The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
Sometimes you stay home from work because you feel like hell, which means you have to push your Algebra final back a day. But then your son also has an Algebra final on Wednesday, so you end up having to prepare an 8th grader for an Algebra final anyway.
It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.
My son has been patiently working away at the Path of Pain since I got home from work, four hours ago. The person who put the video above together is some sort of divine creature; I never even attempted this feat when I was playing Hollow Knight, and if I had I would have invented twelve new swear words and killed one of the cats by about the halfway mark.
This kid hasn’t let a single swear word or even really a single sound of frustration pass his lips the whole time. No controller tossing. No muttering under his breath. Just persistence and patience.
I don’t know where the hell he got it from. Sure as hell not me.
Not that my immediate family is that large, but I’m done with all Christmas shopping for my immediate family, and everyone else is pretty much gift card people. My brother will send me a list for my niece and nephew, who are too young to get mad at me for buying the wrong thing anyway, and the basement goblin will likely get cash. The tree went up after Thanksgiving and I’ve been changing the lights every time I walk into the living room just because I can.
(Seriously, Govee lights are amazing. Ignore the price; order these. They’re absolutely worth every dime.)
Anyway, what this means is that everything’s going to show up broken, or not show up at all, or I’m suddenly going to realize four days before Christmas that my wife and son don’t actually like any of the things I got them for Christmas and I’ve somehow accidentally ordered a ton of stuff for me instead. This is actually a bit of a risk with the boy; he and I have enough tastes in common that I actually rejected a gift I was thinking about for him this year because I decided I wanted it and not him. He’d have liked it, I think, but it was a little too expensive for “he’d have liked it, I think.”
I have one thing left to do for my wife, which is going to involve Doing Art, and which will be a funny joke even if I completely fuck up Doing the Art. She looks at the blog kind of irregularly, so I could probably get away with telling y’all the plan, but … nah.
How’s your shopping going?
Three or four Saturdays in a row now have involved a lengthy afternoon nap; my body has been doing this thing to me where I’m waking up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings whether I want to or not (spoiler alert: I don’t want to) and have been completely unable to get back to sleep. This has led to hours-long naps on each of those Saturdays, eating my entire afternoon.
Well, tonight the boy had a birthday party to go to that was a good 45 minutes from our house, so after driving him out there my wife and I had dinner at Das Dutchman Essenhaus and spent some time attempting to shop in Amish country; it turns out Amish country shuts down entirely at 6:00 PM on Saturdays other than that one restaurant so we didn’t really get to do any actual shopping, instead driving around and alternately dodging horses that were supposed to be in the road and chickens and deer that weren’t. We just got home; it’s 9:00 and I still feel like we dragged the boy away from his party too early.
(The family of this friend of his is richer than God; the building we originally thought was their house, because it was house-shaped and considerably bigger than our own house, was actually their gym, an entirely separate building from their actual house. When he got in the car at the end of the night he said that they had spent a fair amount of time at the party digging a tunnel in their foam pit, which means they have a foam pit. We do not have foam pit money in the Siler household.)
Anyway, I’ve spent all day writing a review of Keith Ammann’s new book in my head; I got an early copy of it and it releases this week, so absent any world-shaking events that absolutely must be written about, expect a book review tomorrow.
Parent-teacher conferences at my kid’s school today, which ate up most of my evening, and then I had two tests and an assignment to write for tomorrow, and I’m contemplating how long I’m going to wait until I take this big bastard out of its box:
… so, I have spent money unwisely, but fuck it, I get to give the original PS5 to my son and get some good dad points, and fuck it, the world’s ending so I may as well buy useless shit, right?
More tomorrow.
I am, for only the second time since he has started going there, irritated with my son’s school. And, like, really irritated this time, not mildly irritated like the time he got in trouble over some bullshit that felt like the teacher’s fault in preschool. Sending-strongly-worded-emails irritated. How dare you make me disappoint my kid irritated.
And I don’t really want to get into details, especially since it’s 8:26 already and I’m showing signs of doomscrolling on top of everything else and I would really like to get away from my computer and go sit in a room with my kid with a book in my hand. I’m not gonna bitch about my kid’s school online, even in the mostly-anonymous format the blog affords me. But I really don’t need any external stressors right now because I know how my brain works and I’m likely to lash out at some poor fool who doesn’t deserve it because of unrelated stress, and I’m also irritated with my school for entirely unrelated reasons, and just … fuck.
Any of y’all have any pull with Medcline? I wanna try out their shoulder pillow. The CPAP means I can’t sleep on my stomach anymore (well, okay, the sleep apnea means I can’t sleep on my stomach anymore) and I’m tired of shoulder pain and waking up with my hands asleep. I’m sleeping a thousand times better than before I had the CPAP but I feel like there’s still room for improvement. That said, I’m not willing to drop the kind of money they want for their system on something I can’t see or touch before I buy it. Therefore they have to respect my status as an Internet Influencer and send me one for free. I have prior experience with reviewing pillows! How many Important Influencers can say that? Not many, I tell you.
So, yeah, get on that, y’all. I’m 5’10”, by the way, since that appears to matter.
There will be no ranting about postcards tonight, because I’m taking the night off, and no ranting about school either, because the boy is still sick and I ended up having to stay home with him today since my wife had unavoidable commitments at her job. He went to urgent care on Monday and was greeted with a shrug and a “Man, viruses are a bitch sometimes, aren’t they? Bring him to his regular doctor if he’s not better in a few days.” Today we took him to his regular doctor and were greeted with a shrug and a “Man, viruses are a bitch sometimes, aren’t they? Bring him back if he’s not better in a few days.” All I know is the kid’s been sleeping 20 hours a day for a week and a half but that doesn’t seem to be helping anyone find anything actually wrong with him.
Anyway. Another part of the reason I’m not doing postcards tonight is that it’s somehow 7:00 already and despite being home all day I don’t have anything ready for tomorrow yet. The fact that I spent the whole day screwing around on BlueSky might have something to do with that, I suppose. (Follow me on BlueSky, while I’m begging for stuff!) So I probably ought to go do some lesson planning now, I suppose.
My son had Parent’s Night at his school tonight and that meant that I got home from school and then had to spend two hours at another school where educators who are much more poorly compensated but also much much happier with their jobs (ilikemyjobilikemyjobilikemyjob) got to spend ten minutes each giving us thirty minutes of information each and then I had to stop and buy candy for my students tomorrow so I can motivate them to do maybe a little work in exchange for sugar and I’m also thinking that this vile nasal congestion that I’ve had for three days is maybe not side effects of the Covid shot I had on Monday but an actual God damn cold and I’m going to go lie in bed and try not to die now goodnight perhaps I shall blog again tomorrow.
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