Saturday Morning Musings

(Warning: Mom and Dad, if you're reading this, I use some expletives.)

For the first Saturday in several weekends, I don't have to be anywhere until . . .later. Like post-lunch and afternoon snack later. And I often don't appreciate that feeling. I get kind of depressed and lonely feeling if I have nowhere to be right away. But this weekend, I'm going to live it up because I haven't had this freedom of time and this amount of sleep in a while. It feels damn good.

Being able to hit my snooze button for an hour, more or less, and listen to snippets of NPR reports in between was so freeing. I've spent all this week hitting my snooze, and then being almost late to school. In fact, I'm pretty disappointed in myself b/c twice this week I had my homeroom kids waiting outside my door for me to get there and unlock it. At least the first time it was b/c I hadn't set my alarm for the right time, ended up getting ready in 20 minutes, and rushed to school to let them in. The second time was yesterday, and I guess I just watched my time that poorly when I was getting ready. (It was picture day, and I guess I felt it necessary to spend an inordinate amount of time preparing myself for those 2 seconds in front of the camera--I really was less vain when I was younger . . .or maybe not less vain; just less aware of products that could make me like how I look.) Anyway, I'm displeased with myself. Tardiness is only acceptable if it doesn't adversely affect anyone but me.

This has been kind of an interesting little week at school. (I notice that all my posts are about school, it seems, but really it's about 80% of my life now). On Monday, I used the girls' restroom, and as I finished up my business and pushed the door aside, it decided it had had enough of shielding girls' private business, and it detached from its hinges to collapse on my arm. Lovely feeling, that. The subsequent bruise has coordinated nicely with all outfits this week.

Let's see: Tuesday morning was the day I slept till 7:20, when, praise Jesus, Janet realized I wasn't awake and called down to me. Wednesday was the day I felt inordinately depressed with my students b/c they feel almost indifferent to the suffering caused by slavery. It's truly not that they're uncompassionate; it's just they live in a bubble, and they hear all these historical facts over and over, but they're so far removed from them that once the shock value of the stats ends, they just feel the tedium of the repetition of the facts. But still, it just stabs something in me to know how shielded they are from the pain of real people. And, in a total reversal of the tone of the day, I was discussing poetry terms with my 7th period, and in the middle of writing the word "assonance" on the board, I got distracted and just had "ass." The sudden bursts of laughter alerted me to my mistake. Then I just had to shake my head at myself and apologize b/c the day prior to that, with this same class, my little teacher filter wasn't working too well, and I brought up a topic or two I really didn't need to.

Thursday saw my Power of the Pen group meeting; those budding writers are a lot of fun. My former student Katie is helping me with the 7th grade team, and it's just so awesome to have her there! Her help makes everything so much easier.

Friday, the second late day of the week for me, was one of those days of great ups and downs. Crazy, stormy morning that ended on an afternoon of blue skies and sunshine. I felt off for the first hour or so, but things seem to settle down after that. My 3rd period expressed that they are liking writing poems so much better than essays, and they like picking their own topics. And then I have to praise them b/c some of what they are writing, just in rough drafts, is really, really good. I feel so excited when I see it--just the potential of it gives me chills at times. And I had to write two demerits, one to a very nice boy who's a little rambunctious at times and one to sweetheart of a girl, the kind who almost never gets in trouble and cries when she does b/c she's so unused to "being bad." But they both threw pens to someone across the room from themselves, and that just won't work. I felt so badly about seeing how upset the girl was that I wrote her a little note just so she knows I wasn't mad at her and that I don't now label her as a "bad girl." Maybe I worry about that stuff too much; I think I was just such a sensitive kid who hated getting in trouble for any reason that I dread having to punish anyone else. But it must be done.

Oh, and the random other bizarre thing of yesterday: I had a kid in my 4th period ask if he could call me by my first name. Say what?? My response: do you call any of your other teachers by their first names? Of course he says "No" but then proceeds to run a list of variations of my name to see if any will work: "Kerry with a y; Miss Kerry; Berry." He ends with Berry and seems pretty set on that one. I have to firmly tell him that if he wants to call me that, then I'll be writing him a lot of demerits. Kids wanting to call me by my first name reminds me all too much of my first year here when I had this one obnoxious boy refer to me as "Melinda" for half the year. Of course, he got a lot of demerits for that, but he still proceeded to tell kids the next three years to call me that so that even this year, after I haven't seen this boy since May of 07, I still get at least one boy a year asking me if they can call me "Melinda." Hell, no, boy! Now shut the fuck up! But I can't say that for real.

Jeesh, children. Give me a break.

In other news, KC moves back to TX today. And I actually need to go do stuff now.