For You, Dear Reader

My cup runneth over. Life is good--there's nothing like Thanksgiving to remind me of that.

Ebb and Flow

Some days I am quite certain I'm on the proverbial emotional roller coaster with my adolescent students. Earlier in the week I left you in my gloom. Today I have random joy to spread. (Yes, I know. Lately my blogging energies have been bubbling in a worn out brew of randomness, letters, and whining thoughts. Your point?)

1. I'm listening to Christmas music on Pandora while I enter my grades. Deal. I like it even if Thanksgiving isn't for another week. I might even put up my tree this weekend.

2. I'm grateful for the warm feel of copies fresh out of the machine. And their smell. Little else can match the delicious sensory overload that is warm Xerox.

3. I must have the teenagers ruthlessly fooled. A student told me today I'm one of "the rare teachers who actually likes kids!"

4. Christmas came early and delivered a beautiful LCD television to my classroom. Thank you, school district, for replacing the unworking dinosaur in here with technology I can't even afford for my own home (to go along with the view I could never afford in my real life).

5. I got a new phone cover. It is holiday bulb red. Isn't red a sublime sort of color?

6. A student wrote this yesterday and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

MYTH OF THE WAY CHAIRS CAME TO BE (by Forrest)

There once was a king who hated to stand and lay. He traveled far and wide to find a solution to his problem, but had no luck. He yelled to the gods "Do you have the answer!?!" The gods replied "We do but you must pass 2 tests. You must stand and hold the earth up for 1 day." So he did. "Now you must lay on a bed of snakes for 1 day." So he did. For his reward the gods gave him a throne of gold with silk cushins and platinum lace. As the king saw the throne he felt rejoyced and asked the gods, "What am I suposed to do?" "Sit," said the gods. And as the king sat in the chair he realized...he didn't like sitting either.

What would I ever do without my 9th graders? Greek Mythology is such a fun unit and this was his personal myth about the creation of something, anything (pretty free topic, I know--I had a bad week). Bless him.

7. I haven't had to scrape my windows once this year. Praise covered parking at the new place.

8. The Roommate and I are hosting a soup soiree tomorrow night with good people.

9. That means that in a few short hours my house will be entirely clean.

10. My grades are updated-ish. It is neither midterm nor end of term. I'm just on the ball.

11. Scarves and flower pins and head bands are my newest accessory obsession.

12. Not everyone gets a best friend for a roommate. I love you like a sister, Alice. Thanks for putting up with my mood-swinginess.

Now, I've an errand to run and a house to clean. Consider me on an upswing.

Determined

This morning I put on the color red and my new favorite scarf that I've worn three days straight now. The morning brought about many encounters with the snooze function on my phone, and a strange memory of a dream about a bewitched PVC pipe. Sunday nights never cease to offer entertaining sleep.

Yesterday I taught the adult sunday school class at church. The lesson was about self sufficiency and work and the feeling of worth that comes from such things. So when I (finally) awoke today, I said a prayer, determined to enjoy this Monday, this week. Determined to feel all the good things about work. You see, I've been in a funk about my job. This funkiness is not for me. I did go to all that trouble, after all, the anxiety and expense of getting an education in something I loved. I did experience the hassle of searching for a career I knew I'd care for equally so as to avoid such funks. But there is a difference between my ideals and my realities--another post altogether.

I can't put my finger on the source of the funk, either. It is a sense of melancholy diluted into me. Maybe it is the boy at church that flirts and little else. Maybe it is the teenagers and their adolescent stint of irrationality. Perhaps it is the weather or the light.

So here I sit, still in red and my new favorite scarf I wear too much in a cold humming office and a darkening classroom. I'm taking a short break from the grading stacks. In my hours here the sun has risen in a window somewhere away from my own western view; and now it has set behind hills across the basin, its last light filtering into a hazy dusk of approaching winter.

I still feel slumped in my own personal job funk. Adolescents do not cheerful companions make.

But I tell myself this: I did something good today for someone who will never tell me so.

If I didn't tell myself this truth each and every day, even in endless Mondays of slumping such as this, I don't know that I could carry on when I only see the sun through my windows and never feel it on my face. If I didn't believe that the students have a secret all their own, that I wasn't giving someone only the best parts of myself, I don't know why else I could stand to be here.

image by sabino

Sometimes I Ride My Broom to School

To the Student Who Manipulated the System and Dropped My AP Class Without the Proper Protocol:

Do you really think asking me for a letter of recommendation after sneaking into your counselor and stealthily dropping my AP class without my required permission was a wise idea? Seriously? Who does that? I'm not sure you'd want me to say things about you such as "quits when a challenge presents itself" or "finds every possible loophole" or "unethical" and don't forget my personal favorite "avoids confrontation when a problem arises" in said hypothetical letter. If I were being 100% honest with the colleges and scholarships for which you are applying, however, I could say little else.

Signed,
That Batch Who Won't Let You Drop AP English

P.S. Maybe you should ask someone else for a more glowing review. Perhaps your sorry excuse for a salaried counselor who is too busy reading the sports section of
the newspaper in his special corner of the school library to realize that it is against policy to let you out of my class without permission.

The Difference Between Pants and Scales

Dear Bathroom Scale,

You suck. I eat better, count points, ignore the existence of a love affair I'd recently begun with The Sugar Cookie of My Dreams. I sweat it out on the elliptical machine and treadmill as my shuffle's play list spins its songs out one by one. I spend my days discovering muscles I didn't know about until they fill with lactic acid after a harsh work out. I sit and stand slowly, deliberately so as not to disturb the wrong body parts as they recover; I refigure my body in strange contortions just to relieve the pain, and still, still you budge so little. I even say "ice cream" and you shift a pound ahead. What gives? You need to cooperate.

Signed,
The One Who Hid You in a Time Out Closet Until You Behave Accordingly

(If my scale actually read this, dear, sweet google image, rest assured that the explanation is clearly that some large appendage--or two--has been amputated from my body.)

Dear Jeans I Haven't Worn Since I Started Teaching,

You rock. I've eaten less, counted points, sweat it out at the gym and you, you glorious things, decide to zip up with ease. You spent the day with me yesterday and didn't cut off the circulation to my lower extremities even once. I truly appreciate the gesture. Please understand, however, that our relationship can only be temporary. There are other jeans with smaller numbers on their tags in a rubbermaid in the closet, each waiting patiently for their turn in the outside world.

Signed,
Who Needs a Bathroom Scale when She has You?

Free Flying Friday

Sometimes a girl just gets the urge for splattering a chaotic thought train on the old blog. A list, if you will, of what is currently on my mind:

1. I am talented at many things. Avoiding the BOX of grading (papers, essays, reading journals, projects) that awaits me happens to be my forte. Yes, a BOX. I've outgrown my bag. I grade, I really do. It just keeps growing in its overwhelmability. (Is that a word? I just made it one.) Instead of facing my problems, I choose to blog.

2. Dear Self: Some guys just flirt. With everyone. Period. They're good at it. Don't take it personally, dearie. It will only end badly if you do that. Flirt back for fun and leave it at that. Think of it as practice for the big game that will some day show up in your life. Besides, are you really compatible with someone who is most decidedly a Glenn Beck fan? (No offense to my Glenn Beck-ite readers, I just don't know that I could marry one of you.)

3. Eating apple pie a la mode at 9 PM with your pals does not bode well for daily Weight Watchers points. Frankly, this whole Halloween, holidays swiftly approaching business is killing the diet.

4. I love a cloud-covered day. Sometimes you just need the gloominess.

5. I will not eat the Swedish Fish kindly provided by the PTSA. I will not eat the Swedish Fish kindly provided by the PTSA. Repeat.

6. Mmmmm, Swedish Fish.

7. I really need to purchase a replacement ink cartridge STAT. This hussling about the school during prep period in search of a printer is no way to live my life.

8. I need to send some new pictures to be printed at Costco. I have an empty frame in my office and old photos scattered in frames about the house.

9. I need to do a lot of things.

10. Alice and I were discussing just this very topic: we each would fully appreciate one week from work on a "vacation." As in, we're out of town and can't do anything with you that week, sorry. But really we spend that week getting everything done for which we never have the time. A giant Checking Off the To Do List Celebration Week. Can you imagine how glorious it would be?

11. Praises be! Ashley, Alice's sister, is coming to town tomorrow. Do you know long it has been since I had my hair cut. July. Early July. Nearly four months! My naturally curly hair grows into a triangle if left alone. A triangle! Not flattering. Oh, how I adore me some Ashley. And not just because she cuts my hair and shapes my eye brows to perfection and...

12. Okay--confession time--she also waxes my chin. I don't know what has happened other than genetics, but I'm developing something resembling scruff. I swear it to you all! This is SO not cool. My entire life I have sat in the back seat of my parent's car watching my Mom "pluck" (tweeze) her chin on the way to every social event we attended in my childhood. My father always had to drive so Mom could tweeze away. I'm her now. I'm her! And I totally get it: the car really is the best place for such an activity--perfect lighting.

13. Grading is waiting. I better leave it at 13. Besides, I'm boring you poor people into a coma.

(Thanks, google, for the image that is as random as this post.)

Overheard at School Today

Friday marks the end of term one in Ms. Rookie's class. In celebration of one of my least favorite weeks, I thought I'd share with you all what it is really like to be a teacher.



(So much for my positivity-fest. Yes I really do get paid to spend the day with these people.)

"What's my grade? Am I passing yet?"
If you aren't the type to keep track of this kind of thing on your own, I'm going to guess no.

"That's not middle awged! Middle awge starts at like 30!"
Nice. Talk about life coming at you fast!

"Can I turn this in late and still get full credit?"
Because you didn't understand my 50% off late work policy that is posted and has been covered just about every day since the beginning of the school year?

"'Dude' is such a sweet word."
Great, and they've given you a driver's license.

"What's my grade?"
Comin' right up! Just let me check my ULTRA-HUMAN MEMORY DATABASE because I actually do have the remaining mental capacity after dealing with you people all day to memorize all 160 students' ever-fluctuating letter grades.

"You mean double spacing isn't just pushing the space bar twice?"
Sometimes there are no words.

"If I do this assignment, can I pass your class?"
Oh, absolutely. Because all those assignments and projects you haven't done this term were absolutely meaningless.

"But I'm like seventy-two ounces of sexy, Teacher."
(WTF?) No, no. Let's clarify some things for you: you are about 117 pounds of awkward freshman pubescence.

"Just think, we may have F's now. But by Monday we'll all have A's again!"
Way to look on the bright side of your failure.

Have a happy Tuesday. I've grading to accomplish and some ibuprofen with my name...