Tag: holidays

Y'all cain't kill me, Chapter 16

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching

How many years have I taught for again? Is this sixteen? Seventeen? I think it’s sixteen. At any rate: I have certainly had harder Last Days Before Winter Break, and I survived this one without any real stress or even any particular stories to tell.(*) My main problem at the moment is that I keep forgetting that, yes, I do have to go to work tomorrow for the teacher record day even if my grades are all already finished. I’ve got some stuff to finalize, some redecorating to do, and a classroom to rearrange as I’ve grown tired of my current layout. That should keep me busy through the district-mandated half day; I was already planning on leaving early as I currently work in a building whose principal isn’t going to be watching us, but they’ve officially announced that anyone who showed up for Parent-Teacher conferences can go home at lunchtime if we want.

And I do, and I will.

I have, as per usual, all sorts of plans for shit I want to accomplish over the next two weeks; we will see if I get around to any of it, and whether I’m much inclined to care about what I didn’t get around to at the end of the break. I’d like to get at least a little fiction written; I’ve been off of that particular horse for far too long and I need to either start writing again or start removing any references to being an author around here. It’s time, damn it.

Then again, maybe I’ll spend a week playing video games and sleep for an entire day at some point. That wouldn’t be bad either! Not bad at all.

(*) This is not quite true, as I distinctly remember at least one conversation with a student that led to me thinking remember this and blog about it later and as I sit here I swear to you that I can’t even remember the gender of the student I was talking to much less any actual content of the conversation. Perhaps it’ll come to me tomorrow, who knows.

PS: I am as startled as you are that I appear to have nothing to say about the impeachment of the piece of shit in the White House. It may be that I will have something to say about it soon, or this may fall into the same hole that the piece about Kamala Harris dropping out of the Presidential race fell into. We’ll see.

My new look

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy

Gonna wear these to work on the day before Winter Break and see if the kids notice.

Happy Thanksgiving

On By Luther M. SilerIn Photography, Politics4 Comments

So it turns out that the iPhone’s Portrait mode works really well on cats, too, to the point where I’m figuring the people who coded it set it up that way on purpose. Dude still doesn’t have a name. Ten minutes ago I thought he had a name, and was ready to announce it, but he does not. Soon, though! He’s ours legally now, and we’ve got an appointment to get him fixed on Monday, so he really ought to have a name by then. Yesterday was the day the fifteen-day hold officially expired, though, so he’s ours.

Maybe that’ll be his name. We’ll just call him Ours. Sure.

I do not typically have Difficult Family Holidays, and do not actually have the crazy racist uncle that so many of us seem to have to tiptoe around on the holidays– or, if I do, he’s made certain to never be such in my presence or at my house. I wanted to make a joke here, the first was about my mother-in-law and the second was about my sister-in-law’s husband’s vague resemblance to Saddam Hussein, but both of them are landing rather poorly so just pretend I said something funny here.

So while we’re splitting Thanksgiving over two days this year– the Electric Boogaloo version is tomorrow– neither should be especially stressful, especially since I seem to be using my lingering illness as an excuse to go Full Metal Masculine and not be helpful in any real way at all.

I’m going to have to cook the whole goddamn meal next year to make up for this year, is what I’m saying.

But: while still ailing, I remain at least nominally alive, which is still an improvement over earlier this week, and I had mashed potatoes today and did not deliberately eat myself into a food coma, which may be a sign that I’m getting smarter as I get older but is probably just a sign that I remember I get two of them this year. So now I get to spend two days stressing about grading and a day actually grading, and then there’s a two-and-a-half week run to Winter Break, and then I can fall into a damn coma for all anyone cares.

Which, y’know. That’s the dream.

More– possibly lots more– tomorrow.

Bullshitoween 2019

On By Luther M. SilerIn life2 Comments

While the weather wasn’t as brutal as Whatthefuckoween in 2014, tonight featured a lovely fucking bastard of a snow and rain mix, and only a small handful of Trick or Treaters; my son, who has been talking about Halloween ceaselessly for weeks, tapped out after about ten houses. I kept my usual vigil in the driveway; while we no longer have the dogs to lose their damn minds every time someone rings the doorbell my anxiety issues are still juuuuust strong enough that I’m not interested in hearing the damn thing at random intervals all night long and I’d rather just brave the cold and be outside.

Total former student count: three. Level of joy at seeing the look on a kid’s face when you utter the words “you can take the rest of it” to them at 6:57 PM: infinite.

Here’s the thing, though: the last time we had shitty weather on Halloween it just snowed and left an inch or so of accumulation on everything. Today it has been raining steadily all day, it is going to continue raining for another three hours or so … and it’s then going to immediately dip below freezing and the temperature is forecast to be twenty-seven degrees at 7:00 in the morning tomorrow.

In other words, all of that water is going to freeze. And it’s going to stay frozen overnight. And the city of South Bend does not have salt trucks ready on October 31 or November 1. They are the same trucks that are currently kitted out for picking up leaves, and they aren’t going to be able to flip them all over overnight for one day of spreading salt on roads coated in black ice.

I would call even odds on whether we have school tomorrow, is what I’m saying. Because as slippery as the roads are looking to be, with no salting, it very well may be too dangerous for the buses to run. And as someone who has been advocating formally moving Halloween to the last Friday or Saturday in October for years, it would not bother me one tiny little bit to lose the day after Halloween to an ice day.

I got to say it was a good day

On By Luther M. SilerIn life

Went from work directly to my son’s birthday party, which started a bit before I was able to get there. Being late to your own son’s birthday party is not the best feeling in the world, but it’s not like it was avoidable; everyone involved knew I was going to be late.

And then I had to continue to be a teacher for a while while wrangling 20-some-odd elementary kids for two hours.

Then I went to see my mom. Who is home now. Hopefully for good.

Soon it will be bedtime.

Thank a union member if you have a three-day weekend. And if you don’t, consider unionizing.