I’m going home at lunch today. I feel like shit that got hit by a car. (Flattened) I need to rest so badly. My plan is to not come in tomorrow either. But, this way I am only missing three periods. I’m going to try hard not to feel too guilty.
I finally got around to reading Harry Potter. All seven books in eight days. That was way better than reading earlier and having to wait around for sequels. 🙂
I have read more new-to-me books and more rereads for fun in the past six months than I have in the previous five years total. I’m not really sure what is up with needing to escape from my life more. But I have read some nifty books. (I think I’m up to 15 books in the last six months?)
That’s what I am reading the kids today. Their grades suck. 🙁 I want to be more patient. Maybe I could be if I ever had a damn break. (I took one day off this weekend. I worked the whole other day.)
I want a whole weekend off. It needs to happen soon.
I talked to someone I have known for a long time last night about me having kids. Ironically, said person is not on this filter by her own request. I’m not really trying to talk about her behind her back but including her seems somehow disrespectful when she stated that she doesn’t want to hear it. First she doesn’t think me having kids is ok because the planet is overpopulated. Fair enough. But she said she also thinks that someone with my history of mental health issues shouldn’t be having children. To say the least this was hard to hear. I managed to keep myself from bursting into tears with effort.
My mental health stuff is something that I have agonized about for years. I have also felt paranoid that people felt this way and weren’t telling me. I guess now it no longer counts as paranoia. I feel somewhat hurt that she said it, but it isn’t as if we have ever been particularly close friends anyway. Given how little she is in my life I doubt this will affect our relationship much at all. But that’s not the point.
I have a pretty serious history of mental health issues. I have been diagnosed with a wide array of disorders (sometimes contradictory) throughout my life. I don’t try to hide this or down play it. I just deal with it. I deal with feeling depressed. I deal with the excessive responses (mania). I deal with my compulsions. I deal with my mood swings. I’m not the easiest person to live with but I believe I am far from the hardest. I feel like telling me that I shouldn’t have children because of my mental health issues is tantamount to telling someone who has a physical disability that they shouldn’t have children. And if you are going to go down that path, where does the line get drawn? Should someone with diabetes have children? Should remarkably ugly people have children? (Ok, that part is being sarcastic.) Where is the line drawn? Who gets to decide who is appropriate for breeding. Because as soon as you start talking about how people with defects shouldn’t have children you are talking about breeding.
Yes, my children are potentially at risk of being severely depressed during their lifetimes. My children are also very likely to be incredibly intelligent (such traits are strongly genetically linked). My children are also very likely to be creative and interesting. If you go through history many of the most brilliant and influential people have had various mental health issues. Does depression make life harder? Yes. I think it is worth dealing with anyway. If I didn’t I would have off-ed myself years ago. I also believe that my kids are going to have the fairly unusual situation of living with someone who actively deals with their shit rather than blaming or denying or hiding from life. I have survived some pretty intense things and I believe that I can help my kids be strong and independent people as well or I wouldn’t have them.
I know I know… I don’t need to justify my decision. But I do need to think about it.
My job is always extremely demanding. Teaching an honors class has made that worse.
I’m also the technology “mentor” at this point because my coworkers are fucking morons and can’t figure out how to work basic websites. This means a bunch of people pestering me constantly.
Academic detention is driving me batty. I’m feeling quite tempted to just ignore the Fs for the rest of the year. If you come in and want to make up your grade, fine. But I can’t keep pushing people to do the work. It makes my life suck.
I can’t be the repository of all the problems of all the kids right now. I’m too tired and worn out. I have nothing left to give them.
I’m dropping all involvement with clubs. I need to spend my lunches staring off into space, not going to meetings.
I am going to drop some of the essays I had planned to give the honors class. I simply cannot spend 10 hours grading essays every three weeks. I can’t do it. Not on top of all the rest of the grading and prep.
I am not helping much with the TNG con. I feel horrible for dumping it on Jon, but I can’t do more than I am doing. 🙁
I’m supposed to be doing research on getting the house remodeled. Right now I am kicking myself for not getting this done last summer.
I’m not seeing my friends much. I’m doing a little bit of it because I feel like I *should* but I find myself feeling resentful of the energy output even as I am glad to see people. I am tired of having to leave by 8:30 because I feel like shit. It’s not like I can say, “Hey–let’s hang out during the weekend day” either because I’m always fucking working.
Hormones are kicking in and I want to cry a lot of the time. I feel so overwhelmed that I want to just give up. Why am I doing all this shit again?
I can’t have sex like I want to because I feel shitty all the time and I know that must be having a negative effect on my overall attitude and emotional state.
I don’t know what is going to give, but something has to.
Today, one of my kids went off campus during lunch and bought me a Jamba Juice. (The kid finishes school at 5th period–that’s the only reason he is allowed to leave.) This was after I bitched him out during 2nd period because he still hasn’t got his book and he was generally being a bit whiney. I think that apologizing after yelling at him probably helped. I told him I had no right to be such a bitch to him and he laughed. 🙂
Last night I jumped my hot honey. It was quite good. Sex is much less frequent these days, but oh so awesome when it happens.
My darling husband came to work with me this weekend and kept me company while I suffered through craptastic work. Have I mentioned that I am incredibly lucky?
We got to be social in three different venues this weekend–none of them for even 2 hours, but that is all the energy we have. It was good to see people. (This is the way to see me these days. Book a slot early in the day for 1-2 hours. That’s all the energy I have.)
And I finally got around to starting Harry Potter. Books 1 and 2 down. 🙂
I’m wearing my custom made salwar kameez. She had it made for me in India. It fits beautifully and looks really amazing.
Now I’m going to get fat! Damnit! I figure I am going to live in this outfit until I outgrow it on principle. 🙂
I feel like crap and I’m being very frank about this with the kids. I’m not being my normal walking-around self. So when kids are talking out of turn or sleeping I don’t feel like getting up to smack their desks how I normally do. So instead, I brought in a squirt bottle. It has fantastic range. I have proven that I can get basically every desk in the room.
The kids love it. They laugh when they get hit, but then they knock off their crap. A threat is often enough to get them to stop. I think this is so funny.
My coworkers are shocked and dismayed that I want to leave off teaching public school to homeschool my children. They believe that my actions are why the system is failing. Uhm, maybe I am acting the way I am because the system is failing–I hardly believe I carry the weight of all the blame.
Academic detention still sucks. But at least 15 students have already pulled up their grades to passing. Only 26 to go… (Passing meaning a C or better.)
It’s amazing that I can cry all the way to school and then turn it off and be fine in front of the kids. Then fall to pieces again when they leave.
Got to tell the kids today that everything smells way more strongly so I need them to take showers more often cause they are making me sick. That was an awkward conversation.
Feeling better than normal for lately. Maybe it’s the cheese. Mmmm cheese. Still exhausted.
I feel terrible. Today isn’t the worst nausea I have felt, but I do feel overall really really awful. My stomach hurts. My back hurts. My head hurts. And today is one of those disgusting days when I am reminded that Gilroy isn’t far from my school. The whole campus reeks of garlic; I want to gag. The toilets in the staff bathroom back up at the drop of a hat and today one of them did while full of uhm something unpleasantly odorous. Walking into that room is enough to make me want to throw up. And that is not currently a room where I want to kneel and throw up. 🙁
And the morning started out so pleasantly…
I have decided that whining about being sick doesn’t count as “baby” posting so this isn’t filtered. I have also decided that if I get around to talking about pregnant sex (holy shit it’s awesome) that will go on the tmi filter and not the baby filter. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
My stomach has been hurting pretty much non-stop for over a week. I get brief respites, but they are normally very very brief. This morning I woke up to the worst stomach upset so far. On the way to work I bought Altoids Rasberry Sours because I was told that sour hard candy might help. Dude. It’s a fucking miracle. I feel so much better. I can even get up and wander around! Sweet.
It’s worth pointing out that despite feeling nauseous and exhausted constantly I am overall in very good spirits. I’m grateful for anything that looks like confirmation of pregnancy. 🙂 There is also at least some link between major morning sickness and a lower chance of miscarriage. I’ll take it.
This weekend is Folsom. This big, fabulous, wonderfully pervy event right in my back yard. What am I doing this weekend? Grading papers. I’m behind and I am too tired during the week to catch up at night.
Ah well. Maybe I will get enough done on Saturday to hit the fair for a little while on Sunday. It’s not like I am up for dressing up anyway. 🙂 Right now I am wearing stretch pants because wearing anything with a waist makes me want to vomit.
I have always had a small bladder. But this is ridiculous. I can’t go an hour. I’m a freakin teacher. We have lab days of 105 minute periods. I don’t think I can avoid telling the kids…
I have a coworker who has hated me almost since I got this job. I never really understood why exactly. I knew about one or two stupid jokes she hadn’t appreciated, but it seemed to be bigger than that. She actually started at the same time I did so it’s been an interesting two years of working with her. Today I sucked up my courage after school and asked her about the situation. At first she kind of tried to brush me off by claiming the past is the past so she could avoid talking about it. I persisted and pushed her to talk to me about why she hates me so much. When she finally told me I could tell that they were things she has held close to her heart and nourished as damn fine reasons to hate me. I don’t blame her, I did some shitty things in her direction. It seriously deflated her anger when I explained my behavior and apologized. She looked flat shocked that I wasn’t defensive or pissy about her accusing me of all manner of bitchy awful things. It was really good and I’m glad I did it. By the end she told me that she has actually had a hard time staying mad at me because overall she likes my personality–it was just too hard to let go of being mad.
That was a hard thing. I’m glad I did it.
And I’m on track for early completion of my BTSA hellishness. I’m still behind on grading, but not too bad at this point. This weekend is probably going to be spent working. Oh. Joy. 🙂 Actually… I’m not too upset. I’ve had very me-centered weekends for a few in a row and I’ll be quite cheerful about going back to being focused on my job when I have more energy. It’s hard to work after school for as long as I need to. And it’s getting harder as my energy is going down.
It seems as though baby stuff is likely to obsess me for a while to come. In addition to all of my current filters: http://rightkindofme.livejournal.com/330553.html#cutid1 (comment if you change anything) it seems like a good idea to give people the chance to opt-in rather than telling them they have to opt out of hearing about baby-babble.
Oh, I’m pregnant. 🙂 According to how such things are measured I am about five weeks pregnant. My estimated due date is Friday, May 23, 2008.
I can’t keep a secret to save my life.
No Top Ramen. That’s just not fair. 🙁
Today we had our first positive pregnancy test.
I’m so giddy I can barely sit still.
My job takes a lot of time and energy in a thousand different ways. I have to deal with 150+ diverse personalities every day. I have to prepare material to start with and then later grade it. I have to deal with coworkers, many of whom I don’t like much. More and more kids are coming to me to dump their emotional problems. I’m glad I can help them, but it takes a lot of energy. (‘Nother kid today.) BTSA is going to be a serious pain in my ass, but I have to do it. At least my mentor doesn’t suck and I don’t have to repeat the stuff I did last year.
Having a house requires me to clean and fix stuff. I am supposed to prepare healthy food multiple times a day (yeah fucking right–we so eat out of the microwave). Noah has been doing way more than his share.
The Interloper is *not* being accepted by Puff. Which means that both cats are pissed constantly. This results in Puff hissing and not allowing affection and the Interloper is crying constantly and I am having fantasies of harming her. This isn’t good. The Interloper can’t remain in our household.
TNG Con stuff is starting to come faster and harder. I have less than 5 months until D-Day. I have a big job and people who want me to do stuff above and beyond my job. I want to cry or quit or something. I will never ever sign on for this shit again.
I’m sick of having fucking yeast infections constantly. It burns and itches. It is driving me nuts.
I’m sick of people telling me how to get pregnant. It is getting to the point where I am pretty nasty when people start lecturing me on what I “should” do to get pregnant. I don’t want to have sex anymore. Sex isn’t fun. It seems frustrating and disappointing.
I’m not in the mood to talk about how people interact and why it doesn’t work for someone or what they want to get out of their community. I feel like this problem is being laid at my feet and I don’t want to fucking hear it.
And we need to unpack from last weekend, but when? I get to go to a fucking meeting (oh wait, TWO fucking meetings) tomorrow night. Noah has declared Friday to be a coding night (he’s bloody earned it, that doesn’t mean I’m good at being patient with him doing computer stuff while I clean up after *us*). I’m supposed to go dancing, but it seems like a really bad idea considering the rest of my weekend. Saturday I have to go to a training from 9-12. Then we get to have dinner and go see a play with one of Noah’s fucking legion of ex’s. Seeing most of them is anxiety inducing and stressful for me for no good reason at all. Sunday we are hosting a tantra class and the last thing I am in the mood to do right now is be patient or spiritual or breathe. I’m going to be fussy if people cancel though because it will feel like one more thing to happen.
I just want to scream. If you decide to give me well meaning advice don’t feel surprised if you are kicked off my friends list. I don’t want to fucking hear it. This phase will pass, but I’m fucking frustrated.
We’re talking about racism in all of my classes right now as part of the different units we are doing. So I brought up the Jena 6. (If you have never heard of them, google the term.) The kids are incensed. They asked me how we can help so we are getting together after school tomorrow to figure out how the kidlets can help raise money and awareness.
Have I mentioned lately that I love my job? That my kids are constant sources of amazement to me?
Have I mentioned that I hate BTSA? Wow. What a fabulous way to ensure that I *don’t* want to be a teacher.
(BTSA is mandatory for people who have a preliminary credential. It is further training to ensure that we are competent teachers. Near as I can tell what it really does is see who will put up with being treated like they are brain dead. I am so fucking livid at the hoops I have to jump through to have this job.)