A Day In The Life Of

When my alarm goes off at 5:30, most times I mumble incoherently into my pillow and thrash around in the dark, usually managing to smash the snooze button a couple of times, and promptly fall back to sleep. I don't know why I do this, since I never feel any better about being awake ten minutes later. It's still dark. It's still cold. And Chris still gets to sleep for another hour or three. Once I do manage to claw my way out of the blanets and stumble into the kitchen, I flail around a bit until I'm sure that I've turned the coffee on, and I peer out the window to check the weather. Because I am too cheap to buy one of those $10 outdoor digital thermometers, I guesstimate a bit and think up a suitable outfit.

Once everything outside starts to turn shades of gray- like it's too early yet for even the colors to be up- I know I have to bust a move or risk screaming my little Civic into the parking lot two minutes after the late bell has rung.

Actually, that has never happened to me. But I'm still petrified that someday it will.

And then I go about my day. Once I've had some coffee in me and my body has readjusted to not slumbering I'm almost always right on top of my librarying. Until this week. Dreaded, dreadful testing week. I knew it would be bad. It was bad last year. It's always bad. It has made that morning bit harder than usual and my days seem forever long.

I'm working hard not to be a Molly McBitter about having to sit on my ass all day watching children take tests. I've tried looking on the bright side of things. I've thought (extensively) about how much worse things could be. I've even contemplated a foray into Not Whining About Things mode for a whole day. But... it's just really very hard. Especially when I have SPRING FEVER and I want to get outside where there's actual air and sunlight that hasn't been filtered through layers of mold, asbestos, and ancient drop-ceiling tiles, not biting my tongue to keep from screaming at the plodding, slow-poke children pondering main ideas and topic sentences to just HURRY UP ALREADY. I mean, it's not really their fault my day sucks.

No one is happier that it's Friday than me. Except maybe every other teacher in the state of Massachusetts, and who cares about them?