Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Excuses, Excuses

Because the width and depth of the web map I submitted to the school webmaster on Friday caused him to flip out by email... and cc it to my supervisors.

Because I fell asleep Sunday on the living room floor...and awoke at 4:55 a.m. with a crick in my neck and the television blaring. Remember when the only thing on before 5 was static and the occasional test pattern?

Because we're studying the eighties in Modern American Culture, and I love the eighties.

Because I had to rush home after class on Monday to take Darcie to the women's health clinic. Willow had a great time "helping" an older boy stack blocks in the waiting room after she'd had her fill of mommy's exam room, and the good news is her sibling's due somewhere around the last two weeks of September.

Because Monday evening I had to turn a student in because he had been bragging about breaking school rules in his public livejournal, and doing things like that makes me hate myself.

Because the Monday night radio show ends six hours before I have to get up for work. After weeks of radio silence, finally figured out the new number of the phone with help from a kid who called every number he could think of until he got it right. Nice to know the students were out there listening all the time.

Because my parents came up to babywatch on Tuesday, and Dad came up early to take me out to lunch beforehand at the awful diner in town -- where "cream of vegetable" means huge chunks of frozen cauliflower and broccoli boiled in whole milk.

Because the headache that started at the aforemention mediocre luncheon got so bad by suppertime that I had to skip a required dorm staff meeting and the Faculty Professional development Committee meeting which I was supposed to chair. Didn't matter, though -- I still couldn't sleep until midnight. I just sat and watched television like a zombie, on the verge of comprehensive malfunction.

Because the Ed Tech Group staff meeting this afternoon blindsided me into coteaching a totally new course for next term, one which will create a pool of pre-trained workjob students for the several labs and commons spaces overseen by our group members by delivering a modular curriculum of basic ed tech and media support skills. It's one I've always wanted to teach, and the modular approach seems useful: I'm not complaining; it's just one more thing, you know what I mean?

Because this evening Darcie took her yearbook editors out to dinner at the new high-end hotspot in town; I watched Willow, and after an extended bath, all she wanted to do was dance. For forty five minutes. To Skip To My Lou, over and over and over again. And whenever I stopped dancing with her, she cried.

Because I've been losing it all week. The stack of ungraded papers that migrates from classroom to car and back again has grown to two inches thick; I never even got around to assigning homework today, a cardinal sin in a curriculum which teaches full year courses two-at-a-time in ten week trimesters, where one day's classtime is 2 percent of the total course, and a a night's homework is equal to three nights in a traditional year-long system.

But happily, tomorrow is to be Winter Carnival, an unused snow day called at the last minute and turned recreational. No class, no stress, no six a.m. wake-up call. A sign from God, or the gods; if nothing else, a sign that the rest of our tiny walled world was equally overfocused and tired.

Looks like I win again. Heck, I even come out ahead: if I assign homework by email tomorrow for the next day, the kids will just think I knew the carnival was coming.