:with love and squalor

I’m having the worst time sleeping tonight (and last night) because I’ve been taking Nyquil/Robotussin for like a week and I’m trying not to take anymore and you get hooked on that shit SO FAST.  I’ve had a really rotten cold for a week now and it sucks because it pretty much dominated my last week off.  i really cannot believe summer is over.  it feels like it never even started.  of course, i wasted a lot of it, but i just am in actual disbelief that it’s over.  after everything i went through last year, it’s kind of hard to believe that i’m going to go through it all again.  already.  i’ve barely even processed everything that happened during my first year of teaching.  i’m honestly not sure i could describe it to anyone who wasn’t there, and no one other than me was there.  i’m imagining myself this time next week (exactly a week—teachers back the 22nd, students back the 27th) and i can honestly predict i’m going to be crying myself to sleep.  i’m going right back into the same hostile environment i never thought i’d get out of, willingly, already.  i can already see what’s going to happen.  all new teachers since the majority of the school ran for the hills when they announced they were shutting down the middle school.  that means a ton of tfa and bctr teachers who won’t know what they’re doing and the school is going to be a total, all around nightmare.  plus, there’s going to be a huge fight in pre-k over who gets what para.  i can honestly imagine the fight right now, word-for-word, and what everyone will say.  the other teacher and para will INSIST that they can’t work together without killing each other, and my para and I will basically have to beg the administration not to switch us.  i reallllllly am not looking forward to that.  or worse, they’ll tell us they’re switching my grade at the last minute.  last year, they told some teachers on the first day of school that they were being moved to a different grade level, so i wouldn’t put it past them, although supposedly we’re going to have a different principal this year since mine got… uh… i don’t know, fired, released, something? for sexual harassment.  yes, THAT is the kind of environment i worked in for a year with no assistance from tfa, baltimore city, my coworkers, or hopkins.  it was like being thrown off a cliff blindfolded while on fire with a yeast infection into a pit of alligators and broken bottles while being rained on from a cloud filled with vinegar.  THAT is what i’m returning to in a week.  the only saving grace, the only thing i’m at all excited about, is getting my stuff from donors choose.  i am really looking forward to making a more comfortable classroom environment for my new kiddos.  and, hey, i’m excited to get a new batch of kiddos, although i’m gonna miss my old ones.  the kids are really the only thing that is good about this job, at least in the hostile environment that i’m stuck in.  there’s really no reason to teach at a school like mine if you don’t love children and want to see them grow.  so i guess there’s that.

last night, when i finally got to sleep, i had a dream that, instead of moving to mt vernon, mary and i moved into an apartment at simon’s rock.  somehow the dream ended with me having a set of cracked ribs.  rest assured if i were preparing myself to go back to another year of college, instead of for another year of teaching, my feelings at this moment would be very, very different.