psycho-ville.

I think I had this teacher in high school.

Well, I'm just a little writing-holic these days, aren't I? It's because it's an outlet for me. A way to let off steam. A way to get out my ick as well as my euphoria. I do hope I'm not some sort of manic depressive. (I don't think I am; I've somehow managed to reign in all recent my shopping/spending issues. And I'm not doing crack or meth or anything.) (Yet.)

At any rate.

So Week 2 of Back to Work is done. Still love my class. Still exhausted. Today, my tired shone through, though, for the first time and we all had to have a little Come to Jesus Moment in which I said things like, "I don't WANT to hurt your feelings...I love you guys, a lot. I don't WANT to have to be a mean teacher. But I mean, seriously, y'all. Behave in the halls. And the bathrooms. Or I'm going to HAVE to be really, really mean."

 I've been pretty good about hiding it from them. But there's this one kid, who I actually have a soft spot for because (a) he's got sort of a sad home life story and (b) he told me on Day 1 that he loves Sci-Fi, and I have a soft spot for boys who love Sci-Fi. (Don't ask me why, because I love and write things along the lines of Erica Jong and Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott and Alice Munro and Anais Nin and Roxanne Gay - all women who aren't even close to anything like Sci-Fi...yet boys who love Sci-Fi draw me to them like Sleeping Beauty to Maleficent's poisonous spindle, and I can't quite figure out why yet. I think it has something to do with smart and funny brains, but I'm still researching.) 

Where was I? Oh, yes. So I made Sci-Fi Boy cry. Well, Sci-Fi Boy needs to man up. No joke. That's number one. And number two: really? Really?? Threatening to punch someone in the gonads because they aren't pooping fast enough for you in the ONE stall you INSIST on pooping in yourself? I mean, seriously. 

I made a boy cry today, is my point. And yesterday, I made Hispanic Benjamin Button near tear up. 

But then there's Monster Face Kid. Monster Face Kid (MFK) likes to stare at me and make weird faces at me. Today, on the playground, I had to be firm with MFK that I do NOT want to marry Mr. R, the Music teacher. First off, Mr. R is already married and I really love his wife a lot. Second, Mr. R is about half a foot shorter than me and no. Third, I only said that Mr. R's guitar playing in the hallways in the mornings makes my heart happy. That does NOT mean I want to marry him. 

And then MFK and I had a playground argument about how women don't actually need a husband to be rich. Sorry, future Mr. Chauvinist. I let MFK know I make my OWN money, I don't need to ask a man for it. Turns out, MFK's mom doesn't work and asks her man for money all the time and so that's why he's suffering from this delusion. And I let MFK know that may be how it works in his house, but in MY house, I make my OWN money and don't want or need a husband. Ev. ER.

Jesus, they start young, don't they?

And also, clearly, at Open House next week, I'll have to put in some kind of statement along the lines of: "If you don't believe everything they tell you about me, I promise I won't believe everything they tell me about YOU." Because I think parents and teachers should present a united front against these 7-8 year old psychos, for realz.

Tomorrow morning, I get my grey hair covered up (hallelujah). Can I confide in you that the grey hairs really freak me out? Nobody but me can see them, but the point is: I CAN SEE THEM. They're THERE. RIGHT THERE. And in my eyebrows; I'm starting to constantly have to pluck out random, grey hairs. I can't even bear to see what's going on elsewhere on my person. It's possibly why I prefer to just remain as hairless as humanly possible. May look into laser hair removal.

Other than that, I brought home lesson plans to do. But forgot all the quizzes and other work I still need to grade. So it's starting again; my goal this year was to stay on top of that. If nothing else, I vowed to myself, I will NOT bring home mountains of child work to wade through and then end up having to take mental health days off to deal with. I have a whole list of vows I made to myself this year, as a matter of fact. Paperwork Vow is already starting to slide. I forgot to answer an important email and had to be reminded. So Email Vow is off kilter already. And, apparently, they're going to start coming around next week to evaluate how we're performing as teachers. In spite of the fact we're still trying to figure out who's in our class and what it is we're actually doing, and we're still establishing classroom routines and expectations. In between the 10 million meetings they're making us attend, of course.

Educational Psycho Central. Mark my words, I'm going to write a whistle blowing, tell-all. Once I pay off my credit card.