So, the cat.

Remember the cat?  The same cat whose continued existence and life on Earth I generously agreed to prolong, just last week, by virtue of spending one thousand dollars of American money which I had worked hard to earn?  That cat?

Little fucker’s feeling better, because he decided that no one in the house had any fucking reason to want to sleep last night and spent the whole goddamn night yowling.  A week ago I literally spent over a week’s salary to keep him alive.  Now I’m thinking about feeding him to the dogs.

Let’s tell a nice story for once.

I have this girl in my class; let’s call her Paprika, which is close to her actual name in a fashion that has me cackling just a little bit right now.  Paprika was one of my kids last year, too.  She’s not special ed, but she’s low– low enough that she probably got tested for special education at some point and just missed the cutoff.  I like the kid; she’s a sweetheart, if perhaps a bit too obnoxious at times, but she’s never going to be a Rhodes scholar.

Last year, at the beginning of the year, this kid literally refused to do any math at all without a calculator next to her and a pregenerated math facts list.  Flatly refused.  She didn’t get it, she didn’t know, she’s never been taught that before, every excuse you can imagine.  I worked and worked and worked with her on basic math facts last year to the point where by the end of the year she was occasionally forgetting to ask for her crutches– and I was rewarded with one of the higher ISTEP gains I got out of my kids last year.  She still didn’t pass, but she did a lot better.

She broke a couple of fingers this week– I’m not sure how, but her writing hand is wrapped to hell and back and she’s got at least one solid brace in there, but she’s got some pincer mobility with her thumb and index finger– the affected fingers are the middle and ring fingers on her right hand.

We were doing some calculations today and she called me over to ask a question.  I answered it for her and then literally instructed her to “check that with your calculator” to make sure it worked as we expected.

She, with a broken hand and a calculator sitting three inches away, pulled out a piece of paper and solved the problem manually.

Every so often– not often enough, unfortunately, but every so often– they make me proud of them.