I have the internet back!!!! YAY!!!

Okay, so I realize its silly to mourn the internet when its off and be overjoyed when its back. I guess that makes me silly.

Been kinda blah and in a funk here lately. I know part of it is just that I happen to be susceptible to depression and once that gets started, its this self feeding monster. But I've also had some shit going on.

For starters . . . and this is silly . . . I'm about to turn 30. Its not that I have some hang up about being old. I've always looked young for my age and I never was one of those young women who lived it up, so its not that. Its just that, 30 means I can't claim that I'm still young and have time to get things in order before I'm a real adult. I'm a real adult now, but I don't own a house, have terrible credit, still live paycheck to paycheck, and aside from my children, I have no major relationships in my life. I've accomplished nothing, have little to show for what I've done with my time, and there aren't many people who would notice if I were to go missing.

Like I said, that one's silly.

The relationship thing is honestly something that's bugging me. I know what I want. But I don't know how to go about getting it. I want a partner, husband, whatever. I don't want a lover who shows up for a little fun and then leaves, I don't want a casual friend with benefits who is all intense attention and then falls away later. I want something more intimate, more permanent, and more terrifying.

Terrifying because I am convinced that there is a dark intensity that lives in me that is truly terrifying to others. When they glimpse it they run away.

Then there's the kids. I love my kids. But since school started its been one thing after the other. First it was a stomach bug that knocked down Noah, then Gideon, not at the same time, but apart so that I missed work for two separate illnesses. Then the ended up with lice. That was fun only not so much.

I know lice happen, but I hate them. They keep picking them back up somewhere. I thought it was at my dad's house (his step daughters have had infestations so bad you can see them crawling), but now I think it might be closer, like their dad's house. Anyway, that's a call from school or daycare.

Gideon got sent home with it, I treated all of us and the damn dog. Washed bedding, sprayed furniture with poison. Replaced pillows. And then repeated a week later. Then Noah told his babysitter that he had bugs in his head. So I had to leave work for that. I didn't find any live bugs, but did another round of treatment, combing, washing, and spraying anyway. And found a preventative product that I am having all of them use daily.

And then there's my own health. I'm still fighting that damn eye infection. Its been what, five weeks? Six? The new round of antibiotics finally seem to have done some good, the symptoms are very slowly improving. But the oral antibiotic makes me feel sick to my stomach and a little head spacey too. And I've had to miss work for appointments. Not to mention the fact that when your eye is sick, its sensitive to light so I've been walking around with migraines from that.

Oh, and noah has tonsilitis so he's home most of the week, which means I'm home most of the week.

All this being sick, kids being sick and running around to appointments, aside from making a huge dent in my sick leave, has made it so I fee like I'm gone from work as much as I am there. I have work from the beginning of the year that still hasn't been done because I was dealing with the crisis in front of me. I missed an emergency parent meeting, always fun. And I had a meeting where I left half the papers I needed upstairs in my classroom. So I looked like an incompetent idiot.

Oh, and then there's the fucking para who stormed into my seminar class Tuesday and demanded a student, who had been sent to work on a project on a computer, she interrogated me (in front of my class) about where he was, who was with him, and why he wasn't doing something else. Then when I was absent he eloped again. And she sent a bunch of pissy emails in which she made fun of something I had said (I tend to stumble over words when I am flustered) to the administration and our coordinator. These emails were forwarded to me by the people who got them. She never once sent me a pass requesting he see her, or emailed me about the assignment she wanted him to work on.

And I understand her having a bad day and being pissy once, but to then go into email and putting what I had said in quotes, its out of line. She's a para. She infinitely replaceable(seriously, if you need a job and have taken a few college hours, go be a para). And I feel like she's aimed some sort of mean girl gun at me.

Anyway, I replied to the emails. Yes, he has a powrepoint to do for a teacher who teaches both speech and English (she was quoting me "english or speech" in emails to others), when she asked me where he was (not that its her place and I told her she could grab him then) I had just been cussed out by another student and was in the process of attempting to calm down that situation.

Whatever. writing about it pisses me off. I feel like I am expected to see all, to know all, and to be everywhere so I know at all times what is going on with my students. At the same time I am supposed to have materials prepared for IEP meetings, assignments modified for classes our students participate in, and be available to co-teach, which amounts to sitting in the classroom, taking notes and acting like a goddamn para.

I miss having a class to teach. I thought that we had discussed altering out program so that I could teach at least a skills class. But instead another teacher ended up with more classes. I want to do a good job, I want to do right by these kids and the law, but I also want to feel like I'm doing something besides treading water.

Anyway. Been in a funk lately. Turning thirty. Kids been sick or unable to go to school and I've been sick. Works been stressful. I've been feeling lonely and isolated. And I don't know what to do about any of it.