Happy Friday!

I cannot being to describe how incredible RELIEVED (not technically "happy") that it was Friday. It has been the longest week. Yesterday was brutally, repulsively, obnoxiously hot and I alternated between wanting to crumple into a heap and cry out of sheer misery, or blow through a rampaging, screeching temper tantrum. :( Grr, unbridled aggression.

Most people know how I feel about the ambient temperature situation in the classrooms, I think.

:)

So I actually have not checked this blog for AGES!! This last month has kicked my behind. I last posted on the 18th?? Ugh. I think sometimes I try to at least start, save, and bookmark posts, even if I can't finish them right away, but the last month as gotten away from me in a major way.

At least I have an excuse, though! I tend to think that there are basically two ways of going about it: going out and DOING things (called living life) or blogging it. Um, blogging about it takes way more time than actually doing it, I think. At least, it does for me, because I can be such a detail-obsessed anal-retentive self-EDITOR.

At any rate, in the last month, I have been subjected to the following overwhelming (though mostly rather fun) experiences:

August: packing up my massive, massive, massive classroom with boxes and boxes and boxes. I think it is a good thing that I ended up with more boxes, and not more stuff than boxes. Sometimes that happens. My nice neighbor helped me. So I bought her Chipotle. I also laughed my darn fool head off silly because her crazy kid was drooling relentlessly, and gnawing everything in sight, including staples on the floor (oops) though we tried to contain her in a ramshackle cardboard box, i.e., playpen. The corner of that box lost the battle with that child's teeth.

August: getting an initial TEMPORARY placement for teaching. It was at a wonnnnnnnderful school, but it was a temporary substitute assignment while the regular teacher was out recovering from surgery. I love the principal at that school. I would love to work for him. I have never heard a principal speak like him. I won't say how he sounds, even though the very thought kind of cracks me up, but he definitely sounds way younger on the phone than he looks in person. He called himself "an old man" on the phone, and I didn't believe him until I met his wonderfully chipper, balding, grey-headed, slightly tubby, roly-poly old-man self. How cute is it that he went to KINDERGARTEN at the school of which he is now principal??? He is just an adorable little man. I have major fondness for this person and hope to work with him sometime.

August: working like a darn fool and KILLING myself making all the food and getting all the preps for my sister's bridal shower. I heard nothing but compliments, though, and I hope people had a nice time. I have decided my two favorite wedding shower games of all time and I hope to play them always. They are some of the funniest things I have ever heard in my LIFE. :D What household chore do YOU hate doing, and why?? And what DID she say when she opened that gift?? Ah, the gifts. Such beautiful wrapping. Why am I such a wrapping paper FREAK?

And? That chicken salad recipe was awesome and amazing. I LOVE me some AMAZING CHICKEN SALAD. Yum. Also, it was easy. I should make it more often. I added halved grapes to mine. Whee!

August: delaying the inevitable, and then spending the entire morning in that temp assignment teacher's classroom going through first grade materials and organizing stuff. Then getting a call in the middle of the day and finding out I was actually going to be offered a permanent position (also first grade!) at another school. No, I wasn't angry about having WASTED MY TIME, essentially, at this other school.

Wanna know the freaky thing? I'd actually been to that school AND THAT CLASSROOM before, several years ago. A very good friend I'd met when I previously taught kindergarten and had district trainings invited me over to her school to take a look and everything. I could NOT believe I was in her old classroom. We'd both been bumped (read: laid off) and moved to other schools the same year, as well. So basically, in the last 8 years, I have taught at schools in Lakewood (off of Candlewood!) - East Long Beach (off of Bellflower!) - Lakewood (off of Candlewood!) - East Long Beach (off of Bellflower!). Each school has been less than 5 minutes from the other school in the same city. Blah. What a waste of time, and energy, moving like that!

Oh, you know what else was fun?? Getting to move all my own stuff from the old classroom to the new classroom, even though technically I am supposed to have district help with that. But being told 3 days before school starts that you are moving, and then having two holidays (a Friday and a Monday, no less, when we start on Tuesday!) right away kind of means you end up having to do it yourself. It was RIDICULOUS. But sis and her bf were GREAT help! Whee. Would you believe I was working in the classroom until 10:45pm the night before school started? Yeah. Apparently, nobody believed that I could put ALL of that stuff (four rows of boxes 6 feet high, in the middle of the room) away in 2 days to get ready for the first day. I SHOWED THEM ALL! Frankly, I'd much rather not ever have to do that again. And the main reason why I didn't freak and stress about it all? BECAUSE I'VE ALREADY HAD TO DO THAT ONCE IN MY COTTON-PICKIN' RIDICULOUS LIFE ALREADY. So, whatever needs to happen, will happen, cuz that's my version of hard-working, ethical responsibility, I guess. And that stupid, useless, annoying woman is NOT welcome to come into my classroom ANYMORE, when she practically ignores me, proceeds to search out her friend (who very generously volunteered to help me), and then starts TALKING about me WHILE I am in the ROOM, and asking the most frivolously UNhelpful, pedantic, redundant questions. "How are you going to get all this put away?" "Does she know that school starts tomorrow?" "But school starts tomorrow!!" And when I inform her that I've had to do this once before, already (boxes piled UP in the corner, nothing put away, the DAY before school starts, because the lousy, ridiculous, obnoxious custodian preferred to schedule ALL his other custodians to help HIS 2 pet favorite teachers move their things from the storage room NEXT TO THEIR CLASSROOMS the week before, instead of already HAVING all my boxes moved from ONE SIDE of the school to the OTHER anytime throughout the summer, since I busted my hump to have EVERYTHING packed away 2 days after the previous school year ENDED), she then informs me MOST irrelevantly that she HAS been an aide for 20 years and KNOWS how much work it is to get ready for a new year. THEN WHY DON'T YOU SHUT YOUR YAP AND OFFER TO HELP ALREADY, THEN, RANDOM ANNOYING MENTALLY INDIGENT STRANGER LADY, AND QUIT ASKING USELESS QUESTIONS AND AGGRAVATING THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!!

As if I needed more stress!

:)

I seriously was 2 seconds away from unceremoniously kicking her out of my room (yes, MY room) before she wandered off. I am GLAD I have not seen her since! Seriously, I have never even had to CONSIDER asking an adult to leave, before. She was just beyond the pale.

September: Oh yes, my first staff meeting at the new school and the first day of school!! Somehow, I made it through. DANG, it is hot all up in there!

September: Oh, 3 days after school starts? My sister is getting married? Yeah? Family coming in from all over the country? Oh, OK. Actually, it was lovely and fun to have my cousins and aunt and uncle come and help me in the classroom for a bit. Every time I see the lovely bulletin board (with paper donated by yet another cousin!), and the giant gouge in the ceiling tile from the unsuccessful attempt to close the transom - I feel smiley.

The wedding - and rehearsal/dinner/weekend - was fun and busy!! However, it was one of the most stressful, unnerving, and downright cursed, fiasco-laden experiences I have ever gone through. It deserves its own post. ARGH!

September: Oh, best friend from high school? You are getting married too, five days after my sister? And on the other side of the country?? OF COURSE I'LL BE THERE!!!

:/

Couldn't be helped. :)

I'm sure it's interesting for the sub to take over a class when they've only had 5 days together, and with you. Haha!!

The flights were fine. The inn was gorgeous and amazing and inspiring. It was a lovely everything, that area is cute. I will save additional details for later.

September: Oh, the week after you get back, we get to have Back to School night, TOO??? Yay!!!

And then I FINALLY made it to a friend's kid's birthday party. The kid is 3. I was invited to the two previous parties ... and somehow never got the evite invitations until AFTER the fact. Oops. But man, busy busy busy! And there's another kid b-day party tomorrow. The downstairs neighbors' daughter is turning one. Hee.

Anyhoo. Somehow, I survived. And September is now almost over!! Yikes. I hope I can make it through the year with my lovely, wonderful, special "screams-and-cries-every-day" little friend in the classroom.