Tuesday: Get up way too early. Get Very Bad News from Mom first thing in the morning. Begin the day in a total haze. Suffer through Hamlet. Forget debit card at home, but only realize this after getting a slew of things at the drugstore and hauling them to the counter (second time this month). Sign everyone up for guestblogging. Start a new knitting project even though I have a dozen others on the needles (must frog, save for something later). Finish up the lesson plan I have planned to teach for Friday, as per teacher recommendations on Thursday night’s meeting. See “Children of a Lesser God” for class. Like it but find it lacking in many areas. No surprise considering my anti-movie thing.
Wednesday: Maintain profound confusion over the bits of pink ribbon strewn about the house. Realize they are always situated in water. Realize then that Pablo is chewing the balloon ribbon from the b-day balloon Ethan got at a party last week. Rush into the room to find that despite the balloon’s rest on the ceiling, Pablo has somehow managed to wrestle the thing to the floor and hold it there so he can willingly ingest ribbon and throw it up. Have one of E’s classmates over for a playdate gone horribly wrong. Listen to the boys bicker and fight for 2 1/2 hours and try not to yell or condescend too much. Unsuccessful.
Thursday: Class. Due dates. Stress out. More class. More due dates. Meet with observation teacher over the lesson plan scheduled for Friday morning. Really like this teacher — contemplate asking her to get together sometime for something aside from school/work crap. Get upset stomach due to nerves. Decide what I’m photographing for a “metaphor project” for class: poop (explanation later). Go home and overprepare for Friday’s lesson by abusing the Wikipedia.
Friday: Teach.
Saturday: I don’t really know what I did, but that’s all that counts. Mental vacation.
Sunday: Clean house. Homework. Mow lawn. Develop rash from mowing lawn.
Monday: Cookout. Invite a bunch of couples over for some serious grilling. Fun had by all, for the most part, except for having to retreive the badminton birdie from the roof half a dozen times. How many people does it take to rescue althletic equipment from the roof of a one-story house? There is no punchline. It is eight.
Tuesday-Thursday: Slave away on the unit plan. Come away with something I’m halfway proud of. Only one poem I picked for the unit uses the word fuck, and considering my taste in poetry, that was quite a challenge.
Friday: Have a quiet night at home alone in preparation for my state teaching licensure test the following morning. Decide another night of Law & Order will kill my soul. Load the mp3 player with music, strap on my shoes, and start walking. Walk for nearly three hours through the dimly lit streets of campus. Fall in love with moon flowers, get whooped at by passersby, but don’t care because the casual stroll feels so damn good. Collapse in bed wincing over a blister on my foot hidden under a very thick callous.
Saturday: Take the biggest bullshit standardized test of my life, the test that tells the state whether I am equipped to take on a teaching position in the public schools. Of 120 questions, only six or so have been explicitly addressed in any of my classes. Thank myself for being a compulsive reader and high on comprehensive skills, even though comprehension and theory aren’t as important, apparently, as knowing the difference between pentameter and tetrameter. We have reference books for a reason. Drool on Ethan’s head.