Catching Up

OK, it’s been a while, but not my longest absence from this journal. I tend to move away from it when I’m busy, and come back when I have a minute to breathe. I’ll catch you up, dear bloggites.

the One-Room Schoolhouse

My student teaching is going pretty good. I have a handle on most of the classes and study sets, and I can almost, ok, I can deal with the kids in a big group all together, all ages. It’s basically a one-room schoolhouse, like you would have seen on Dr. Quinn, Frontier Quack or whatever that dumb show with Jane Seymour was called. (Yes, I watched it every week. Shut up; I was like, 13 years old.) The teaching methods aren’t much more modern than what you’d see on Dr. Quinn, either. But, they work. We get great results. It really helps that all the kids are totally brilliant. The main difference that I can see is that nobody gets their mouths washed out with soap, and no paddlings[1]. Oh, and they’re not all white kids.

I also finally quit that stupid DE job, and now I do follow-up surveys for a “residential service” company[2]. I don’t have to ask any questions; all I need to do is enter the answers in a grid and also log the ones that don’t want to respond. It pays ok, thanks. I’ll look forward to starting to teach, full-time, this summer.

Birthday season has come and is almost gone. Littlest Boy got a pull-toy, Middlest Boy got a new sword (!) and Bigglest Boy got a science kit.

Middlest Boy discovered – or reacquainted himself – with the pain of love. The Valentine’s card he gave to the girl who is a year and a half older was received, but there was none in return. I don’t think the poor girl even considered the idea that she’d get one, and certainly not one from someone in kindergarten.

Bigglest Boy has started getting into fights – which scares me. It’s always at the park, it’s always kids he knows, and it’s almost always – at least as far as I can tell – his fault. I don’t know what to do about it, since often I’m not on the scene; I’m off coaching the soccer team. Bigglest Boy would be perfectly capable of defending himself – except that he won’t. He antagonizes these other kids with clever insinuations and nonsense, and won’t even put up his hands when one of them punches him in the jaw. I don’t understand why he’s doing it – and after it’s all over, and everything is cleaned up and we have gone home, I will put the suggestion that we go to another park. He doesn’t like that idea. “But… all my friends are there!” With friends like these…. Anyway, I don’t know what to do. Monsieur is concerned but not terribly; I did some rough-and-tumble play in my tomboy youth but if I ever had been punched in the face, I would have run all the way home, crying. I don’t think getting beaten up is getting through to him.

Meanwhile, Monsieur is quite wonderful to me.

I’ll try not to disappear so much from now on.

[1] If you want that kind of action, get a ticket for Gitmo.

[2] (Actually, they’re general contractors: Because we greatly value your feedback, we would appreciate it if you would take a few minutes of your time to complete our follow-up survey. We thank you in advance for your honest appraisal of the way we ruined your home improvement project.)