I looked for myself in the rear view mirror

Didn't do much today.  I slept a lot.  But I don't even have Covid as an excuse.  I know, because I got a second test today just to be sure Thursday's wasn't a false negative, and I am currently corona-free.  KJr is also Covid and flu negative, but Cake does have the rona.

This weekend was blissfully free of kids' activities.  Crab is still in Africa with her stepmother and Kraut, and Cake's quarantine means we didn't spent all weekend getting up at an ungodly hour and driving out to Cowtown, USA to watch untold hours upon hours of junior high girls' volleyball.  I got to luxuriate in bed late and take naps.

And yet, somehow, I still feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to watch, read, and listen to everything I want to.  Maybe it's all the napping.

Burton Independent School District has reinstated its mask mandate for at least a couple of weeks due to the rise in Covid cases.  That's good, although as I think I said most of the students in my class continued to wear them anyway.

This is turning into a Covid blog, ugh.

For dinner I made ground turkey baked in half bell peppers topped with Monterey jack.  Nature's taco! 

Tomorrow at work... more assessment based on an app that the district probably paid a lot of money for so we have to use even though it's not any better than me just asking the kids the questions!

Caveat Lector

I've been listening to the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo on audiobook.  It's 52 hours long.  I am 25 hours into it.  I have 27 hours left.  It's a bit verbose, innit.

Audible has an interesting pricing structure.  Books are one credit, whether they're a short story, or an enormous tome like Monte Cristo, or even the (yet even longer) collected Sherlock Holmes read by the incomparable Stephen Fry.  I've been an on- and off- member for years, maybe a decade.  These days, though, I mostly just piggyback off of 74's account.  Don't tell Jeff Bezos, he'll be mad.

I had a dream that all my friends, even Flax and his wife and other non-townies, went to a bar without me, even though the pandemic was still going on.  I was shocked to find them all there, but when I expressed amazement that they had (1) convened at a bar during the Covid era, (2) not told me about it, and in fact (3) had assured me they weren't going out any time soon, they just kind of shrugged it off.  I remember that in the dream, 74, at least, was a little abashed to be caught out.  I wonder what all that means.  I certainly am not anxious that they're all out having fun without me.  I like staying in.

I declare that I am England

I used to like my work.  I used to be proud of where I worked, a form of elitism and hubris I suppose.  Since my ignominious departure I've been served quite an array of professional rebuffs.  I still love teaching the kids, but Hanover has so much bureaucratic nonsense, and so little interest in acting efficiently to serve kids, that it's really draining.  Don't get me wrong; the people, especially the P and VP, at Hanover, are terrific.  It's working in the cogs of the machine itself that's so disappointing.

JHM's behavior specialist emailed me yet again to ask that I detail his behavior in the proper documents.  I know I should have done this long ago.  I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it.  I'm not sure why, but sometimes I get so... done that I can't get started on things that need to be done, especially tasks like this that are so faceless and tangled in red tape.  I feel like I don't have enough time at work to think, let alone to document who did what when and what worked and what didn't and how many minutes were spent doing it.  

It's been a rough year.

I went home and slept like the dead.

And will our voices be heard

I got tested and I don't have Covid.  Most likely.  Yet.  

At work the kids were cutting out, among other things, a picture of cheese to glue on their paper.  Super-achiever JXC told me in all innocence, "I'm going to cut the cheese, but I know it doesn't go on yet.  It just makes it easier to get to the other pictures."  I thought I detected HND, a mischievous towheaded lad, smirk at the cheese phrase.  Indeed, later he announced loudly, holding up the picture, "Who wants me to cut the cheese?"  After a positive response, he tore the picture with his hands.  JXC said, "That's not cutting, that's ripping."  At which point SEM, an earnest Indian boy, cried, "Yeah, you ripped one!  I didn't rip one, you ripped one!"

I didn't even know those expressions were still in use.

Just give me one extra season

Well, Cake has the Covid so I am isolating in the house and will sleep in my office.  I feel fine though and have three shots in me, so I'm not as worried as I have been in the past.  Tomorrow I'll get myself one of them rapid tests them scienticians rave about.

Work was good.  We had a K meeting during my one free period that was very odd.  Rand, a staff member who has some title like "Inspector of Curriculum," and whose job seems to be to make sure that everyone else is doing their job and is therefore pretty useless, started right off with laying down the law.  Our mentor teacher-slash-assistant-slash-co-teacher-slash-coach (she has an ill-defined role and an ill-defined authority) Ms. Callpork, has been doing various things to make the days of me and Ms. Young easier.  She's been doing some teaching in Ms. Young's class as well, which Rand did not react well to when she heard.  And so apparently now all support of any kind from her is going out the window, and Ms. Callpork is supposed to now sit and watch and report (to Rand, natch).  It got kind of strained and awkward, and at one point Ms. Young talked about how Ms. Callpork had been pulling our low reading group, and Rand just lit into her with this, "Don't use that as an excuse!  That's a gift of time."  It was very sudden and out of left field.  Also, I had the odd sense that none of this was addressed to me, like I was an observer in the room.

In the hallway, I expressed how odd it all was, and that not only was it depriving us K teachers of a much-needed and -appreciated resource, it devolved Callpork's role into some kind of... I don't know, observer if you want to be kind and snitch if you're more cynical.  She replied that actually this was all brought about because when P and VP happen to walk by and glance at our rooms, I always seem to be teaching but they somehow never see Young teaching anything.  I guess that explains the feeling I had of not really being part of the meeting.

After school we had a meeting on making our laptops work like the phones at work.  Truly, we live in the future.

Suddenly the night has grown colder

First day back with the kids.  It actually went fairly well.  I'm guessing that's because the day back from a vacation is usually a low-stress day and the students who are usually defiant and balk at doing anything resembling work feel more free.  Or maybe they all matured a lot over the two-week break!  Yes, that's likely.  VP and I joked that it was because the three most defiant kids (JHM, AAA, and FRH) had lost track of their disruption schedule.  "Let's see, was it me who last spent the day screaming?  Was today your day to jump on the tables, or to go limp and be dragged down the hallway on the way to music?  Oh, forget it.  We'll just start again tomorrow."  

It came up that my (nominal) co-teacher Ms. Young hasn't seen Ghostbusters.  She asked me, "Is that the one with Casper?"  Lord, I'm ancient.  I can feel the sawdust in my bones crunching as I shuffle about.

Back at the homestead, LD spent the day making a spreadsheet to try to keep track of our expenditures from last year.  It's appalling.  We spent way more than we thought on things like eating out and other fripperies.  And man, kids' sports are enormously expensive, especially when you take into account the plane tickets required to go to away games and tournaments.  I think travel shouldn't be required for kids' activities until they're in high school, but apparently I'm in the minority.

We're not currently hurting for money, but her lucrative job ends in ten days (the company got bought a while back, and closing time has arrived) and there's a general feeling of uncertainty.  It was a really great job with a CEO who was one of the good ones; it's always gloomy when things change, more so when the situation is a comfortable one and the status quo seems just fine.

Insert title based on obscure lyrics somewhat obliquely relating to the topic at hand here

Well, work wasn't that bad.  As LD had so wisely predicted, it being a teacher's work day made it a very easy transition back.  None of those trouble-making kids.  We had a training on planning for virtual learning in the event of another Covid-based event, such as too many faculty out to keep the school open.  The packet of information was called "Virtual Prep."  VP joked that it sounded like the name of a private school, and we riffed on how the dress code would be button-downs and ties, but only from the waist up.  From the belt down, sweat pants and bare feet.

There was also a training on how to (ethically!) administer the state test.  As a K teacher, I wouldn't normally do this, but sometimes we're required to stand in for teachers of higher grades who are out that week.  Substitutes aren't authorized to give the state test.  We had to sign forms swearing and affirming and fixing our hand to this document on this the ___ day of _____ and so forth, vowing that we wouldn't cheat.  It makes one feel like a professional.

We had an hour and a half for lunch, but I stayed in the building to work on my room and eat the lunch I brought.  I'm trying to eat less, and less bad stuff.  It used to be remarked back in the Prestigius days that had the healthiest lunches in the school, but as the man said, things have changed.  Also, I forgot my badge, so it would have been a pain to get back in if I had left.

endless void

Did almost literally nothing today.  Laid in bed with the dogs, mostly.  Ordered some groceries via Instacart because of wanting to avoid Covid and it's quite cold and I don't particularly want to do anything today.  Unfortunately our shopper was kind of unimaginative and simply refunded all the items that weren't available instead of getting approximate replacements.  But... mostly my ennui comes from really dreading work starting up again.  That's entitled whining, I know, considering how good I have it compared to a lot of this country and the world.  But a great number of things have changed since I started this chronicle.  Hanover is a fine public school and I guess I'm lucky to work there considering how depressing my job search was but I am really, really not looking forward to seeing the uncontrollable defiant kids.  Not to mention the bullshit assessments, unmanageable class sizes, and general diverting of funds from anything that might actually benefit kids.  

Anyhoo, as I write this is getting late in the evening and I have less than 3000 steps on my Apple watch.  Since I have a streak of 150+ days of 10,000 steps I'd better get on it.

dogs and birds

Went to Preacher’s house, walked his dog who can't stay with us because she bites.  Took a nap.  Had a nice late lunch with Friar at the Londoner, talked of Marian and work and his dream of opening a bar and so on.  Walked our dogs plus the Preacher's other dog Snorty.  When K Jr came home with Snorty a bird flew through the door but we managed to guide back out with a broom.