Cranky Day!

Last night, as my head hit the pillow, I thought to myself: Oh s*&t. I forgot to lock up the money I had collected for science fair presentation boards. There was a pile of single-dollar bills in my unlocked desk drawer. I hurriedly sent an email to a colleague of mine, asking her to grab the cash for me. Then I forgot about it.

Today was a PD day. The program was about creating a multi-culturally aware classroom. Oh my goodness. It was exactly what we had seen many times from TFA. The speaker was enjoyable, but lacking additional information about the statistics on his slides. I had a nice Chinese food lunch special for lunch, and overall it wasn't too bad. I left a few minutes early so I could get back to school and meet my students for an after school SF work session.

I walked into the building, and was swarmed by kids who had to hug me and tell me how much they missed me. My heart melted.

Then I made my way upstairs, and the aforementioned emailed colleague said, "I'm so sorry, I just checked my email. I didn't get a chance all day to check it. I looked in your desk drawer, and didn't want to go fishing around, but saw a bag of quarters and figured if they didn't take that, they didn't take the money."

You mean the bag of quarters that also had $50 in dollar bills? Crap. And just like that, my stupidity lost me $50.

I futilely fished through my drawers, in the hopes that I misplaced the money somewhere. No luck. I'll never see that money again. It's not even worth pursuing, so I'll just have to cough up the money. The worst part is that some kid, likely one of my beloved homeroomers, will think that he can get away with crap like this.

I spent the next hour being cranky, and having kids comfort me with their SF enthusiasm.

Of course, a few of my kids refused to take the late bus home, so I had to wait for another half hour while we played the "my mother/father is on the way, I'm sure" game. Crankiness ensued.

In typical TFA fashion, I then learned an important lesson about getting over minor setbacks. I had dinner with my grandfather's friend. By that, I mean I had dinner with a man who attended school with my grandfather in a small, nearly unpronounceable town in Poland until they were kicked out of middle school, thrown into concentration camps, and then forced through myriad horrors for the next several years. They then (separately) sailed to the US and made their lives and families from scratch. I learned about his early experiences in this country, and his three sons and eight granddaughters (interesting statistical anomaly, right?). It was nice, and made my $50 much less significant in the Grand Scheme of Things.

I headed home, suitably fed, and stopped at the gym on the way. In my hurry to extinguish my crankiness, I didn't even change out of my work clothes. I figured an easy 30-minute weightlifting session in work clothes wouldn't be too bad. My sweater already needed washing and, as I learned in college, pants never get dirty.

On my way into the gym, I checked the rules list posted on the way, because some kids had been running around the gym this weekend while their mother walked slowly on the treadmill (like, .5 mph slow). As I thought, no children under 14 were allowed at any time. 10 minutes into my relaxing, but lazy-because-I-donated-blood-yesterday workout, about a half dozen 10-year-olds walked into the weight room. As I stood there holding weights, they dropped their bags around the floor, took out medicine balls, and took up every available square inch of the room tossing them around. I didn't even have room to do my own lifting. I looked around in amazement and their complete lack of consideration, and then stomped out of there.

Still cranky. I threw on some running shoes and did a couple of laps around the parking lot. I know my problems aren't bad compared to some stuff that's happening in the world, even in my kids' lives, but I still need to sit in my PJs for a couple of hours and have a beer.