I Wanna Be Invulnerable

Drora's baby hasn't arrived yet--37.5 weeks, and the wee un's father is apparently having dreams about having to fight off crazy women who want to take his baby at the birthing center. But all is going well, except that Chava's apparently having a pretty rough time of it right now--can't write more than that.

I, on the other hand, have nothing more going on than a slight touch of bronchitis, and am reacting with about the same emotional fortitude as if I were told they wanted to have all my toes removed.

First, there's the practical problems. I've been running a day late and lots of dollars short for weeks, and the thing that kept me going toward the finish line, even when it was clear that I was coughing to death at the parent conferences, and hadn't done anything except keep upright for a week, was that I would get a three day weekend, to do laundry and dishes and read books and such, and that on one of those days, I would go in to work and get everything all set up for the coming week.

Not happen? Not even the vaguest sniff of it? You got it. Weekend consists of me lying flat on my back taking all kinds of stupid drugs, and here it is Monday night of that precious three-day weekend, and NO planning done, NO grading done, NO dishes done, NO NOTHING DONE. Which means another stupid lousy humiliating incredibly rotten week of 'taking care of myself' scrounging every-damn-thing from clean socks to bus fare, and being unprepared for everything, and hating life generally. Oh, not to mention that it was for nothing, because I AM STILL COUGHING. It is almost impossible to put into words how cheated and bitter I feel right now. I don't care that in broad terms this is nothing, emotionally this is enormous. I feel like a little kid that has had a lollipop taken away.

Also, I have a note from my doctor saying that I'm supposed to take off through Thursday. (Stupid doctor.) I honestly don't know what my VP is going to say about that in the morning. I suppose I could organize lessons for the day and then stick around until they get someone in. I feel well enough to teach, or at least well enough to mind the class as well as a sub would, but there's the possibility that I may still be contagious. When do you stop being contagious with bronchitis? When you stop coughing? When you haven't got a fever? When they say you aren't?

I feel vulnerable at work, all the time, and I need, NEED to at least not be obviously, physically, falling apart. This has not been helped by a round of parent conferences in which at least four people mentioned that the children were not 'listening to me'--one mentioned it vitriolically--or by the fact that, well, not so secretly, I think I'm a complete screw-up as a teacher. I have no more give to let out. I have no more secret resources. And I still haven't sent in the kids' Scholastic orders from last month. I kept meaning to find a minute.

I need a car. I need another weekend. I need something to eat that tastes good. I need a new set of lungs. By tomorrow morning, if not sooner.