Slept amazingly well last night. Then went and had breakfast with The Cousins again, and it turns out that, somehow unbeknownst to me until today, one of them and her husband are astonishingly rich (like, Eames chair in the living room where the dogs can sit on it rich) and they also cook up a damn good brunch. And this isn’t quite a “rich” thing, as the object in question is less than $20, but I tried to put butter on a piece of sourdough bread and their butter dish called me poor. I have never tried to put butter on something, been shown the place where the butter was, and still been unable to find the butter. Not once in almost fifty years. Until today.
I have melted into my chair since we got home, I just had Frosted Mini-Wheats for dinner, and I am now girding my loins for the third-to-last week of school. This will involve going to bed early and not much else.
All of it. Forever. Forever and ever, and ever and ever.
This is a review of a local high school, and I hope the author steps on a Lego every time she gets out of bed for the rest of her stupid life, and I hope her mattress is lumpy and her pillow is fifteen degrees warmer than her room:
Also, guess what LMS my district uses?
There’s currently a screen up saying Canvas is undergoing “scheduled” maintenance, which … no. No, it isn’t.
These three books were waiting for me when I got home. That’s Sisters of the Lizard, the sequel to my ninth-favorite book of 2025, She Knows All the Names, the sequel to my twelfth-favorite book of 2025, and The Last Contract of Isako, the first book in a new trilogy by Fonda Lee, whose last trilogy was my favorite book of the year three fucking books in a row. And next week I get a new Dungeon Crawler Carl book, the latest book in a series that was first in my list of favorite books of 2025.
Come on, God damn it. Slow down. I read faster than 95% of the entire human race and that may be an understatement, and I can’t keep up with this shit. I need all the writers to get together and put themselves on a schedule. This is crazy.
Believe it or not, this post is not about my students.
(It was a long day, but by “late April in a middle school during a week where we took two 150-minute standardized tests” standards, it was fine.)
I went to Barnes & Noble after work, feeling the need for some retail therapy– it was payday, after all, and after discovering that pay-per-teaching-hour for that summer school gig I was talking about yesterday was a fucking astounding $94.20, I went ahead and applied(*)– and so I drove to the mall, since that’s where our Barnes & Noble is. You can’t see it in that picture, but the entrance to the lot is just past the bottom-right of that picture, and I hope I can explain this coherently: the lanes to enter the lot split off, and there’s a yield sign, but not a stop sign, for people entering the lot. There is a little triangular raised divider in between the lanes to turn left, toward B&N, and right, toward … I dunno, I never turn right.
A car in front of me pulled toward the right, stopped, and let two people out, who immediately walked in front of my car without so much as glancing back over their shoulders. To be clear, that’s not a crosswalk and there are not supposed to be people there– but if they are, they should be fucking looking for cars. If I hadn’t been paying attention, I’d have hit at least one of them.
Anyway, I bought some books. I didn’t mean to, to be honest, but it happened anyway.
And on the way home the same fucking thing happened again, where a couple– an adult and an older teenager this time, one of them walking a bike– just blithely crossed the road in front of me, ignoring the fact that oncoming traffic had a green light and without so much as glancing in my direction. This would absolutely have led to deaths if I hadn’t been paying attention. The other one would have been a hard bump at worst, since there’s no way to drive fast into that parking lot– broken bones, maybe, but it would have taken some extra bad luck on top of all the stupid for anyone to die. This? If I’d glanced down at the wrong moment I’d have plowed into them at 35 miles an hour. And, again, it’s not like they saw me coming and dared me to hit them. Not even a glance at the direction of oncoming traffic, either time.
I’m not leaving the house for the rest of the weekend.
(*) $6500 for 23 days with students, including half an hour of prep, half an hour of breakfast, and three hours of actual instruction, which is the only part I’m counting. The first week of June is all trainings and onboarding.
Completely lost track of time tonight; I had my club kids after school, one didn’t get picked up for forever, and then I think I melted in my chair for a little while, maybe? Either way, whatever I had planned for tonight clearly isn’t happening because I plan on being thoroughly asleep in an hour. I’ve already decided I’m not teaching tomorrow, ILEARN review be damned; the kids are out of their minds and I’m exhausted so to hell with it. I’m going to pass out progress reports and tell them to get something done then hide under my desk for the rest of the day. The math test is next Tuesday and after that the school year gets a lot easier.
(Also, is $6400 for five weeks of four-hour days worth it? Yes, right? Obviously yes? I should definitely do summer school.)
Three Billy bookcases from Ikea showed up on my front porch today.(*) I’m not sure at the moment where the third is going. My wife said she had “bookshelf fatigue” a bit ago when I called her into the bedroom to ask for opinions. I don’t blame her; I have Me Fatigue, which is a close variant. I have Entirely Too Much Shit, and I keep acquiring more shit, and I looked at those filled bookshelves (which won’t look like that forever, as they’re going to be organized better sooner or later) and started musing about how my house burning down might solve some of my problems.
Not all of the books in the picture are mine, for the record. But enough of them are, and when you widen the scope to the whole house, I’m not exactly a hoarder, because I’m too organized for that, but Jesus, I have a damn problem.
Also, I need a second Spring Break where all I do is read. Like, 24/7, without breaking for food, bathroom, or sleep. Either that or I need All the Writers to take, like, a year off. I understand that writing is how they feed themselves but if everybody could just take a little hit on behalf of my mental health and the success of my marriage I’d appreciate it.
(*) Initial review is that at their price point they are excellent bookcases, which is basically what everyone I’ve ever heard mention them has said. We’ll see how well they hold up; that shelf on the far left is effectively made of cardboard and probably ought to go as soon as possible, so what might happen is I get rid of it, slide the other tall one down and stick the third Billy in between it and the two that are already on the wall. We’ll see.
Was gonna use the spiffy new laptop to write a post.
New post wasn’t going to be about the spiffy new laptop, it was going to be about getting sick twice in two different ways at work today.
Spiffy new laptop won’t load the WordPress new post screen. Everything else works fine!
Guess why I bought the spiffy new laptop?
Anyway, I’m writing this on my phone and it is possible that there will be a ragesplosion soon, so y’all can look forward to that, because this makes no sense at all.
