I do not think that losing school again tomorrow is likely, but if it does happen, I will lose my shit.
I will then go hunting, and rob many other people of their shit.
Which I will then also lose.
I require some normalcy, and I require it right now.
(Wow. Do not use DuckDuckGo.com to search for “fuck snow” if you have the explicit image filter turned off. Jesus.)
Anyway.
Today was, honestly, a pretty decent day– the kids were a little wild after a surprise week off, but not mean wild, just talky and silly– and there’s a new Iron Man #1 out (I didn’t make it to the comic shop yesterday), and I got three books delivered that I’ve been looking forward to, and there’s a new demo out for Nioh 3. So I’ve got a whole lot of media consumin’ heading my way.
Anyway. Everybody cross your fingers and, against all sense, hope for no snow tonight, so that we can keep the Western Hemisphere.
It was sixty degrees outside last week, so naturally this morning I woke up to, depending on where I measured, between ten and eighteen inches of snow on my driveway and front lawn. The driveway was still so warm that once the sun came out it completely dried off; there’s not a spot of snow or ice on my driveway right now. Despite that, my mailbox is still annoyingly inaccessible; the battery on the blower died before I got to it and I never went back out after charging it. Hopefully the mailman forgives me tomorrow.
Anyway, I taught from home today for the first time in a few years. I haven’t missed it.
I’ve been weirdly jumpy and out of sorts all evening, for no clear reason. I’m pretty sure we’re going to have a regular school day tomorrow– it’s 7:30 and none of the nearby districts have so much as called a delay yet– so I probably ought to get on putting together some sort of lesson plan. Maybe then I’ll go to bed early; it feels super late for some reason and there’s no reason to sit around and kvetch all night.
This has been a massive mess of a mental health day. It started off absolutely wonderfully, with the literal first thing I was greeted with upon turning my phone on being that Dick Cheney had died, but then featured a lunchtime panic attack that led to me calling off for the rest of the afternoon (it was all meetings, not teaching, but still,) getting home all full of piss and vinegar about getting a couple of things done while everyone else was out of the house, then doing none of that, and ending with one of my more unshakable depressive episodes lately, as I sit here watching election returns and dealing with a shitton of possibly-misplaced family and work-related guilt.
Part of me is blaming DST again. It was pitch-black before 6 PM and my mood just fell apart. Seasonal affective disorder is not usually a problem I have, and it’s worth pointing out that my day was shit when the sun was out too, but I’ve had a hard time this week for some reason.
Spent the evening beating my head against a bad book, and now I’ve gotten some grading done, gotten frustrated by that, and now I’m going to spend an hour beating my head against a bad game. Then maybe I’ll take a handful of ibuprofen and go to bed early.
I dunno what the headline means either, but a new Atmosphere album just came out and I’m listening to it and that lyric from “Neptune” stood out for some reason(*). I have been playing Silksong for several hours, hating most of it, and I still stand by my thorough review from the other day. The game’s fucking masochistic; it’s not fun-hard, it’s bang your head against the wall until the pain stops hard, and I can’t explain why I’m still playing the fucking thing. I’m not relaxed when I’m playing, I’m stressed out and angry, and that’s … not only kind of shockingly immature for a motherfucker who is going to be fifty in less than a year, it’s also not really a good use for leisure time? Like, there are other things I could be doing. There are even any number of other unpleasant things I could be doing that would at least result in, say, the house being cleaner or some sort of shit like that.
It is possible that I spend too much of my leisure time doing things that actively make me unhappy. I should find a therapist and have a conversation about that.
(*) Also don’t know why the album is called “Jestures,” but I’m on my first listen so it might become apparent eventually. There’s no title track.
So, um, these showed up today. They are hand-numbered, 41/199. When I die, my wife can sell them to pay for my funeral. They will make me happy every time I walk past my bookshelves for the rest of my life.
Have I read the books yet? Nope. Although now I kind of have to. We’ll make it a summer project.
Teachers complain a lot, right? The understatement of the decade, surely. Like, read the site for five minutes. Teachers complain a lot. But one thing I feel like doesn’t get discussed enough is how emotionally fucked up the end of the school year can be, and now that I’m down to the last three days I’m starting to really have to stare that in the face. This has, on the balance, not been a bad year– there have certainly been moments, there always are, but in the main it’s been a pretty good year. Top half, let’s say.
Some years aren’t all that bad– last year comes to mind. But this year there are a good half dozen kids who I really, really like, who I’ve grown pretty close to over the course of the year … and I get to see them three more times and that’s it. They’re gone. And because I teach 8th grade, it’s worse, because they’re not just no longer in my class, they’re gone entirely. Like, maybe I’ll see them when they do their grad walk in four years, but that barely counts? And even if they do stay in touch, and some of them do, of course, it’s not like this is the kind of relationship where I can drag somebody out to lunch or go see a movie or some shit like that. Like, not even in a “that’s kinda weird” sorta way! A “people are going to assume terrible crimes are happening!” sort of way!
I don’t want to commit crimes! I just think your kid is cool and I would like to keep them in my life after seeing them nearly every fucking day for a year.
Next Thursday is going to really suck, is what I’m saying.
Related, but not really: I had a parent email me about a concern over the final, which in and of itself is just fine, but in the middle of the message she threw in “as you know, he tried taking his life a little over a month ago,” and NO THE MERRY FUCK I DID NOT, MA’AM. I thought for a minute she had mentioned it and I had forgotten, somehow, and looked through every previous email I’ve gotten from her, and … NOPE. There very much was no message about it.
And, like, how do you respond to that? Do I just pretend she told me? I ended up not directly addressing it one way or another and answering the substance of the email, which feels … weirdly flippant, somehow? I feel like I’m yadda-yaddaing a suicide attempt, but I also really don’t want to correct her on it. I may contact our social worker and see if he knew about it, but that potentially opens up an entire different can of worms if he didn’t.
…that’s how it works, right? I’m still sick, by any reasonable standard, although I think the fever has gone away– it helps if you don’t take your temperature!– and the Weird Ear Thing has gotten better enough that I didn’t actually go back into urgent care this morning. I’ve started my antibiotics, finally, although this is still probably a virus.
One way or another, Goddammit, I’m going to work tomorrow, and I’m gonna make some kids know some math whether they like it or not, because I’m tired of this, and if there’s one thing America has taught me over the last eight years it’s that the best way to fix being sick is to pretend you’re not sick any more and then bad things never, ever happen as a result. So Goddammit, that’s the plan.
(I may still go back to urgent care if this ear thing isn’t fully fixed tomorrow. I’m hoping that the antibiotics take it out as a side effect, since it really doesn’t seem to be wax-related. We’ll see.)
Nothing but unwise ideas and shit I shouldn’t write down in my head tonight, so I’m gonna sign off early and play Veilguard. Last teaching day of 2024 tomorrow; the rest of the week is basically babysitting.
