180 days as a teacher

What a day. First off, it's my shortest day - only 4 teaching periods (in a row of course).

For the first time, I feel like I connected with the class of aliens (that one group of girls who don't know their arse from their elbow, and who have nothing, NOTHING to say when I ask questions despite the constant chatter/whisper that runs in the background while I lecture).

We had a discussion about cigarettes and smoking - very fitting since we are about to learn all the nooks and crannies of the respiratory system. I will be dividing the class into 2 groups - one group will be making scientific posters while the other will be putting together an anti-tobacco commercial (on video).

This will replace the lab we would have done - which would probably have been somewhat controversial with the administration since I was going to have the girls watch a cigarette being smoked (there are contraptions that do this for you)- the scientific part of this is analyzing a the filter that captures the smoke and shows how a cigarettes pollutes your lungs.

For the first time, the girls got excited about something, they had something to say, they were interested and full of questions. It was as though they were in a trance - or perhaps I was - and I was almost disappointed when the bell rang (which is unusual since with this group, I count down the minutes to the end of the period...).

Montreal was a gridlock today - a truck spilled its content on one of the two main arteries - a load of sodium hydrosulfite. This happened at about 8:30AM and when my hubby came home at 6:30PM, the highway was still closed in both direction and everything was at a crawl. Makes you think about how you would escape the island if ever there was some kind of disaster... very scary...

Anyhow, after taking all sorts of short cuts to get off the island and to the daycare, I picked up the girls, dropped one girl off at my mother-in-law, and took the other one to an appointment she did not have. Here's how that conversation went:

Receptionist: "I'm sorry Miss, but Christine's next appointment is only on the 26th"

Me: "No problem - my husband loves to get a good beating on Wednesday evenings when he sends me into traffic to virtual appointments. I'll be sure to pass on the next appointment date, as well as any leftover frustrations on my part."

So I strapped her back into her carseat, drove back to my MIL, grabbed the other kid, strapped her in, and drove home while my very bad friend, Mr Migraine, was having fun pounding at my temples.

As I popped a couple of Fiorinal w/codeine once I got home, I was dreading the evening ahead - I had at least 3 hours left of toddler entertainment to come up with.

The meds don't always work, but when they do, I get a bit of a high, similar to that you'd get if you had 3 dark roast Ventis, followed by a tequila shooter. (Please note that I've never had this particular combination of liquids, and that this would probably set off something much worse than my usual migraines...).

So once the meds fully kicked in, the kids were soooo cute and could do no wrong. I quickly cleaned the kitchen and fed all three of them, and put away the dishes. Effective, effective, effective.

Then, I heard these words come out of my mouth, like some echo you hear without knowing which direction it came from:

"You girls wanna do some fingerpainting?"

They probably wondered where this lovely lovely and RARE proposition came from too, but they did not overthink the situation, and next thing I knew, they were down to their underwear and ready to paint.



By the time they were done, they looked pretty much like the piece of paper on the table (which is why they always fingerpaint in their underwear...).

And so went Day 34 of my 180 days...