Yesterday was hard. It culminated in me being mad at the world and Adam reminding me, "I'm your friend."
It didn't start there though.
It started with me feeling an increased desire to be patient and just roll with things. You can see how well I didn't do.
We had both recesses inside and with the wacky week we had of school every other day, it was crazy town. I had students sneaking onto Youtube when they were supposed to be working. My school computer is a continual source of angst. There was a security breach of some kind and now I have a 14 character password I have to constantly type in. By writing time, which is the last thing in the day before specialties, I told them if they wrote one sentence, the introduction to their paragraph, they could have free time. My expectations had been altered and they were rock bottom.
You would think they would all immediately be getting to work and having free time, but you would be wrong. About five of them did that. Another five copied the first sentence from their passage they were supposed to be researching for their paragraph and I sent them back to the drawing board. The rest of them did who knows what. They wandered and couldn't find things and asked again what the assignment was.
So on the backdrop of all that fun, Emma fell on the ice on her way to work and hit her head hard (I texted Adam, wondering if mothers ever complained and allow me to be the first). Her head hurt a lot so I was trying to troubleshoot if she had a concussion in the gaps of my day (which weren't many). Adam finally ended up taking her to the doctor. She is taking the day off today, but I think she's OK.
Besides that, I got a text from a guy in our ward seeing if it was still OK if we hosted Empty Nesters in March. What?!?
This is the older Empty Nesters. We went one time, back in September or October and decided it wasn't our scene. There are at least 20 couples in that group who actually go and they signed us up to host? Because we never go? I tried to be as tactful as I could in my decline. Sheesh.
This weekend is all family with Braeden's family coming and my grandma's funeral. I have an eye appointment after school on Monday so I can't stay late and I have a chiropractor appointment Tuesday so I can't stay late and Wednesday we leave!
I decided yesterday was my day to stay late. I had my sub plans mostly written, but I needed to add to them from stuff at school. And I needed to make all the copies. And organize the field trip I'll miss. And type up instructions for the aides that come in my classroom. I ended up putting each day's work in a basket.
I don't know how many times you can tell yourself, "This will be worth it. This will be worth it." I may have reached capacity. Being gone from school is so hard! I can't even begin to warn the sub about behavior. I'm going to leave candy and say, "Good luck. Give them candy if they are good?"
So all of this is to say, I was still at school and finally finished at 6:30. Mark was going to bring me an external DVD player to try out because my class earned a reward to watch a movie. And that reward was HARD FOUGHT and I was going to deliver. For reasons beyond my understanding, the TVs at the school were given to surplus. Streaming services now block you from being able to show something over airplay, so I was out of ideas.
Mark was buying himself a phone before coming to me and it was taking longer than expected. Even though I was ready to go, I still had things to do, so I busied myself and Mark finally came and the DVD player wouldn't work with my school computer. That is when I kind of lost it. All the angst of the day just got me and it was the last straw.
Mark hugged me and spoke to me calmly like you would to an angry toddler (which is pretty much what I was at that point). He tried different things (he even climbed up and connected the DVD player to the projector on the ceiling but that didn't work either).
Showing my students a movie or not isn't the end of the world, but they EARNED it. And that was not easy and I wanted to reward them.
Adam came and tried all the things too. Mark left and I was still a twirling tornado and that was when Adam reminded me he was my friend.
I know.
I was just SO mad.
I'm working on it.
We came home and Adam stopped off at Kneaders for soup and bread. Before Adam got home, Mark sat across from me in the family room. He said, "Today is as stressed as you're going to be. This weekend will be nice. You're ready for your trip. You're going to have a good time. From now on, you just get to enjoy." I'd like to think Mark's future wife will be the recipient of his calming wisdom, which he has honed from years of living with yours truly.
We ate dinner at 8:00 pm. Then we watched an episode of Corner Gas while Adam rubbed my back.
He is my friend, and I'm grateful for that.
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