered all the time. Let's just say it's nice because I'm not responsible for anyone's well-being during this time).

Today when the art teacher came in, she announced that today they were doing something different. Today they were going to have a music lesson! (We don't have music, so this is a real treat!) She brought out this box of brand new percussion instruments, including maracas, jingly bells, triangles, and (god help me) cymbals. Yes, cymbals. Fuck.

My kids WENT NUTS. They were so over-stimulated by this new experience that the room was a...a....a...I don't even know what to call it. Let's just say it was crazy. She managed to teach them what whole, half, and quarter notes were, and they did play some rhythms, and it was cute to see them all excited and into it, but with my headache, I was NOT amused. At all.

Today...of all days...I really needed a nice, quiet, involved art project.

True Dat

Wow, my rate of posting has really slowed down. Maybe it's because I'm so tiiiiiiired all the time! And busy. The 2nd quarter ends today and the end of the quarter is always a crazy time. At least there's no school tomorrow (for the kids anyway). Hopefully I can get some work done!

Actually, this is not likely as we have to spend the first half of the day at another school for a completely unorganized Professional Development (PD) session. The reason I know it's gonna be a mess is because a couple of weeks ago, I volunteered to do presentation at this thing. However, I received NO information about it. Nobody was able to tell me anything about it, such as what the topic was, who my audience was, how long it was supposed to be, etc. FINALLY, I got an email yesterday answering all my questions. Yesterday. The presentation was supposed to be tomorrow. Yeah, I pulled out. There's no way I'm going to prepare something in one day. Fuck that.

Something funny that happened today to lighten the mood:

One of my kids, who is the oldest child in her family said to me, "Ms. M, after you have your baby, you shouldn't have anymore." Another one of my kids who is also the oldest child piped in, "True dat! True dat!" Well, at least I thought it was funny.

Damn Snooze Button

Saturday night I didn't go to sleep until about 1:00. I got up around 9:00 and was dog-tired. I figured, okay, this is good. I'll be tired enough to fall asleep early tonight since I have to wake up early tomorrow (Monday). Sounds good on paper, right? Wrong!

I could not fall asleep last night. While I didn't look at the clock to see what time it was, I laid in bed a good hour and a half before I actually fell asleep. I'm thinking it was around midnight. Grrrr.

This morning, I woke up 1 minute before my alarm went off. This happens frequently. I actually felt quite refreshed, but for some stupid reason, I hit snooze to get an extra 9 minutes in bed. When the alarm rang again, I was no longer feeling well-rested! I felt like I needed another 2 hours. How is this possible? How can 9 extra minutes of sleep make you more tired? A riddle of the universe.

Damn you, snooze button, damn you! Because I know tomorrow I will hit you again.

I am So Screwed

School starts again on Monday and I am SO SCREWED! I am barely dragging my ass out of bed every morning at 9:30, and I mean dragging. I am seriously prying my eyes open with, uh, some kind of prying tool (?) and pulling myself up even though my body is screaming for more sleep. Then I walk around like a zombie for the first 30 min. of being "awake." What the hell am I going to do on Monday when I have to wake up at 6:15?

What's weird is that until yesterday, I was getting up without any problem. I would get up at 8:30 or 9:00 and feel refreshed and ready-to-go (even though I had nowhere I needed to be). But all of a sudden, yesterday morning I felt like I was hit by a truck.

Hmmmm...maybe it's the pregnancy, but why now? Why does this happen a handful of days before I have to go back to work?

Like I said, I am SO SCREWED. I'll let you know what happens on Monday.

Is It Too Much to Ask?

I'm not in a very good mood today. The main reason is because I didn't get enough sleep last night, but a lot of little things that happened today added to my bad mood. It's the little things in life that matter, so I must ask the question:

Is it too much to ask...

1. to have the street our school is on plowed? I mean, a school is a pretty important city building, right? Hundreds of people go in and out of it daily; cars, buses, and pedestrians are a given. So why the hell wouldn't the city make it a priority to plow around a school? I'd bet if an ambulance had to come to our school, it'd get stuck there's that much snow. Cars, including mine, were sliding all over the place.

2. for the French teacher to actually BE AT SCHOOL on the days that my kids have French? I mean, how many f'ing preps can I have cancelled?

3. have paper towels in the teacher's bathroom? I mean, it's bad enough that I bring toilet paper.

4. have my administrators actually answer my emails in a timely fashion? My principal and assistant principal are hard people to find. They're never stay in one place, so email is a perfect form of communication. However, I NEVER get a response from them. Grrrrr.

There's actually a lot more on my list, but thinking about all this stuff again is making my bad mood worse. So I'm going to stop now, take some deep breaths, and just let it go.

Randomness

What I really want to write today:

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

But I will actually post something "worthwhile" since I haven't posted for several days. I feel like writing "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" because being a teacher is CRAZY sometimes. At some points during the day, I literally have 5 people talking to me: 5 people who don't understand that I cannot understand one thing they're saying so they just stare at me when they're done asking their question as if they're waiting for a response. Sometimes I have them form a line so I can hear their questions one at a time (like normal people). Sometimes I just give them all a blanket answer like, "Go sit down." I think the latter is best because my kids tell me the stupidest things. Like today we were talking about the "Twelve Days of Christmas" because that is the song that they are performing at our holiday assembly. I told them about how the 12 days of Christmas were actually the 12 days following Christmas leading up to the Epiphany on January 6. One of my girls was practically jumping out of her seat, waving her arm in a frenzy so I would call on her. When kids behave that way, I won't call on them and I let her know that. She put her hand down and pouted.

Later, when we were doing something else, I was standing by her desk working with another student and she interrupted (out of the blue) to tell me what she had wanted to share earlier. I told her it was neither the time nor the place to tell me something. So the poor thing waited until after dismissal to finally come up to me and tell me the EXTREMELY IMPORTANT information that had her jumping out of her chair: Her little sister's birthday is on January 5th, the day before Epiphany. Wow. What the hell am I supposed to say to that?

Sometimes I feel like my classroom is the chaos of the trading floor at the stock exchange: too many things going on at once. In fact, my dentist tells me that he sees people in 2 professions come in with a glazed look on their face after a day of work: stockbrokers and teachers.

All Over the Place, but Not Getting Anywhere

You know it's bad when you're driving home and you are debating if it's safe to rest your eyes for just 1 second. (Just so you know, it's NOT a good idea). From the moment I woke up today, I was off. And when I found a penny on my way to the car, I knew I was going to have a really lucky day or I was totally in for it. (It was the latter). I went through the motions and somehow got to work by 7:30. I then had from 7:30 until almost 9:00 to prepare for my day, but I couldn't manage to do it in a cohesive way. I was all over the place. I prepared for the morning, but then got totally engrossed in 2 projects (at the same time, no less, to make it even less efficient). To make matters worse, neither project even needed to be done today! The bell rang to signify the start of the school day and I hadn't even used the bathroom yet! Hmmmm....doing things that don't even need to be done or using the bathroom before you can't use it for several hours. Apparently I had made my choice.

Now since I've come home, I've had 2 things to do before I leave to go somewhere at 7:00: grade math tests and do laundry. Do you think I've done either one of them? Nooooooo. It's because I'm brain dead.

Because of this affliction, I've delegated some responsibilities of remembering things to my students. I tell them things like, "Remind me after lunch to...". This backfired on me today, though, when my kids asked me, "What were we supposed to remind you to do?" It's spreading!

And I thought I was tired!

As you learned yesterday, today was the first day of school. I am officially exhausted. We had no breaks today (despite the fact that we were assured that our prep schedule would be emailed to us by this morning...ha!). I even had to eat lunch with my kids (as well as guess what time we even HAVE lunch) because my school can't manage to get it together enough to get gather enough people to supervise the lunchroom. Whatever...my school's disorganization is a whole different entry (and perhaps a whole different blog)!

All teachers know that the first day of school is more annoying than anything. The kids don't know what's what yet, so you have to explain absolutely EVERYTHING, from how to line up without causing injury, to how to pass papers down a row so that everybody gets exactly one, to how to walk in the hallway without alerting the entire building that you're there. These are probably things that civilians take for granted that people know how to do. But people only know how to do these things because their fourth grade teacher taught them to do so. It is no fun teaching this mundane stuff. It seems simple enough, but nine year-olds want to test how you're going to react when they start walking down the hall flapping their arms. Like I said, NO FUN! (Well, except for them. Flapping your arms while walking IS fun! Try it tomorrow at work!)

After school, even though I was VERY tired, I had to go to the main office downtown to hand in some paperwork so I can move up the payscale now that I've finished my Master's Degree. I knew going on the first day of school was going to suuuuck because about a gazillion new-hires were going to be there getting their paperwork submitted, their fingerprints and id photos taken, and generally running through the series of flaming hoops the Board makes us all run through. I finally found the building, which has oh so conveniently moved to the west side of the city, and joined the line in which I was probably 20th. The line barely seemed to be moving at all even though it had a sign that said "Express Drop Off." Twenty minutes later, I'm about halfway through the line and feeling even more tired than I was only 20 minutes ago. I was so tired that I wished that I could sleep standing up and take a little cat nap. At this point I hear deep breathing behind me. I turn around and see that the guy behind me IS asleep standing up!!! His eyes were closed, his chin was to his chest, he was slightly swaying back and forth, and he was SLEEPING! Poor guy. He looked like a new-hire and with this being the first day of school, I'm sure he had a hell of a day.