*Oh man–are we really only one week into school? That seems utterly and absolutely impossible, considering that I’ve already not-slept enough in the past week to make me tired for a month.
*Here’s the good news, though: after last week’s first-day debacle, I purposely tried to scare the pants off of each and every student so that they’d be terrified to ever act up again. And it’s mostly worked so far—the one kid who’d caused me such grief over the whole respect issue has been acting as closely to an angel as he’ll probably ever get, and I’ve enjoyed relative peace and order in my classroom ever since.
*I guess the old saying holds true—it’s better to be feared than loved, eh?
*I will say this though—it seems that I’ve already made enemies with the popular girls. Last year, I couldn’t tell the popular from the unpopular until the very end of the school year, but this year I’ve been able to pick out several of them right off the bat. This is a scary thought for me because it probably means that my brain has just reset itself into “middle school survival mode” instead of thinking through things like a responsible adult. Anyway, these three “popular” girls were giving me a particular amount of grief last week, and they’ve basically been giving me sass and crusties ever since.
*Of course, the great thing about the whole thing now is that I can choose where I want them to sit (aka as far from each other as possible), and I can drop their life skills (citizenship) grades at will. Who says revenge isn’t sweet? 😉
*It’s sad how some things never change, ya know? Unpopular in my own junior high days, unpopular now.
*Have I mentioned yet that this year they’re having me teach a Spanish class? I’m not even certified to teach Spanish, but because I speak it fluently (more or less), they just assume that I must be able to teach it, too. The scariest part of the whole thing so far is how much my lesson plans have resembled those of my own junior high Spanish teacher, a man we all thought was a little creepy and who sprayed the front row profusely with his spit on a regular basis. I mean, I even had my students sing and start memorizing this song all about the Spanish-speaking countries and capitals today (which I had been forced to learn and memorize during my own Intro to Spanish days). Disturbing, really.
*In non-school-related items, we have tomatoes coming out of our ears (and out of every other body part you can imagine…er, maybe don’t imagine…). Basically, we have so many tomatoes that we’re furiously trying to get rid of them as soon as possible since we just don’t have the stamina to be canning every other night. Anyone live close by who wants about 30 pounds of ‘maters?
*Yesterday (for the holiday), Matt and I went on a little double date with my mom and stepdad to go out to breakfast (for an early birthday gift for both of us) and then out to see Austenland. Remember a couple weeks ago, how I was just saying that they don’t make chick flicks like they used to? Well, Austenland certainly came as a lovely surprise—not only was it split-a-gut funny, but it wasn’t nearly as predictable as I thought it would be. Such a cute movie, I thought. Have you seen it yet?
*(Oh, and I totally want to read that book now. If you’ve read/seen them both, how does the book compare?)
*Speaking of books, today during my 3rd hour, when I announced that the books they needed to be reading for their first book project needed to be at least 200 pages, a collective gasp rose up from the crowd. You would think I’d just said that I’d plotted to kidnap the Queen or something by the way they muttered and shot dark looks at me. Am I unreasonable to expect 12- and 13-year-olds to read a 200-page book every month and a half?
*I thought about calling them all wimp faces for that, but I thought that would be a little undignified. Sometimes I have to consciously turn off the middle school mentality after being amongst them for so many hours a day.
*Looking around our apartment now, I am horrified—I forgot how absolutely exhausted I am during the school year (my body really doesn’t function too well unless I’m getting about 9 hours of sleep a night, which I’m not currently), and I wonder if I’ll be able to complete my 50 Weeks to Organized project in time. Luckily I got the biggest beast of a project out of the way, but I’m getting worried that my house will never be clean again. How do you other full-time workers do it?!
*In lieu of cooking dinner, I’m seriously considering just eating cheese and crackers and then making the banana cream pie I’ve been craving all week.
*Yeah, I think it’s a plan—watch the latest episode of ANTM and eat pie. That’ll show my messy house who’s boss.