A Beastly Day, With a Beautiful Ending

Today was a Monday after a very busy weekend for me. By the time I awoke this morning, my sweetness was already en route to Boston. As I listened to my alarm, I yearned to hear his, "I landed and I'm here" phone call. I got ready for work, noticing that my daily Claritin was no match for the latest batch of allergens blowing through North Texas.

At school, I was still struggling to get the morning groggies from my head. Between classes, I sat in the teacher's lounge with the other science tutor. One of our teachers came in, and congratulated her. The teacher left. I turned to the other tutor. "What did she congratulate you for?" She said, trying to be delicate, "I got a teaching job...here. They offered it to me on Friday." Of course, I acted all squeal-y and excited about it. But I couldn't shake the conversation I'd had with our principal a couple weeks ago. When I inquired whether he'd be needing to hire any science teachers for next year, he'd said he didn't know yet. Today, it was clear that he'd made up his mind.

Feeling about three inches tall, I went to my auditorium duty. Since there has been an increase in kids skipping and leaving campus recently, all the campus monitors have been assigned to outside posts during lunches. That leaves yours truly the only one supervising the auditorium. It is a huge old room, seating at least a thousand. It has a stage, which is off-limits to the kids. It also has two sets of stairs leading to a balcony of seats, also off-limits and even more enticing to the troublemakers. And today was the day that my assistant principal decided to walk in, when a rebellious student was refusing to come down from the balcony. She, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, griped me out in front of a group of students. She ended with apologizing for leaving me in there by myself. "This is too big a space for one person to watch." I told her.

For the last three class periods of the day, I had to go "babysit" the substitute for one of my science teachers. I don't know why the other teachers thought this was necessary. He was doing a great job, and all the kids had to do was complete a personality/career profile test. It would have made for an easy afternoon, had it not been ridiculously muggy, and 80-something degrees in that classroom. Woof. In 9th (last) period, I overheard something aggravating. A usually sweet student of mine blurted out to her friends, "I don't give a f*** about teachers!" The best response I could muster up, to let her know I'd heard her: "Thanks, Marlene."

Finally, the bell rang, and I made my way to the gym. My plan was to do the 5:30 spin class. I was a little nervous. This would be the first exercise I'd done in over a week, since I'd gotten sick, fainted, etc. However, I felt fidgety and ready. It was amazing. It felt so good to sweat, to use my muscles, to fight for breath. I made it through the whole class, and did better than I expected I would!

And as if spin class wasn't great enough, my dinner was delicious. First, I had a salad. The spinach, grape tomatoes, and baby carrots looked like a confetti used to celebrate summer. Then I made a cheese quesadilla. I used a heavenly homemade tortilla from Jesse's mom, and even whipped up a smidge of guacamole. Yum!