Super Start

First day moments:

Coolio, the portable a/c a friend lent to me, shuts down before period 1. So sad. My high hopes are dashed.

Coolio sort of looks like this.

No ants this year!!!  A billion hurrahs! I cut and distribute the power pie, insect-free.

Last year they were EVERYWHERE.

As I near the white board, a funky smell reaches me. It is NOT the smell of stinky teenager. It is the smell of something organic. I try not to think about it, and after that class, I put a powerful odor catcher in the offending zone. Dear Lord, please don't let it be what I think it might be.

Truly thought this trouble was behind us. It might be under us. 

Not one kiddo complains of heat (or stinky zone).

Good sports--love them already!

Colleague brings me a gorgeous lavender plant and an uplifting note on a beautiful card.

A visual reminder to stay calm.

At lunch I buy a soda from the vending machine. It is warm. Is Coolio conspiring with other campus appliances to keep me from cooling down?

So glad our fridge has an ice maker. 

Today was a minimum day! ANNNND we got to leave without going to any meetings! WHooP!

I wish. I went to Vons.

Under the heading "Something I should know about you," a student writes, "I'm Batman."

(Tomorrow I will tell him, "No, I'M Batman.)

Dun dun dunnnnn...!!!

What happens to a school when the head custodian and the head secretary both retire at the same time, leaving rookies all sophomore administrators?

• The custodian noticed my pathetic three dollar garage sale lectern. "I'll build you one." He did, and man, that thing's gonna last forever.

• The secretary would call in my subs for me. I don't even know how to do that.

• The custodian would offer to carry my loads of work for me.

• The secretary would iron the table cloths for the school and clean the teachers' refrigerator.

• The custodian knew where every piece of furniture was hidden on campus and could fix or replace a broken piece after one email.

• The secretary would house, give direction, and encouragement to the worst "academic offender" that our former principal was committed to working with and shopped with the students our school supported to go to out annual D.C/NYC. trip, making sure they had cameras (pre-cell phone days!).

• The custodian personally fought--and won--the infamous 2012 Rat War of Outer Bungalowia. 

• The secretary personally helped the financial secretary prepare delicious food for the staff in the legendary year of Waffle Wednesdays, 2013. (A subsequent school-wide weight loss challenge has ended that beloved tradition. Now I cry a little inside, every Wednesday.)

• The custodian would turn on the heat in our non-insulated bungalows on chilly mornings. (And he never told the teachers, but I found out he would prepare the avocados for our guacamole for our frequent staff potlucks before the end of that tradition because of the subsequent weight loss challenge.)

• The secretary would hear my joys, burdens, dreads, and general silliness with love. She said I reminded her of her own daughter, and she has been my school mom.

They take with them decades of knowledge and unconscious competence. Both have done their best to leave well-marked trails for their successors, but all I can say in response to my interior Saturday morning cartoon "Dun dun dunnnnn!" cliff hanger music is we shall see.

(Personally? My school parents are leaving and I am sad.)

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.

a hundred candy wrappers and some "jerky"

File the following under:
  THINGS I DIDN'T SIGN UP FOR

As I dropped off my class keys at the custodians' office this afternoon (yippee!), A. exclaimed, "Tell her, J.!" So J. asked me, "Guess what I found under your Promethean board? About a hundred candy wrappers and a dead rat!"

(Ew!)

"Was it old? Maybe it OD'd on sugar."

"Yeah, it had definitely been there a while--it was like jerky..."

(Major ew!)

"How come I didn't smell it?"

A. chimed in with a smile: "Maybe your kids outsmelled it." Which is entirely possible, but the whole situation is grosser than I care to consider. I am so glad that I wasn't the one to discover the thing.

Houston, we have reentry

I'm back in the bungalow, but so is the rat.

Drat. Drat. Drat. Drat. Drat.

rodent in the bungalow

I'm not desirous

of catching hantavirus

ew ew ew ew ew

Ew.

Beach and fair plans fell through, so I

a. grabbed The Help by Kathryn Stockett and SPF 55 by Neutrogena and headed straight to the pool

b. called someone else and went to lunch

c. finally booked that massage

d. nailed down my plans for Hawaii

None of the above! I went to the bungalow and did hard battle. I dealt with shelves housing National Geographics culled a dozen years ago when I taught 7th grade social studies. I bested the corner of detritus recently visited by the bunny who hopped in for a visit (see earlier post). I checked every marker for ink in every desk pencil box, ditching the dry, jettisoning all but the juicy. My inner Henry David Thoreau was simply shrieking, "Simplify! Simplify!"

So it was inevitable, canyon school that we are, to find fossilized mouse dookie in those places unvisited by human hand or feather duster for over a decade. But my deep worry is that some of the dookie is not that old. Ew.