Ufda!

Blech.  This day was gross.  Overall, the day wasn't very bad, but it wasn't very good either.  It was just kind of "blah."

It was probably my fault; last night I didn't sleep very well (I had a dream that I went home for a weekend and my parents informed me that I was getting married.  The church was decorated, guests were invited, and my mom even got me a dress!  Apparently everyone knew about it but me.  It was an arranged marriage with my friend's ex-boyfriend.  I obviously couldn't marry him, or my friend would hate me for life, but my parents and his parents didn't seem to understand that...) Anyway, I was very glad to wake up this morning.

Then at school, half my kids were falling asleep and then a few minutes later, they were going crazy!  It seemed like I did a lot of yelling/chewing out/reprimanding students today.  We have a new student in 4th grade, a girl, so some people were teasing the 4th grade boys about having a crush on her.  I had to have a little talk with my 6th graders.  Then, in the gym at noon recess, one of my students was throwing balls away from the people who were playing with them, some boys were shooting baskets from the top rows of the bleachers, and there was tackling/biting going on in the football game.  Like I said, lots of chats with students. 

We went a little bit over in MN history today, so we went a little bit over in art, which meant we didn't get started with 7th and 8th grade geography right away.  Today we were choosing new countries to do reports on, so that took way more time than it should have.  There were two groups presenting and we ended up going over about 10-15 minutes so the second group could present.  I kicked out two boys from class (I probably wouldn't have had to, but they were the straws that broke the camel's back, so I did anyway).  Then I felt bad afterwards, but I didn't want to back down and lose face with them.  Ugh.  You just can't win. 

We had ten minutes left at the end of the day, not enough time for a good recess, so I decided we should finish our art project (a chain the colors of the church year).  We finished the chain and were about to hang it up when I realized I had miscounted the white chain links and we were short about 30.  It was time to pack up and I decided we could finish hanging/fixing it tomorrow morning.  One student decided she wanted to play with the chain instead of getting ready to go home.  I stopped her and asked her to get ready for the end of the day.  She kept playing with the chain.  I repeated myself.  She started moving it to the lab table.  We went back and forth, "What did I ask you to do?"  "Get ready to go home."  "Why aren't you doing it?"  "I'm putting the chain on the table!"  "But what did I ask you to do?"  "Get ready to go home."  "So why aren't you doing that?"  Sigh.

But we got everyone sent off to the bus on time and we weren't even the last class out the door.  Tomorrow is a new day.  Now if I could just get my desk cleaned off...