Abject Bad Moods
Two people at school have been driving me crazy all week with bizarre, out-of-character mood swings! It was starting to make me feel self conscious...am I a bad teacher/colleague? Well, as usual, it turns out that both of them are dealing with big (somewhat secret) changes that explain everything. At a parent-teacher conference, I asked a student's mom why his behavior might have changed this week. "Well," she said, after considering it for a bit, "maybe it's because I fought with his father last weekend and moved out the next day." Yeah, maybe that's it.

Then today, a colleague who's just been kind of nasty all week, let me know that her husband lost his job over the weekend. At least now I can try to help her with planning and not just try to stay out of the room when she's there.

I am very very excited for happy hour on Friday. The most hilarious thing in the world to me is listening to how elementary teachers actually talk and thinking about how I revered my teachers when I was little. I'm thinking it will be even more interesting when they've been drinking. Yesterday, one of my friends at work had to eat dinner in the lounge really fast so she could get back to conferences. She said "I gotta scarf this hot dog and haul ass back to my room." I could not stop laughing. But it was the reality of the situation for most of us:) 11 hour days are no fun.