Waffles is Smart and Bad

So, I bought Waffles a big bag of mice to play with. Yesterday, while cleaning up the apartment, I took the mice out of their bag and put them in a container on top of the television. Well, it turns off that Waffles saw me doing this and learned where lots of her favorite toys were hidden. Ben tells me that while I was gone at work today she would get up on top of the TV, dip her paw into the basket, and pull out a mouse toy. After dropping it to the ground and batting it around for awhile, she would grow bored of it and hop back up on top of the television and pick out another mouse. But I'm smarter than her. I took out most of them and hid them in the TV cabinet. I'm smarter than the cat! Hahaha. I can't wait until she goes back and looks for the toys again and can't find them.

Days Off

Yay for snow! I only had to teach two days last week. That was nice. I also got some grading done. I guess you can count seven essays as some grading. I'm going to get the rest done this weekend. I am. I promise.
So, even thought I didn't have to teach the past two days, I'm going in to help with Saturday SOL enrichment. I think it's going to help like three of four extra kids pass, so that's good. I need to have 70%+ of my kids pass the test. I'm very worried about this. Only about 60% of my kids have been turning in essays and only about three quarters of those will pass. I'm a little terrified. Also annoyed with my mom because I told her this, and that we go over all these grammar things where they do work (which they won't do), and then they still don't incorporate these things into their writing. She implied that it was my fault. I also told her it's hard working at a title one school, and she's like that's no excuse, you had good teachers at your title one schools (I went to two title one elementary schools which are a hell of a lot different than middle school. By eight grade it's really hard to get kids to change their work habits). Anyway, I'm frustrated with teaching and the kids who don't bother to even try to absorb the things I'm teaching them and won't do work that I give them.
Enough ranting. I did make a delicious Thai recipe for dinner tonight. Green curry tofu. Pretty tasty. I think I now love coconut milk. Tasty.
Busy weekend. Saturday - SOL at school then going to MAC to watch Drew at Metros. Sunday - BDay dinner for Ben's mom. Monday - back to school (although the weather might have some more snow in store for us).
Anyway, time to grade some papers, or something like that. I spent my day cleaning and organizing the apartment. We can actually see the counter now.
Okay, the new Hootie Wendy's Bacon Chicken Ranch commercial is bizarre... real bizarre.

Duh...

One of the whole points of the last blog was the make you lazy people help me figure out a personalized license plate. I need help; this is a big decision.

Children, pay attention!

I think I say that about thirty times a day. That's impressive seeing how I only teach three classes a day...
Two weeks until the writing test, I keep telling them, and they keep telling me to stop rubbing it in their faces. I don't think they realize that if they fail, they not only screw themselves over, but screw me over as well. I can just picture the English department meeting next year where Ruth gives us the break down of the results and gives us highlighting to brightly illuminate the fact that we are failures as teachers and can't get 70+% of our kids to write a coherent five-paragraph essay. My kids have got the five paragraph part down but not the coherent part. I should really share some excerpts with you, but I think that would probably be in bad taste to publicly, and with written proof for the world to see, to make fun of the young minds in my care. Really though, that's slightly over stating my job considering that I feel like a zoo keeper/jail warden about 80% of the day. In Fairfax, that's a C+ amount of the day!
Is it wrong that I get insanely jealous when other women talk to my boyfriend? I think it's like the Celeste-UMD-hug incident which Kayla remembers so fondly because I think I literally lost control of my body and severely strangled Ben while watching a poorly written and performed play. I know my boyfriend is great; I like him, but really, I don't think women are out to steal him. I mean, he is messy, and lazy, and plays video games all day instead of putting away dishes and didn't grade my papers for me. See, he's no catch, so stay away from him, bitches! That includes you, Group Girlfriend! Ben's humor is the only thing that makes him bearable and I don't like it when other women appreciate that about him. His laughter is mine, all mine!
Okay, I think it's time to stop being psycho and go to sleep. Another day, another class' essays left ungraded. I now have greater respect for my English teachers and blame my college professors much less for taking weeks to get our papers back to us. After Thursday of this week I will have three sets of essays to grade for five classes. Good thing my kids are lazy and haven't turned in many of them! Yay for laziness!
My new quest: find cheap, original art to hang out in the apartment. It's times likes these that make me wish I had a friend in school who was an art major who made stuff that I like. Ben and I've been looking on eBay to find cheap, original art. I've found quite a few things that I like, but eBay is being broken and not sending either Ben or I our confirmation numbers so that we can register and bid on things. It makes it a tad difficult to purchase things on eBay when they won't give you the necessary tools to accomplish it.

La Sigh

I need a vacation. I need another week off from school. I am so utterly exhausted with everything. I hope I get a nice recharge since my apartment now has like normal furniture and less empty cardboard boxes in it. That should be nice.
I haven't had many problems so far this year making myself grade papers, however, I could only make myself grade one small period's worth of work. Good thing my kids haven't had to turn much in for the past couple of weeks. I've got to get benchmarks done this week before Thursday. I have training on Wednesday and will probably have to come back to school after training to get things finished. I hate that, that really sucks.
I feel compulsive eating coming on. It's bad, I was doing so well keeping myself balanced even though I was traveling many, many mile a day. Now that the commute is gone, things seem to have gotten worse. I don't know, maybe moving is more stressful and exhausting that I planned for it to be.
On a positive note, I think I'm finally getting better. I've been sick since the first week of January and I can finally talk and go hours between nose-blows.
On a less positive note, I think I'm getting depressed because I can't motivate myself to do anything. I haven't been like this all year. I feel the procrastinator coming back with a vengeance. I guess that I now have time to do things during the week, I don't do things on the weekend. This is bad because I haven't had time to do things during the week. Like this week, I've got a lot to do during my afternoons and evenings. I have to go grocery shopping, clean the bathroom, clean the kitchen, do laundry, put my clothes in my dressers, etc. I have a boatload of stuff I've been putting off to do at school. I need to let some parents know about the Saturday SOL enrichment, check in Tangerine books, let kids know that they haven't turned in books, start literature circles with my GT kids, benchmarks, grade essays, teach writing,and freak out because the SOL writing test is only a month away and many of them are not going to pass...And then my administrator keeps asking me to do things, like go to Whitman Loves To Read Night. I hate to say no because it is such a worthy thing, however, I need some down time. I'm planning on going to SOL enrichment this Saturday and I don't know if I'll burn myself out doing all this extra stuff at school, but then I don't feel good turning all this down.
Argh. I think I'm just going to go to bed.