EST ?

I think I'm still on Seattle time. Either that, or I'm so far gone that it doesn't even matter anymore. Got waylaid in Houston on my way home, and didn't make it back to the MIA until nearly 1:00 am. I literally teared up in the airport as I lugged my bags to the taxi stand, but refused to cry in a public place, on the last day of vacation no less. Up at 6:00 to teach school, go coach a soccer game, and "lesson plan," all of which was far, far too quickly followed by a day we like to call Tuesday. As some have said, I'm hard core.

I don't know quite what to do with myself. No, scratch that; I know exactly what my body needs: sleep. Unfortunately, guilt pangs about my aimless Reading class, my as-of-yet-unwritten graduate paper, my midterm exams (due to department chair 12-10), and compulsive consumerism which attacks in weekly fits, have stalled my sleep in a state of limbo. I can't quite sleep because I feel guilty sleeping, but I can't quite work because I'm too tired to be effective. Instead, I brood, I watch ALIAS, I shop. All of these things are deliciously justifiable to my conscience, in its present state of self-pity. The shops in Seattle, long plane rides, and Season Two are marvelous enablers in this whole endeavor, so we all get along swimmingly. Right.

Getting a grip on life just doesn't get any easier when at least every day another new, completely unforseen problem comes my way. This morning, for example, circa 6:00 after I get out of the shower, get dressed, and finish making worksheets for the terror-children in my 2nd period, Cervantes has a meltdown. Cat comes sliding off the desk, dropping ass-first to the tile floor. Fortuitously, there was a plastic cup of orange paint to stop his fall; one little hind paw shoots through two layers of saran-wrap, two inches deep in pumpkin colored pigment. Shit.

Clearly, as all felines do upon contact with cold-ish liquids, he freaks out, just about like I did whenever I think about the extra hour added to the school day starting in January. Of course, his next impulse is to run frantically around the house, shaking the sodden paw and sliding around on smeared orange kitty paw prints. Thus, circa 6:03 am, the apartment's tile floors look like a battleground. Containing the damage by encarcerating the naughty animal in the bathroom, I spend 20 precious morning minutes sniffing paint remover while scrubbing the most offensive of many stains in our living space. Does any of this ever get any easier? Will my children ever be able to recognize a noun? Will teaching ever be truly fun? Who he hell knows.

It's now 9:00, and my indecision has brought me to another late evening with little productivity as far as teaching, school, or exercise is concerned, so I think I'm just going to throw in the proverbial towel. Or did the cat already soil that this morning? I'm confused.

Ouch

Have just noticed that the phrase "Thanksgiving From Hell" recurrs in the past TWO postings...there is a problem with this. Maybe I should stop bitching about the 3 hour time change both ways,the 16 hours of flight time, the 3 hours of layovers, and my 12:30 am arrival Sunday night (a mere 6 hours before SCHOOL STARTS), and just get it over with. At least I'll get to hang out with my sister?

Educators Gone Bad

What happens when teachers get near vacation...it's about 8 school hours until Thanksgiving break, and the mood around the apartment is getting a little unstable, as evidenced by the events of the past few days, and the forthcoming 266 NE quotations.

1. Watch Cervantes dismember a 2" cockroach leg by leg by leg by leg by leg...by leg. The carnage lasts a full-on 20 minutes, including the cat dragging the indestructable creature around by one antenna.

2. V. Knechtel: "My new roommate Luis, who likes to cook for me, and who some people call good-looking."

3. T. Williamson, re: trans-continental flight to "The Thanksgiving From Hell" "So I'll have my good cheese and my nice olives, and I'll be all like 'Fuck you American Airlines'"
M. Ivy: "You're flying American?"
T. Williamson: "I have no idea."

4. T. Williamson, re: punishing kindergarteners: "Yeah, well you were going to go to the moon, but now *that* fieldtrip is canceled...Sucks to be you, doesn't it!"

I have not yet packed, have not yet finished grading tests, and have very few concrete plans for tomorrow, save packing my gourmet travel dinner, and making it through another day at Miami Central without crying during my planning period. Because I never do that. Ever.

More anarchy today, apparently I'm an "ASS" a "LIAR" and still don't teach anything. I love the precocious honesty of today's children. Also a shakedown on the threshold of Rm 14 c/o 2 cops, 2 security guards, and one very angry, very overweight assistant principal screaming "Why you runnin'? Who you gonna run from?" to a very angry, very tall high school student.

Drama, always drama. One of these days, all of the very carefully leashed and hidden anger inside of me is going to come out. It'll be on the "new New" reality TV show: Educators Gone Bad: tales from the class"

My kingdom for...some stability?

"My horse! My horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

Ah, if only my problems were concerned with horses and battlefields. I have decided that one of the major problems in the public education system is stability and routine. Me, the non-linear, discumbobulated, spastic thinker, an advocate of structure and rigidity? Alas, it has come to that.

When an entire class roster changes over 4 weeks, when new students arrive on a regular basis JUST so that they can cancel out their failing grade from the high school down the street, there is a problem. There is no continuity, no follow-through, and hardly any sense of permanancy in many of these kids' lives, so when there's no structure or logic to school either, it makes you want to go insane. I don't blame kids for being confused or rebellious in a place where they can't even decide if you're allowed to have CD players in the building or not! Where fire alarms go off no less than twice a day, followed ten minutes later by...

"Students and teachers please pardon this interruption: please ignore the alarms, we're doing some testing on the fire system"

Hell, I wish I had some stability in my own life. My current routine of sleeping 6 hours a night is non-functional one, and soccer is devouring every free moment of my time. Too bad that's the only part of school which makes me happy in any way. To compensate, I've been travelling a lot, which is nice, but doesn't really help solve the problem of getting things accomplished and implementing a logical structure to my existence.

I got to see a bit of autumn in Philadelphia, got a dose of that lovely 37 degree rain that makes you want to kill yourself at the end of first semester, and saw the golden afternoon shadows stretch out over soccer players on Walton Field. Went to Hot Soup only to discover that I'd fallen completely out of touch with the rhythm and logic of glassblowing, and it took me till the end of my time there to get back into that routine. Pretty depressing, but not a total loss.

I'm off to Seattle next weekend for the "Thanksgiving From Hell" [really, I'm trying to be optimistic], but at the moment I'm trying not to think about that.

What I *do* need to think about in my immediate future is the test I'm giving on Sherlock Holmes next Monday, my lesson plans for the week, and the 160+ progress reports that must be filled out by Thursday night.

Man, I've really got to get back into the swing of things.

I hate my country

I can't believe the citizens of the United States of America are so fucking stupid.

8 years. 8 fucking years.

I didn't go to school today.

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

the world, in short, is going to hell.

I am at the *legal limit* in all of my classes except one, literally walked out of 6th period today because I could not remain in my class and not 1. yell, 2. hurt someone, 3. hurt myself/destroy property.

I voted today in Miami-Dade county, and the electoral college makes me want to hurt things/people. If Bush wins, I'm leaving the country as soon as I am contractually permitted.

My "graduate" class this evening ran overtime talking about how kids [gasp!] might not [shock!] have intelligence that registers on a "bell curve" or "IQ test." Imagine, if you will, my fingers making "air quotes" as I "speak." Please, visualize. Apparently, kids learn better [gasp!] when they are [shocking! scandalous! illuminating!] invested in and interested in the subject matter. When it "applies" to their "daily life."

Fucking revelatory.

Does that explain why 30 ninth graders refuse to sit in their seats?

Does that explain why the public education system here is so fucked that it's worse off than the prostitutes up on Biscayne underneath the Syphilis billboard ["It's back, it's spreading.]?

No, it does not. More nutella, more cabernet, more sleep.