I notice I write more often about Ju than anything else. I suppose that shows quite a bit about how I spend my time when I have free time to write - and that is with Ju at my feet or near by, being the descarado that he is. For a change of pace, here are some other random thoughts.


Lela has always been a picture licker. Recently my mom sent down some photos of the wedding and now I always have a calico fuzzy body next to my laptop, trying to lick them. I have no idea what is so attractive that she likes them so much. I hope she isn't slowly killing herself with this weird habit.


I realized I had always assumed that people kissing on television and in movies were faking it. Well, they are, of course, but I mean with no tongues and such. Not sure why I always assumed this, but it just seemed natural to me that since these people, despite being actors etc, had girlfriends/boyfriends/wives/husbands that they wouldn't possibly be really using tongue in that shot. I mean, I know it looked like a tongue, but wouldn't their significant other be upset? I have no idea when I lost this assumption, but I think it was quite recent.


This entire year has been one big adjustment in responsibility for me. I started really teaching, really planning, and really "being in charge" of other people who work in my classroom. I never see myself as a boss. I am not comfortable telling others what to do. I suppose it takes some getting used to. I ended up doing the same thing with the DI program. I have been working with my team for over a year, but to really get the program started, I wanted to get others trained and have other teams and get school support, and some how in all that I ended up coordinating this program for the entire school. Not that I don't love the program and want to see it succeed, but I didn't mean to sign up for this - I'm not good at managing people, teams, not letting emotions show or get involved in what I'm doing. It's not anything I ever trained to do. Some days I wish I could just quit, but then what would happen to the program? Maybe someone else will volunteer for this position next year. It's unpaid and stressful, so I doubt it.

School is back in full swing. I have two new students in my class, both who are wonderful and sweet (and girls - as if I needed more girls!) and eager to learn. Days have gone pretty much normal, despite construction going on in the HS/MS, with the exception of an occasional power outage here and there.

UNTIL>>>>> today. Some of you might remember my rant about power outages and (ahem) not-so-intelligent-administration-decision-makers. Luckily when we lack power since then it has not been a long term status. It's been a bit shakey because of the construction equipment running all the time, moving and disconnecting things, and so on. Yesterday I kept trying to run around school to find some where to print the names of my new students and their photos for the "who's at school" wall, but the power went out for long enough that I had to give up. Today when it started to flicker on and off during the morning exploration centers, I didn't think much of it because it usually comes back. It finally kicked off during circle (9 AM) and never returned (which spurned a whole series of stories of ghosts in bed rooms by my students that all generally ended with a parent removing the ghost, kicking it out, or otherwise eliminating it from the premises).

Luckily, since some parents decided to have countless meetings with our director, a skylight had been installed in my room during the vacation and when we have no power we no longer are in a dark cave with no natural light. We did our group activities with this natural light, washed hands, had snack, and went out to the playground. At some point, the message was passed through that went the power came back, we were not to turn on anything that wasn't in use and only use ONE A/C, lest we knock out the circuit again (I later heard we had completely blown out the circuit on the street and there was no estimate when it would be fixed). We spent the rest of the day with out power, and eventually without water because the pumps won't work with out power, obviously. The no water thing is particularly difficult for those of us in the preschool, and worse for me who has no less than 6 students who go #2 at the same time every day (!!!).

Parents started showing up to get their kids around 11 and word was passed that we were to remind the parents to also take the older siblings home when the younger ones left, as there was no power to cook lunch or wash hands in sinks, or anything really. The classrooms were already sweltering (90+ and humid and many without opening windows), but after being on the playground for almost an hour, I had to take them back inside just to get them out of the sun. Eventually parents trickled in and got their children.

No power here also means no phones, so I later found out that calling all 459 parents had taken over 2 hours to complete with 6 cell phones across the administration office. Some parents were never reached or did not return phone calls or maybe just had no way to get their kids before they left work, and when I left at 2 PM there were still quite a few sitting around on the front steps, looking bored and hot, unfed, and I felt bad for them.

Some interesting news on the first day back at school - Last September,they closed our gym because the roof was falling off and they were going to fix it. It remained closed through the end of the last semester, but with promises that the roof would be done by the time we came back in February. Well, sure enough, the roof is actually done (shock), but it seems that it spent so much time without a roof that the floor melted in the hot sun and summer heat. So now we have to wait another month or more before we can use the gym because they need to replace the floor. Sigh. Somehow, this is so typical, I just can't quite bring you all to understand what I feel right now.

Just want I wanted for Xmas - a cold. I can't believe I have gone almost the whole semester without catching almost anything! I guess I should count my blessings since I spent virtually the first two years strait of being a preschool teacher being sick with one thing or another. I chalk this one up to elevate stress levels due to the construction in my room over the holiday vacation and the pressure of having to empty the whole thing of all toys and materials by Friday (while still teaching 15 three year olds from 7-12 and running DI in the afternoons) and the strange actions of the PTA this morning, when they just popped in the middle of work period and started removing old toys and furniture because they were going to "replace" it with "new materials" in "January" (want to believe them? Try reading my rant about the school printer which we just got a new one TODAY). After kind of politely telling them to come back later when I had some time to devote to their cleaning, I went to the superintendent and called our coordinator who is on maternity leave and found out that the PTA did not tell anyone what they were doing and did not have this "authorization" or whatever they seemed to think they had. They were unapologetic about the mess they created and now I am missing furniture in my room which I need.

Story for today -

Last year, in about... I dunno, maybe March, our sick sick printer that used to jam 4 or 5 times a day (probably more, since surely I cannot be the only person who was unjamming it), suddenly was so broken that no one could fix it and disappeared. They told us in April we would get a new one, when there was money, then it was in May, then they told us a new one would be bought before the next school year, as there was not more money in the budget. At the beginning of this year, we heard that rather than buy a new printer for the 40+ teachers in the Elementary, a new one would only be bought for the administration office, and we got our old broken one back in the middle of August. It would print one document and quit, then it disappeared again for a week, then it was back. As of today it's still not spitting anything out, yet it remains there like a plastic tormentor every time I go to the bathroom or to check my mailbox.

I think I only managed to print 3 or 4 things on it so far this year, since it seems to receive a print command and then say it was printing, yet nothing would ever come out. Every time I need to print something, first I open the print jobs folder and see how many are in the line. More often than not, there are print jobs in que from at least 24 hours before, if not days. I finally quit relying on printing anything and tried to find time to either run over and ask the principal to print for me on his private printer, or go down to the high school and try to use the library printer when there was a computer free. When ever I sent an email to our tech guys, there was never a sign if the problem was dealt with, fixed, or even acknowledged.

Today was the last straw, as I often have sent "please go have a look at the printer because it's not working, again" messages, and yesterday I sent one saying "someone please go put the printer out of it's misery because it has been dieing for a long time" - I had to print a small note to send home with the kids tomorrow. The document was a whole 4 pages long. Wow, 4 pages, what a strain huh? I sent it to the computer lab, where I was promptly chewed out for printing there as it isn't for common use. The broken teacher's printer isn't the computer lab guy's problem and we teachers need to go to the source of the problem and get them to get us a new one. Yes, I have been CCing the emails I send to the tech guys to our director every time, what more can I do? Rather fed up with this whole conversation (been under so much stress the last two weeks, I actually was close to tears), I returned to my room and wrote a lengthy email to both the tech guys, our principal, and our director, saying in short that the whole situation with the printer was ridiculous and totally unacceptable that 40+ teachers have no where to print anything and that some kind of response would be nice so we know that actually someone out there cares and is doing something about it. The director actually did come in, told me he whole heartedly agreed with me, and that something was being done. But when?

Great quote for the day - "my sperm are like the borg...a collective intelligence.
200 million minds. Plotting...learning the reproductive tract's weaknesses.....and waiting to strike.
Sounds like I have a terrorist in my pants" - Brian

Another interesting tidbit from school I forgot to mention - after all our hard work fund raising, begging, and cutting supply orders, our new music room was finally completed, with it's fancy sound proofing to prevent the echo-chamber effect, complete with a fancy double door to keep all sound inside and outside separated. We were all so excited, and then off went the piano (so lovingly stored in the computer room for so long) on it's cart, trailed and pushed by several maintenence men to make it's debute for the first class with piano music played by the music teacher since 2 years ago when this whole construction thing began. And oops, well, the engineers forgot that a music room needs to have a door way that instruments can fit through, and well, so the piano can't get into the music room. I guess we should have known to build the room around it, since doors are never a sure thing in this country, especially not in our school...