Just checking in...

I just finished up an online writing center appointment for a paper due next week. It was so bizarre. I almost wished to be face-to-face with a bored, grad student, whose face screams, "Your paper sucks!" while they try to give you constructive criticism (in a foreign accent). Instead, I could have been chatting with "Evelyn" from India for all I know. There could have been a group of people laughing so hard they cried at how terrible my paper was...or asleep because it's actually the most boring paper ever. It was convenient, but so bizarre.

I've had a lot of ideas...some of them turn out okay, some of them not so much. Deciding that I would be able to handle grad school and work school was a bit ambitious of me, but luckily the end of the semester is near. I really miss all the things. GrayWatch 2015 (where I keep an eye out for gray hair) might end this year.

So far in November...

I know what you're thinking. And you're right.
This is the dance bag Alex was given at school for his dance class. I just opened it (like a month and a half into lessons) and found these tiny sheets of paper of things he's supposed to be practicing. I tried really hard not to laugh.
This is V's nightmare. It's not just the glittery dance bag with "Arabesque Cross Your Heart"...it might be the straw that broke the camel atop the jamming out to Taylor Swift with the windows down, shopping, and saying, "I want to wear fancy clothes" when it's the weekend and he doesn't have to wear his school uniform. I spend a lot of time with him, okay? It's fine.

The clock in my classroom does not work. The custodian replaced the batteries at least 3 times and finally I took the clock off the wall and hid it in the school because I was starting to feel like a disappointment to the custodian...like it was my fault my clock couldn't get it together! (Our custodial staff is Asian...)
I bought this cheap alarm clock that projects the time on the wall or ceiling. I wanted something I could see from across the room. Unfortunately the projection is weak and has to be right near the wall. It won't go all the way up to the ceiling.
But I did the next best thing and convinced my students it was camera. They walk by it waving all the time, asking where it goes.
It's super entertaining.

I am not a bug person. I can function if I see one, but I'd rather not see one. At the Arboretum last weekend, I was trying to impress a group of elderly people by acting really interested in showing Alex all the flora. I was reading the names and smelling them and acting like a horticulturist, when a bee flew out of the bushes toward my face. In mid-sentence, I yelped and hurried down the path. It was just one bee. I thought, "Bitch, that's what you get for frontin'."

Families of cockroaches live at our school. At the beginning of the year, I was concerned and grossed out. I would get my hall mate, a fearless A&M Entomology grad, to take care of the situation.
Now I have accepted they are just part of the family.
I was sorting graded papers like a zombie one morning when I saw this one dragging his dead, lower body around my room. I took pity on him and realized he had a way rougher day in store than I did. I did nothing to get rid of him and just let him drag his body around the room until he chose a desk to die under. Then I wondered what student would notice, and staying true to their masterful lack of observational skills, not one student found him. Not even the 4 students who sat in that desk all day.



In conclusion, November has started out pretty strong.
My odds of being diagnosed with something from the DSM-V are steadily rising.