Twenty-four hours of weather, coffee, and partial hibernation.

I have a lot I want to say about Christmas in Idaho, New Year's in Vegas, etc., but who has time for long, juicy descriptive posts?  No sir!  This blog is just to fill you in on a few happenings of the last 24 hours only.  They're not earth-shattering, but the are a bit interesting.

First, school started again yesterday.  I was mostly prepared, except for that moment just before second period when I realized I needed a hundred copies that I didn't have, and I needed them in ten minutes, ten minutes in which I was supposed to be teaching.  So I improvised.  "Since I gave you a test the first day back," I announced, "you can have five minutes to chat about your break and what you got for Christmas!"  Then I darted out of the room and down to the copy machine, proud of my teaching prowess.  I don't think I was fooling anyone, though.

Additionally, it was cold yesterday, so they turned the heat on at school.  Unfortunately, my classroom has no outside walls, and didn't need the heat.  I have a thermometer at my desk, and at one point during class yesterday it read 85 degrees.  The lowest it got was 78.  Ever sat in in hot car with a few bored teenagers for an hour or so?  Miserable, yes?  Try thirty-five of them.

Yesterday, as I often do, I ensconced myself in a booth of one of my regular coffee shops to grade papers.  That's right, I have regular coffee shops, plural.  About four or five of them.  Why?  Because I can't stand to grade papers the same place every day, which is why I'm grading them at coffee shops instead of at home, anyway.  I also rotate in some public libraries for variety.  I particularly like this coffee shop for two reasons: first, it ran a groupon in which they offered a voucher for 25 cups of coffee for $9.  That's about 50 hours worth of grading bribes to myself for only $9!  The second reason is that it has a secluded area that is specifically for studying, complete with booths, outlets, and signs requesting quiet.  Usually people at these booths are wearing large headphones and have papers and laptops spread out across the tables, and they look intent, serious, and like they wish they could get their coffee in an IV drip because their paper is due tomorrow.  But last night one table was taken up by an attractive man who proceeded to have a conversation on speaker phone in the study area, for more than an hour and a half.  The table across from him was occupied by a first date.  Why, I ask you, would you take your coffee date to sit in the study area?  The entire purpose of your going out for coffee was to be able to chat and get to know each other.  There are two other rooms in this coffee shop, ones without plain signs asking you to kindly shut up and let us get work done.  Why in heaven's name did you choose this one?  After an hour or so of listening to their date, every word clearly audible, I had to resist a strong urge to say something to them.  At first it was, "I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but this is the study area.  Could you please move to a different table?"  As their date went on however, the things I wanted to say changed to things like, "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation.  Might I suggest, sir, that after forty-five minutes of talking about yourself, you switch topics?" and "Your discussion about gun control is interesting, even if your arguments are cliche; however, your main argument, which you have repeated at least ten times, has a blatant, glaring hole in it.  Let me fix it for you."

Finally, after the first date left, the only sound was the comparative quiet of the ongoing speaker phone conversation.  Besides, that wasn't in English, so it wasn't nearly as distracting.  When I finally got home, I went to bed nearly immediately.  Before snuggling in, however, I added an extra blanket and pulled on knee high wool socks.  The thermometer in Zhivie's tub read 60 degrees.  My room is on of the coldest in the house, but, being the veteran of many winters of being too cheap to turn up the heat, I am well equipped with wool socks and warm sweats and extra blankets.  Before I went to bed I lit some candles and turned on the lava lamp, both of which usually take the chill off of any room long enough to fall asleep.

I woke up around three or four to a strange sound.  Zhivie was moving.  Her internal clock has switched to winter mode these days, and she hasn't voluntarily come out of her substrate burrow in almost a month.  Every few days I dig her out, wake her up, and set her in front of some food.  She looks at me resentfully, and then eats some food before returning to sleep.  So to wake up to her rooting around in the middle of the night was disconcerting.  As I lay there I realized that, lava lamp not withstanding, it was cold in my room.  Too cold.  My clever tortoise's internal clock had woken her up to tell her to burrow deeper into the ground, where the cold air wouldn't reach.  In the wild, a Russian tortoise burrow can reach six feet deep.  But Zhivie isn't in the wild.  This comes with perks, like daily fresh vegetables, no parasites, no predators, and no being run over by cars, trucks, tanks, etc.  However, one major bummer in this case, is that she only gets 8 inches of substrate.  No six foot burrow.  I dragged myself out of my warm bed and checked the temperature as she scrabbled against the rubber floor of her tub.  50 degrees, rather cold for a cold blooded animal.  So I turned on a light and dug out the small space heater my sister had given me for my birthday.  When my alarm when off this morning, my room was back up to 60 degrees, and Zhivie had stopped trying to dig to China.

Apparently the heat had gone out in our house last night.  I had just assumed it was really cold outside, and that my room with its two outside walls was just unlucky.  As I hit snooze repeatedly, I was woken up by Randy, my wonderful, considerate landlord/housemate who's usually never awake before ten.  It was six a.m., and he was opening my door to stick in a much better space heater and apologize for the cold.

But don't worry, I won't freeze.  It's a balmy 80 degrees in my classroom.  Again.

Dear Dysfunctional Roommate

First, I hope you don't read my blog.  Second, let me be frank.  We haven't known each other long, since you only moved in a month ago and have generally been gone as your life seems to fall apart in a new away every day.  I sympathize, empathize as much as I am able, even though at least half of this seems to be self-created.  However, your indecision, impulsive decisions, deciding that you're moving out, that you're not moving out, that you're moving out this week, or that you're moving out next month is affecting more than just yourself.  And I don't just mean Randy, our other roommate/landlord, who is listing and unlisting your possibly empty bedroom.

I'm talking about your cat.  Your dear, sweet, annoying cat you have for some reason named Muumu.  Last week, when you didn't come home for three days, I texted you to ask if you were ok.  You asked me to feed your cat.  That's the only time you've mentioned it, despite being gone five out of the last seven days, again.  So I continue to feed your cat.  I even bought more cat food when you ran out.  I pet your cat, and I chase it off the furniture and counters for you.

Let me make myself clear: I do this not because I am thrilled to have a cat in my house.  I do this because there is a cat in my house, its owner is neglecting it, and I'm not coldhearted enough to let an animal suffer from neglect in my own home.  I am growing increasingly worried.  I'm worried that the longer this goes on, the less comfortable I get with the idea of Muumu being ok with you when you do finally move out.  Not only that, but you have mentioned giving her away once or twice.  Basically, I am increasingly convinced that you are unable to adequately care for your cat.  Your dear, sweet, annoying cat that is the most talkative damn cat I've ever met.

I'm worried that since I am already taking care of your cat, loving your cat for you, and apparently more concerned for your cat than you are, I would be the natural choice to take care of your cat.  But I do not want your cat.  There are plenty of reasons that I got a tortoise instead of a cat.  The biggest is that I'm gone a lot, and I don't think my lifestyle is stable enough for one.  But apparently, neither are you.

So please, I implore you, come home, stabilize yourself, and take care of Muumu.  Because if you're gone another week, I'm going to have to learn how to clean out a litter box.

Miss E.

Gripe

This morning I got the go ahead from my administration to start building a debate program.  So the first thing I did was look up the cost of membership for our school in the National Forensic League.  There's a junior league for middle school and the high school league for grades 9-12.  However, I teach at a junior high, with grades 7-9.  Should I sign up for a junior league membership or a high school league one?

So I called the NFL headquarters in Wisconsin to ask.  Do you know what they told me I needed to do?  Buy both.  The junior league membership is $35 a year, and the senior membership is $99 a year.  To buy both means I would need to convince my administration to fork over $134 a year, just to make the school an NFL member.  That would not include the fact that they're willing to let me create more classes (meaning I'll be able to teach fewer English classes), talk about tournament fees, etc.  

Grrrr.  $134 just to have my three grades of students get memberships. One $99 membership could get four grades at a high school.  

Sigh.

Trying My Patience

Today is my students' monthly book reviews, where they take a test on a book they've read over the course of the month.  One girl, who hasn't brought a book to class all month today brought The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and told me that she "didn't exactly finish" her book.  She's on page seven.  But she's writing a book and has been working on that.  So I tell her to do her book review on the book she's been writing and I can give her partial credit for that.  She thinks about that.  She "didn't exactly finish" writing the book.  I explained she could write it on a fairy tale, and I could give her credit for her analysis, if not for her reading.  She thinks about that.  Wait!  She's been reading a book in her reading class!  She "didn't exactly finish" the book, though.  But she's 95% through it.  So I tell her to write her book review on that book.  Then she asks me for a pencil.

So I bring her a pencil, full of lead, from my desk.  She pulls it apart and says, "There's no lead in it."  I pick it up and shake it to show how much lead there was.  But now she can't get the pencil back together.  She's broken it.

Sigh.  Sometimes I think the most valuable asset I have as a teacher is a poker face.

Compensation

Whenever I feel like I'm not really contributing to the world, I remind myself that I have, at the very least I have introduced roughly 1000 students so far to freerice.com, and that they have probably played enough to save several people from starvation for several days.  If I do nothing else worthwhile with my life, well, that's not too bad.

My Mother's Daughter

My mother is a fantastic teacher.  She is the kind of teacher I mentally refer to as "a program builder."  This means she does a whole lot more than "teach a class."  She takes those classes and turns them into burgeoning programs at the school.  Soon there are extra curricular opportunities and competitions and festivals and the general quality of the program is shooting upward.

I have no idea if I'll ever be able to build a program like that, but I'm noticing that my instincts keep steering me in that direction.  Last school year I started a small, rather rinky-dink debate program at my school.  By the end of the year, I was campaigning to get an intermediate-level debate course added, and nearly succeeded (high hopes for next year).  Today I spent any extra time I had browsing the National Forensic League website looking for ways to expand this one semester, one class elective into some sort of soul-expanding program.  I know it will mean extra work for myself, extra hassle, and more working with many of the school's most independent minded and rowdy students.  But I can't help it.  I see a way that it can be expanded, and I'm emailing my administrator asking for permission to get right at it.

Sigh.  I might be my mother's daughter.  I'd burst with pride if I wasn't so busy signing myself up for extra things.

Overheard in My Classroom

"I started watching the Twilight Zone...Best TV show EVER!  And it was made in the 1960s!"

She went on to explain how it was black and white, and how she was watching it with her dad, since it was the show he grew up on.

Later, after class started and I was signing reading logs, one student raised his hand and called me over:

"Guess what?  Israel is going to invade Libya!"

"Oh no dear, you mean Gaza, and maybe they are."

"AND they're sending in missiles!"

Y'know, Libya, Gaza, same difference to a 12-year-old.  The important parts are the words "invasion" and "missiles."