No Verb

Yep, the self-proclaimed Wisest Human: timecube

I always get the stupidest injuries. I have skinned my stomach while riding a bike. I have gotten stuck in a bike while trying to fly a kite off of the back. I have cut my finger on a toilet. And tonight, WHILE WRAPPING PRESENTS, I ripped off half of my lip with a piece of tape. Yes, there was blood. I’ve never broken a bone, had surgery, or gotten stitches. I’m careful; I avoid all of the dangerous things that many people kill themselves doing, but I can’t avoid the unforseeable injuries that sneak up on me while I’m performing everyday tasks. If I die in some sort of unnatural way, I’m confident it won’t be in a car accident or a house fire. No, it will be making the bed or washing the dishes. At least I can be comforted in the fact that I have a sister who has to get stitches from peeling apples and gets stuck dangling upside down off the side of the boat because her bathing suit is caught.

K: Yells something inappropriate.

Me: “K, you’re skating on thin ice my friend.”

G: “I’ve skated on thin ice before! It’s dangerous!”

C: laughs

Me: “That laugh sounded like the laugh of a weak little boy on death row”

C: “Death row?”

Me: “I mean, his death bed”

They’re pretty much the same thing anyway. I’m sure there are lots of weak little boys on death row.

Despite the huge pile of papers to grade in front of me, I can’t seem to do much this morning beside sip coffee, eat Hershey’s Kisses, and listen to Burl Ives Christmas music on my iPod. I don’t even have one bit of remorse about it, either.

The wreath stirrup pants are back. This time, they are accompanied by a knit wreath vest and black leather ankle boots with stiletto heels.

No, I can’t monitor whether or not your child gets his homework done. Homework happens at home, where you are. School work happens at school, where I am. If even you admit that your kid plays Xbox for 4-5 hours a night, then he doesn’t have a learning disability, you both have common sense disabilities.

Here is what I wore to school today: a bright aqua-colored t-shirt, a denim jacket, a puffy bright red skirt, brown tights, and brown moccasins (ones that are supposed to be shoes) with flowers and sparkles all over them. More than one student reluctantly pointed out the following: “Uh, well, you’re kind of bright today.”

There were more stirrup pants today! This time a very Christmassy Tartan Plaid. So festive.

Oh my gosh. My department head is wearing stirrup pants with Christmas wreaths on them. Good morning.

Wednesday continued to be somewhat crappy at school (actually, it kind of all seems like a blur right now). I was in the middle of unloading it all on C tonight when he read me this email that A. (middle school teacher in the ghetto) sent to me through C.:

“I read j’s recent entry about teaching crap.
Tell her I totally feel for her and relate completely.
I too am having a rough week and it’s my 3rd year. The
kids get crazier closer to each break. And while those
moments do absolutely suck, you experience less and
less the more you teach. Anyone who has not lost it
with a group of teenagers is simply not human. It took
me about a month into my career at Horace Mann before
I yelled the “I am so f—in’ pissed at you!” at my
students. I went straight to my principal and
apologized. And they laughed at me. Moral of the
story: teaching is good work; not easy work, but good
in the sense of its worth to the world. Tell to hang
in there and know that she’s in my prayers.”

He read it to me while I was standing on a chair in the kitchen and getting food out of the top part of the pantry. First, I laughed out loud. Then, I stuck my head into the pantry and cried rather loudly. Then I got down and made a martini and finished making dinner. Tomorrow is Thursday.

As of only Tuesday evening, I already feel like this week is kind of a low in my (short) teaching career. Here are some things that have occurred this week:
1. When I opened my email on Monday morning at 7:30 am, I found an email from a parent accusing me of being racist. That’s right, racist. I felt totally awesome after reading it.
2. I yelled at my sixth period today. I actually pretty much flipped out and yelled. And I kind of felt like crying while it was happening.
3. A snotty little brat got mad at me because I can’t grade 120 papers in 3 days. I am such a slacker.

These things are relatively minor, but they bothered me more than they should have. Everyone in my department was really supportive about #1. They all agreed that the parent was completely insane and said that stuff like that happens all the time. My sixth period deserved to be yelled at. Through my yelling, I still remained relatively calm. It was a controlled yelling, and then I talked to them at the end of the class calmly and honestly about my expectations. They responded well. As far as #3 goes: well, she can just stuff it. Her anger was just unreasonable. So I really should get over it. I don’t feel angry or anything now, I just feel like I don’t want the crap that comes with the job. But every job comes with crap, and mine comes with two weeks of vacation in just 2.5 weeks. That’s nothing to complain about.

After church, we went out for Dim Sum with a bunch of people for church. The food was great-even the tripe, although it did have the texture of bald tires. We then went to Lee Lee’s, where we saw (and marveled at) the following:
1. Essence of chicken
2. Vegetarian buns
3. Vegetarian buns-pork flavored
4. Pork uterus
5. Chicken feet
6. Something that looked like an ox hoof, but was labeled “duck feets”
7. A red brick-looking thing that was labeled “beef bloods”
8. A strawberry gummy candy that claimed to be made with advanced technology
9. “Fruit” circles that looked like pepperoni. The ingredient list featured “flavor of haw”

We have these crazy neighbors who live downstairs. They are really nice and friendly, especially the woman, but most things they say are incomprehensible. We are fairly confident they are selling drugs out of their condo, and we don’t think they are all there psychologically. Today while we were walking back through the complex after getting coffee downtown, we ran across the woman quite a far away from her condo. We said hello, good morning, and she informed us of the following: “I’m just checking out the orange trees! There are three navels, and this one is named Marie!” How do we respond to that? “Glad to meet you, Marie”? As we turned around to leave, she moved a little and an orange fell out of her shirt onto the ground. She laughed, picked it up, and stuffed it back up there.

Me: Okay, your outline looks great,except it needs to start with a Roman Numeral, THEN move to capital letters.

Sophomore: Well, I tried to do that, but I can’t.

Me: Why not?

Sophomore: I looked last night, but my keyboard doesn’t have Roman Numerals on it!