Went In To Work

On a Sunday. Didn't want to, but my room was chaotic, and I NEEDED to put in six hours or so of real work uninterrupted by teaching classes. So I went.

Not easy. The Balabusta does not have a car. The fella could not drive, as a result of the the van having an iffy wheel he does not want to take on the freeway. And the Balabusta does not have a front door key to the school. That has to be taken from the flowerpot of a science teacher who lives about a mile and a half from the school. No problem with a car. Without a car...

I took BART to Fruitvale, and got a cab. When I arrived at Fruitvale, there were two cabs, both driven by sober-looking middle-aged Sikh men in turbans, and my heart rejoiced. Unfortunately, both these cabs were claimed before I got over there, and I got the one driven by a battered-looking Anglo dude of a certain age, whose cab smelled like cigarettes, and who was mightily hacked that I needed to go to two different addresses.

We made it. I worked in my room from nine to three, which was fine, except that the building is totally abandoned, and I cannot get the hall lights to turn on.

I walked to the science teacher's house, afterward, dropped the key off, and got the bus. And it was all basically okay. But I don't feel okay. I feel sad. I feel overwhelmed by all the junk in my life. The friends I don't call much anymore. The job that eats all my emotional energy. The STUPID new teachers induction program, which eats too much time--and requires I spend six Shabbosim a year attending stupid classes and eating sandwiches out of my backpack because the only veggie options they serve are just too awful to be considered. My masters thesis, which I'm making no progress on, less, now that all my notes are in a computer which has died, and I don't know how I'm ever going to get it fixed, since the van can't go on the freeway. Books late to the library, bills overdue. I feel as though I've been working too hard for years now, and I'm still always behind. A day late and a dollar short, for way too long.

And I've completely killed my nails. I only bite them when I'm under stress these days. I've had to stop biting, this weekend, because I am out of nail.

I know that tomorrow I will get up and go to work. I will make a bunch of photocopies, and send jobs to the copy center. I will practice my Fred Jones schtick where I pretend to be Queen Victoria (feh, murmurs the Irish-American, but I can't think of a better example of a nonresponsive face). I will teach my classes, and finally maybe call and find out why I didn't get credit for the full forty hours of the class I took in August. I will try, again, to set up a time to talk to the vice principal about my discipline issues. I will write a lesson plan for the sub on Yontiff, and choose between going by the district office to sign my contract or going in to Berkeley to return library books. I will set up a doctor's appointment, and pay a couple of bills, and maybe e-mail my thesis advisor to apologize for falling off the face of the earth again. Maybe I'll call the USF library and find out how much I owe them in late fees. Maybe I'll even call the woman who set up an independent study for me last semester that I completely flaked on, and apologize.

Maybe I will even call my therapist and tell her that I feel the depression creeping back, and set up an appointment. Maybe.

But right now I just feel cornered. Tired. Really sad. Out of steam. I don't feel ready to deal with Yom Kippur. I don't feel ready to deal with much.

The fella says I need another job, and strongly suggests going back to my first plan of teaching high school, and NOT ESL. Sounds good to me. Anything that doesn't involve fighting on a daily basis with kids whose learning disabilities are being masked by their bilingualism sounds GREAT right now.

I actually like the vilde chayas. Sometimes. Sort of.