Are you kidding me?

Today, at the faculty meeting, our principal remarked to us that we've only been in school for two weeks. Two weeks? Are you sure? It's felt like two years. Is this a bad sign of things to come?

Counter

Times seriously wanted to quit: 2 in 6 days.

Update

So, my dad had me buy a wireless router to replace the one that broke last year, so now I have an internet connection in the office upstairs (where my computer is). Now I won't have to fight my mother to get on the computer. My mom uses a very nice computer and a very fast connection speed to play text twist and spider solitaire all the time. I did get a very interesting wireless network connector. Instead of getting a card, this is a USB device that plugs in and lets you access a wireless network. The great thing is that it was cheaper than a card and can be used on any USB 2 compatible computer (which is basically all of them that have been made in the past two or three years). It sits atop my tower like a little phallic symbol. The good news is that I can pick up other wireless networks on my street, so if ours is broken and others aren't, I can steal some of their bandwidth. Unless, Ben and my dad made sure I couldn't accident's log on to another network.
The kittens are getting really big. They are about a month old and are starting to get their teeth. They play fight with each other often and are getting really good at walking. I'll have pictures at some point.
Work is meh. I know it's hard being a first year teacher, so I don't expect my life to be enjoyable this year. I also spend a good deal of time in the car commuting. It takes me like an hour and ten minutes to get to work in the morning with no traffic, and almost two and a half hours to get home in the afternoon. The only place I hit real traffic in the afternoon is on the beltway (which I'm on for about fifteen minutes in the morning). Well, I also get some traffic and annoying traffic lights when I come through downtown Alexandria. My schedule is hellacious. I wake up at 4:45 am, eat breakfast, feed Waffles, get dressed, and try to leave for work by 5:30 (I've been taking showers at night to cut down on how early I need to get up). I get to school anywhere between 6:30 and 7:00 and have until 7:30 to do everything I need before the kids enter the building. Then I teach straight through until 11:27 when there is a 20 minute lunch break. Then I have another hour and then I'm done for the day. My schedule isn't that bad, but I do have to have everything ready for the day by 7:30 or else I have no opportunity to get it done.
My students are a very mixed bunch. I really enjoy my 1st and 3rd periods (of course I have them on the same day because of an odd block scheduling). My fifth period is small and very chatty so much so that I'm going to have to start to assign detentions and boring seatwork for the rest of the semester. My second and fourth periods are okay. There are a couple of kids in each class who have a lot of problems controlling themselves when it comes to talking. They did a good job on Friday of keeping quiet until the last twenty minutes of class. I appreciate their attempts to be quiet and told them so.
My days are so boring. I get up early, go to school, teach, do what I need to do after school (meetings, planning lessons, photocopying, tidying up my room) and leave between 3:30 and 4:00. I get home no earlier than 5:30, eat dinner, pack my lunch for the next day, watch some tv, play with the kittens, and then go to sleep. I'm so exhausted by the end of the day that it is painful to go swimming Tuesday and Thursday evenings (this also limits my amount of sleep to six and a half hours of sleep and makes the next day unbearable).
I've decided to keep a countdown of how many times I've wanted to quit. So far, it's one. I'm not too worried about this since veteran teachers say it's normal to want to quit almost every day during the first semester of your first year.
A couple good things about my job are: I like the administration at the school a lot, my team members are fantastic, my mentor is simply wonderful (she gives me lesson plans and the handouts so I basically have to do very little planning), my inclusions teacher is dynamic and very helpful, and the kids aren't too bad. The ones who are problems are at least nice; they just can't keep their mouths shut.
Also, I think accidentally is spelled wrong in here somewhere because spell checker and I weren't getting along, so it's not because I'm dumb that I have that mistake, it's because my mouse clicking abilities are less than stellar.

I hate my life

Well, not really, but it does suck. I drove 100 miles today. No, I didn't go anywhere out of the ordinary, but to work and then to a meeting. I drove for about three and a half hours today. I left the house at 5:30 am and didn't get back until 6:30 am. That's 13 hours. That's too long to work. That's too long to travel. If I drove the same amount of time every day while I was in school, I could have gone home every other day. I could have driven home Monday night, come back to Baldwin Tuesday night, driven home again Wednesday night, driven back Thursday night, and finally driven home again Friday night and it would equal the same amount of time spent in my car a week.
It takes an hour to get to my school with minimal traffic.
Also, Anne made me feel special today because she left me a message telling me that she still looks for me in the dining hall. Sometimes I wish I was back at Baldwin, other times, not so much.