breather

I need a break from the book I'm reading... the protagonists just died. I need to compose myself to muscle through the gut-wrenching ending. Literature can be so gothic and gloomy. It's also beautiful and bizarrely cathartic to experience Fos and Opal die. But, what's going to happen to Lightfoot? I can't decide if Fos committed suicide. Was he really that weak? Did his scientific world view fail him?

And, I need a breather from school. I was completely exasperated by the end of my classes today. The students wouldn't shut up. It's as if they're goldfish. They had two long weekends in a row, which somehow sabotaged all the progress in classroom management I'd made. This stuff does not come naturally to me. I need to come up with a rewards system for the kids... a feasible one. Maybe I should reinstate the apple. And putting in your name for good behavior. And having drawings at the end of the week. We could start fresh every week.

My deed of noble note was giving a pint of blood, which took a total of 4 minutes and 53 seconds. My nurse was as competitive as I. I asked her how long it took to draw a pint. She told me anywhere from 5 to twenty minutes. Then, she looked over at the guy near me and leaned in towards me and said, "He's a wimp. He should at least pretend while his daughter's around." She set our goal: beat the wimp. I've never really had a competitive element to donating blood. But, it did make it more exciting to race (and took my mind off the gory details). After we beat "the wimp", my nurse high-fived me and said, "Girl power!"