It has been a Day. You know, one of those. I would say that I knew it would be from the moment I first awoke, except that this is not true. I first awoke at 6:25, when my alarm goes off so I can exercise, and at that point, everything was still on track.
"Ah," I thought fuzzily. "Here it is 6:25 again so I can exercise. But you know what, I feel lazy today. I will exercise later, when I come home from school, and now I will reset my alarm and go back to sleep during the exercise time. Maybe then I will also have dreams to write down."
(I have been trying to begin writing down my dreams because I have been told in no uncertain terms that this is the way to figure out what to do with my life. Because it will help me figure out what my subconscious most fervently believes. So far, though, I've been markedly unsuccessful in writing anything down. Instead, I just have persistent dreams about needing to write down my dreams. My subconscious is just as much of a ditz as my conscious.)
So I jabbed at my alarm reset buttons and lay back down with a self-satisfied smile. I specifically remember the self-satisfied smile.
Because the next thing that happened was that I found myself looking at my mother, fully dressed for work, standing beside my bed. "Hello," she said. "Did you oversleep?"
Clock! What? 7:54….Must leave house at 8!
"Eaarrrrrgblh!" I responded, leaping out of bed.
Wash face! Brush teeth! Walk into wall! Shit! Contacts! Skirt, sweater…huge hole in sweater! Other skirt and sweater! Hair, ponytail! Hair, ponytail that does not look like Cyndi Lauper previous to alien abduction! Makeup to try to alleviate look of living-death! Go, go, go!
Amazingly, I made it out of the house, to get coffee, and to school on time, which proves that I really can get ready for work in six minutes, although I spent the entire day worrying that I stunk, being as yesterday I also lazily left my exercise, and my running, for after work, so I still carried unwashed sweat from both of those activities on my body. But I tried not to think about it.
After making it to work, I supervised breakfast, which went basically okay, except that Mrs. J. had to come and sit with the third grade boys because they were being too loud, which made me feel like I should have gotten them to be quiet before she had to sit with them. But also, the third grade boys are always loud, simply because they are third grade boys, so I do not feel too bad about that.
My next task was to make two copies of Al's IEP. An IEP is an Individualized Education Plan, and it's a legal document, pertaining to the specific needs of each special education or learning disabled child. It's important. And confidential.
And so the fact that I got about halfway through and then completely and totally destroyed one of the original pages in the copier is a problem.
I'd been doing pretty well up to that point, speeding along, had my little system worked out for unstapling, copying, and stapling, and then I hear that "ee-eee-ee-eee" tone the copier makes when it has a jammed page. And oh, was it jammed. I have never seen a more jammed page than this. I'd been using the top-loading document-feeder thing, and one of the pages had gotten completely mashed up in it, and it was not coming loose.
I spent probably fifteen minutes trying to wiggle this thing out of there, but it was obvious within the first three that it wasn't going to come out anywhere close to undamaged. In fact, there was serious doubt as to whether it was going to come out in anything less than twenty pieces.
"Ginny," Valerie the secretary said to me. "How did you do this? I didn’t even know the machine could get a paper jam here! It's not even designed with any access!"
"I don't know," I said miserably. "Maybe if we took a paperclip and sort of…pushed the paper?"
Eventually, I ended up having to actually get a screwdriver and take pieces off the machine to even get the paper out so the copier could be usable at all. And we had to call the maintenance people because the document feeder was completely not working. Which is probably not surprising, considering that I unscrewed it and poked at it with a paperclip.
"I don’t know what went wrong," I kept saying uselessly. "I don't usually have bad machine karma." Although, after poking this one with a paperclip, I think it's going to hate me for life.
I also, of course, had to send an official fax downtown asking for a copy of the mangled official document, which is bad because they are way hypersensitive about these things. And the entire debacle meant also that I was out of the classroom, where I ought to have been, for most of the morning.
Finally, though, I got back up there. "Now," I thought, "the day can get back on its feet. Now I will just be working with the kids. No more oversleeping, no more fooling with machines."
I walked into the classroom to find that one of the supervisors from downtown was sitting there observing. Today. When I had not been in the classroom. All morning.
Now, admittedly, she did not come to observe me. But still.
So after supervisor-from-downtown left, I hoped the day would finally calm down. Mrs. J. had to go take care of some forms, so she asked me to take the two kids we had in the classroom at that point (normally we have more, but one was absent and one was on a field trip) to the computer lab and do some writing there. I was fine with that.
We started, and we were doing well, and then two more of our kids showed up. I was a little taken aback, because I'd expected Mrs. J. to be back by then, but okay. I'd do computer lab with them too. Except that these are fifth graders, and they already know how to use computers, and so in no time they were done. And although Al was being good, Dillon was being bad. By which I mean, out of control.
Now, I like Dillon, and I understand hyperactivity, but man! It was like he came into that room and exploded! He even found a way to express his hyperactivity by computer: when I looked over at what he'd written in the gaps of two seconds between one hyperactive outburst and the next, it turned out to be "DILLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" In eighty-two point font. In red.
Which, you have to admit, is pretty much a perfect of expression of the hyperactive mind. Right there.
Eventually those kids left, and another one (bafflingly, since she's only supposed to come to us in the mornings, but whatever) showed up, and I invented some stuff for her to do, as Mrs. J. was still MIA. (This bothers me, as I run out of work for the kids. If I were a creative superstar teacher, I guess I would immediately know some cool learning stuff to do when this happens, but I am not a creative superstar teacher, it seems.) And that was okay. And then finally school was over.
And I had to race to the doctor's office to get the stitches in my lip taken out, because even though they're absorbable, Doctor G. had said she wanted to snip them before they absorbed.
But when I got there, Doctor G. looked at my lip and frowned. "This is healing…..funny' she said. She looked again and frowned more. "No," she said "I don't like this at all. I made a mistake. I mean, I didn't make a mistake, but I made a mistake. I want you to see a plastic surgeon."
"Grandaddy," she yelled to her ancient grandfather, who is as short as she is (she comes up to my shoulder, and I'm 5'2"), and who had just drifted in, ghostlike, "I took a cyst out of this young lady's lip! It was cool!" Her grandfather didn't say anything and drifted out again. I'm not sure why he was there. Maybe it was bring-your-ancient-grandfather-to-work day. Nonetheless, he added an air of ancientness to the proceedings.
"Doctor G., Doctor G.!" At this point the receptionist came running in, on the departing heels of Ancient Grandfather. (At least, I think she's the receptionist. I'm not sure what she is. I hated the old receptionist, who was the Slowest Lady on Earth, and didn't much like her replacement -- at least I thought she was her replacement -- who seemed to have whooping cough, but I liked this girl, who I'd never seen before.)
"Doctor G., we've finally got Mr. Hooper on the phone!" Dr. G. sprinted out of the room. I followed.
"Mr. Hooper," she cried, in her broad New Jersey accent. "Mr. Hooper, please stay on the line! We've been trying to reach you for three days!...Yes!...No, it's...Mr. Hooper, you have pneumonia!...PNEUMONIA!....YOU HAVE PNEUMONIA, MR. HOOPER!" I gathered Mr. Hooper is a somwhat eccentric patient.
After that she got me an appointment with the plastic surgeon, after bounding around endearingly a little more. Anceint Grandfather drifted back in too.
So I didn't get the stitches taken out after all, and now I’m worried my lip is going to be marred for life. Though I'm not too worried, because I still trust Doctor G. And it doesn't seem too likely I'll be permanently damaged. But still. It was just right as the ending for today.
And I still haven't been back upstairs to deal with the disarray I left my room in or the exercise I haven't done yet. I guess that's what I'll do now. Man, I hope it's done being a Day now. Though of course all that's going to happen if things get less eventful is that I'll spend more time worrying about what to do with my life. Just like always.
"Ah," I thought fuzzily. "Here it is 6:25 again so I can exercise. But you know what, I feel lazy today. I will exercise later, when I come home from school, and now I will reset my alarm and go back to sleep during the exercise time. Maybe then I will also have dreams to write down."
(I have been trying to begin writing down my dreams because I have been told in no uncertain terms that this is the way to figure out what to do with my life. Because it will help me figure out what my subconscious most fervently believes. So far, though, I've been markedly unsuccessful in writing anything down. Instead, I just have persistent dreams about needing to write down my dreams. My subconscious is just as much of a ditz as my conscious.)
So I jabbed at my alarm reset buttons and lay back down with a self-satisfied smile. I specifically remember the self-satisfied smile.
Because the next thing that happened was that I found myself looking at my mother, fully dressed for work, standing beside my bed. "Hello," she said. "Did you oversleep?"
Clock! What? 7:54….Must leave house at 8!
"Eaarrrrrgblh!" I responded, leaping out of bed.
Wash face! Brush teeth! Walk into wall! Shit! Contacts! Skirt, sweater…huge hole in sweater! Other skirt and sweater! Hair, ponytail! Hair, ponytail that does not look like Cyndi Lauper previous to alien abduction! Makeup to try to alleviate look of living-death! Go, go, go!
Amazingly, I made it out of the house, to get coffee, and to school on time, which proves that I really can get ready for work in six minutes, although I spent the entire day worrying that I stunk, being as yesterday I also lazily left my exercise, and my running, for after work, so I still carried unwashed sweat from both of those activities on my body. But I tried not to think about it.
After making it to work, I supervised breakfast, which went basically okay, except that Mrs. J. had to come and sit with the third grade boys because they were being too loud, which made me feel like I should have gotten them to be quiet before she had to sit with them. But also, the third grade boys are always loud, simply because they are third grade boys, so I do not feel too bad about that.
My next task was to make two copies of Al's IEP. An IEP is an Individualized Education Plan, and it's a legal document, pertaining to the specific needs of each special education or learning disabled child. It's important. And confidential.
And so the fact that I got about halfway through and then completely and totally destroyed one of the original pages in the copier is a problem.
I'd been doing pretty well up to that point, speeding along, had my little system worked out for unstapling, copying, and stapling, and then I hear that "ee-eee-ee-eee" tone the copier makes when it has a jammed page. And oh, was it jammed. I have never seen a more jammed page than this. I'd been using the top-loading document-feeder thing, and one of the pages had gotten completely mashed up in it, and it was not coming loose.
I spent probably fifteen minutes trying to wiggle this thing out of there, but it was obvious within the first three that it wasn't going to come out anywhere close to undamaged. In fact, there was serious doubt as to whether it was going to come out in anything less than twenty pieces.
"Ginny," Valerie the secretary said to me. "How did you do this? I didn’t even know the machine could get a paper jam here! It's not even designed with any access!"
"I don't know," I said miserably. "Maybe if we took a paperclip and sort of…pushed the paper?"
Eventually, I ended up having to actually get a screwdriver and take pieces off the machine to even get the paper out so the copier could be usable at all. And we had to call the maintenance people because the document feeder was completely not working. Which is probably not surprising, considering that I unscrewed it and poked at it with a paperclip.
"I don’t know what went wrong," I kept saying uselessly. "I don't usually have bad machine karma." Although, after poking this one with a paperclip, I think it's going to hate me for life.
I also, of course, had to send an official fax downtown asking for a copy of the mangled official document, which is bad because they are way hypersensitive about these things. And the entire debacle meant also that I was out of the classroom, where I ought to have been, for most of the morning.
Finally, though, I got back up there. "Now," I thought, "the day can get back on its feet. Now I will just be working with the kids. No more oversleeping, no more fooling with machines."
I walked into the classroom to find that one of the supervisors from downtown was sitting there observing. Today. When I had not been in the classroom. All morning.
Now, admittedly, she did not come to observe me. But still.
So after supervisor-from-downtown left, I hoped the day would finally calm down. Mrs. J. had to go take care of some forms, so she asked me to take the two kids we had in the classroom at that point (normally we have more, but one was absent and one was on a field trip) to the computer lab and do some writing there. I was fine with that.
We started, and we were doing well, and then two more of our kids showed up. I was a little taken aback, because I'd expected Mrs. J. to be back by then, but okay. I'd do computer lab with them too. Except that these are fifth graders, and they already know how to use computers, and so in no time they were done. And although Al was being good, Dillon was being bad. By which I mean, out of control.
Now, I like Dillon, and I understand hyperactivity, but man! It was like he came into that room and exploded! He even found a way to express his hyperactivity by computer: when I looked over at what he'd written in the gaps of two seconds between one hyperactive outburst and the next, it turned out to be "DILLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" In eighty-two point font. In red.
Which, you have to admit, is pretty much a perfect of expression of the hyperactive mind. Right there.
Eventually those kids left, and another one (bafflingly, since she's only supposed to come to us in the mornings, but whatever) showed up, and I invented some stuff for her to do, as Mrs. J. was still MIA. (This bothers me, as I run out of work for the kids. If I were a creative superstar teacher, I guess I would immediately know some cool learning stuff to do when this happens, but I am not a creative superstar teacher, it seems.) And that was okay. And then finally school was over.
And I had to race to the doctor's office to get the stitches in my lip taken out, because even though they're absorbable, Doctor G. had said she wanted to snip them before they absorbed.
But when I got there, Doctor G. looked at my lip and frowned. "This is healing…..funny' she said. She looked again and frowned more. "No," she said "I don't like this at all. I made a mistake. I mean, I didn't make a mistake, but I made a mistake. I want you to see a plastic surgeon."
"Grandaddy," she yelled to her ancient grandfather, who is as short as she is (she comes up to my shoulder, and I'm 5'2"), and who had just drifted in, ghostlike, "I took a cyst out of this young lady's lip! It was cool!" Her grandfather didn't say anything and drifted out again. I'm not sure why he was there. Maybe it was bring-your-ancient-grandfather-to-work day. Nonetheless, he added an air of ancientness to the proceedings.
"Doctor G., Doctor G.!" At this point the receptionist came running in, on the departing heels of Ancient Grandfather. (At least, I think she's the receptionist. I'm not sure what she is. I hated the old receptionist, who was the Slowest Lady on Earth, and didn't much like her replacement -- at least I thought she was her replacement -- who seemed to have whooping cough, but I liked this girl, who I'd never seen before.)
"Doctor G., we've finally got Mr. Hooper on the phone!" Dr. G. sprinted out of the room. I followed.
"Mr. Hooper," she cried, in her broad New Jersey accent. "Mr. Hooper, please stay on the line! We've been trying to reach you for three days!...Yes!...No, it's...Mr. Hooper, you have pneumonia!...PNEUMONIA!....YOU HAVE PNEUMONIA, MR. HOOPER!" I gathered Mr. Hooper is a somwhat eccentric patient.
After that she got me an appointment with the plastic surgeon, after bounding around endearingly a little more. Anceint Grandfather drifted back in too.
So I didn't get the stitches taken out after all, and now I’m worried my lip is going to be marred for life. Though I'm not too worried, because I still trust Doctor G. And it doesn't seem too likely I'll be permanently damaged. But still. It was just right as the ending for today.
And I still haven't been back upstairs to deal with the disarray I left my room in or the exercise I haven't done yet. I guess that's what I'll do now. Man, I hope it's done being a Day now. Though of course all that's going to happen if things get less eventful is that I'll spend more time worrying about what to do with my life. Just like always.
Labels: being dumb, kids, quotidian
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