Hiatus Ended

Well, I looked at the date of my last post and shocked myself. I knew I hadn't posted in a few days, but really...it was longer than I had thought. I have perfectly good reasons. My dad retired. We threw a ginormous party. All his family from the Bible Belt flew out and attended. It was a mini family reunion. (He has seven sibs, and both his parents came, as did some of the cousins.) It was a great party in a beautiful setting with tasty food. I was a mean (but, alas, not lean) photo machine. He's going on a cruise to our northernmost state, which he's excited about. We had several events with the fam before people started leaving yesterday. In the meantime, I still had school (unfortunate) and grading (untouched) and sub plans (necessary). Late night gabfests with the aunties meant little sleep, but they were so good and so natural and so fun that the sleep deprivation was worth it.

On Monday, however, I lived an entire day before 8:00 a.m. I got to school early to take care of sub plans, as I had a training session at a local university. After rushing to make hundreds of copies and resurrect myself from a sleep haze, a student arrived to show me the bruise someone had made on her face. I rushed her up to the office, sat with her and the admin for a bit, was holding up my carpool to the training event, and learned (as I was rushing out the door) that my sub had no-showed. O. M. G. And then, at the training event, I proceeded to binge on pastries and whatever else they laid out for us on the table -- it was totally stress eating, and I haven't done that in a while. (I'm sure the hormones didn't help, either.)

After the training, parts of which were pretty good, I went back to school to hear the rest of the abuse saga. Some of what the student said was accurate, but then she started changing her story as the day dragged on. I'm beginning to wonder about the possibility of the emergence of mental instability, or least some pathology, in this one; the game-playing and story-manipulation and bizarrely selective details have risen to new and afore-unseen levels (I've known her for two years), and I'm getting worried.

I will be happy when April is over, I've decided. I've had to be out of the classroom two days per week since we returned from spring break. And the AP test approacheth. Stress!

I have a lot of penance to do for not posting daily, so I'll do those under separate posts. Sorry 'bout the big gap.