Houston, We Have Re-entry

My brain is set on "whirly." That is an entirely different setting than "coherent." So here are some of the thoughts whirling in my head today:

Kids arrive a week from tomorrow--PANIC: I'M NOT READY and THIS ROOM ISN'T READY.

I think I will ditch latitude and longitude this year and dive right into colonization.

Hey, no rat dookie.

NO, ant scout, you must not live. 

The custodians took my desk like I asked them to. YAY! There's room to polka! If I wanted to polka. I don't want to polka. Should I pronounce the "l" in "polka?"

Why doesn't the pricey rotating fan that I bought with my very own money rotate? It rotated in June.

PANIC: Should I switch my computer desk to the other side of the behemoth Promethean board?

Where should I put the iPad cart?

PANIC: I don't know how to use iPods in history lessons. I suck.

The custodians took my desk like I asked them to. PANIC--where can I shove stuff I don't know where to put?

I better start making copies of the syllabi before the machine breaks and the Christmas rush. PANIC: I have to make the syllabi, or find them--are they on the Mac? The PC? Aughhhhhh--

Syllabi is a funny word, and coincidentally my principal said "foci" this morning. What else sounds like that? Alibi. Lullaby. 

Lessons are more important than the room. I should work on the lessons immediately.

I can't work on the lessons--this room is unacceptably chaotic. 

How can other teachers just show up on Wednesday all calm and serene? Is it medication?

No one has been in here for July or August. So why is it so dang DIRTY? Brown dust is coated everywhere. 

Hey, class sizes of 32. Nice!

Hey, just when did "32 kids" become a good class size in my district? That is just so wrong.

No more separate GATE classes--all the kids are mixed together. Lord, help me stretch them all.

Where'd I put those Glade plug-ins? They don't make these any more. PANIC: How will I keep my 8th grade bungalow with no a/c from smelling like an 8th grade bungalow with no a/c?

OK, so in over twenty (gahhh--over twenty???) years of opening days, I have ALWAYS been ready on time. (Well I wasn't ready for the opening day when ten minutes into class E. threw up. Nothing can quite prepare you for that. Ready to stand and deliver, I mean.)

Odds are on my side.

TBTLW & TBTK

My school is on the edge of a canyon. One morning I found an FOC (friend of Charlotte) so big that I had to get my favorite custodian to escort it back to the canyon because it was both 

TBTLW* and TBTK**:

*Too Big to Let Wander

**Too Big to Kill

I am an FOC, too, thanks to Mr. E. B. White and my mom, but this fella kinda gave me the shivers. It wanted so badly to be a tarantula, but it was just a spider on steroids. I named it Barry Bonds. If it had been slightly bigger, it could have enrolled as a 6th grader.

Barry Bonds rides the magic shovel back home