ta-da

It turns out that I was dreading returning to school for no reason. I haven't been bitten or even yelled at yet. Granted, I've worked two 11.5 hour days, 23 hours, which would punt most people into Wednesday afternoon. But, not me. I'm staring Tuesday night in the eyeballs. Interims go out on Thursday; so, I have been wading through all the tall paper-clipped stacks of paper on, under and around my desk. The collected, alphabetized, graded, entered, and maybe piles. And, then there are a lot of random, I have no idea what this is piles. My room is an arson's dream and a neat-freak's nightmare.

My brilliant lesson plan went splendidly in my first class and TANKED in my second class. It was dire, but I was at the point of no return: all the supplies were out. My second class were cutting the glue sticks with the scissors. Um, pay attention and do what you're supposed to do. "Ms. M, this is so hard!" "I can't do this!" In parenthesis: I think I'll launch paper at my classmates instead... or chase Joseph with scissors... or start singing. Seriously, some of my kids avoid thinking at all costs. Point of pride: I only yelled once during the entire fiasco, but served an ample dish of sarcasm. Sarcasm isn't helpful when dealing with seventh graders.

And, I'm having to meet with a lot of parents to sign students' personalized plans because they made poor scores on the state standardized test. Needless to say, that means a lot of paperwork and meetings for the lowly teacher. Their performance in last year's class creates a lot of hassle for me.

This is all to say, when I picked up my book to read, I was too wasted to concentrate. So, I thought I'd blog instead! And, three cheers for yummy yet inexpensive shiraz!!!

I woke up at 3:30am this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep. When I told my mom, she offered to make me a doctor's appointment. This year, I've been having little trouble falling asleep but waking up in the middle of the night wide-awake. I wonder what the difference is: stress, age, etc?