about looking at the collection of all the work done this week—or any week—that really gives me a good sense of accomplishment.  (sorry I can’t link to it, the county won’t let me show student work so it’s on an unlisted webpage.  if you want to see it, email me and we’ll see.)  there’s pictures all there of stuff that wasn’t there before.  the projects all link to each other in ways i had imagined them to do, if not in ways they managed to do in real life.  once again, it’s the pictures of things that speak to me rather than any reality they may or may not display.  i don’t think the kids actually got what they were supposed to get from it all.  but still, there it all is.

next week is a short week (and, again, short pay.)  just a palm pirate day and a 2-day mobile project,along with my only takers for knitting this summer, all with the 9+s and that’s it sor these parks.

this session’s parks are.  the one in the morning is a bright and clean and orderly as can be imagined. the one in the afternoon is only 10 kids total, so i get to have a regular 2-hour art camp, with 6-8 year olds this week and 9-11s next week.  working outside under the picnic pavilion is actually rather ideal, as the breeze was blowing and it was far enough away from the main building to be free of distraction.  just me and 10 kids making buttons. such a lovely time.

this friday it all will be half over.  and there’s nothing new posted on the school job front.

i took a very deep nap after that last post for a couple of hours. deeper sleep than i’ve had in recent memory. great!  i figured it was the ‘fed, even though it’s supposed to be non-drowsy, but I took another one around 5 and haven’t slept so maybe it was just a genuine nap.  the pills and throat spray are helping, though; let that be a lesson to other sickies out there.

tomorrow begins art camp, session ii.

i think.  of course, i’m not quite vertical yet.

soon off to pour cafes.

addendum:  yes, it’s definitely better.  i lasted at nola three hours and we sere so slow i came home, not before procuring some pseudo-sudafed, which is whatever it is in place now for sudafed. i can’t hear a thing, my ears are stuffed, but the rest seems pretty clear and i’m not coughing as much.  thank god. and i can now rest all day.

it will be a vegetable week, since i made less than $20 today, and i hadda buy the pseudo-sud.  that will be good, actually, if i can just make myself actually get food.  juicer will be the word of the week, i think.  maybe pasta, as well.  i’m gonna rest awhile, and then see if anybody’s out at the farmer’s market on sunday, which i don’t think, but maybe.  and i think i have ancient red beans on ice somewhere, if they’re still “good”.  like that.

but really, it is a puzzlement to me.  i don’t really need to broadcast my petty difficulties as far as france, but on the other hand, i do need, it seems, to puzzle them out.  my breathing, for instance.  turns out i was unsuccessful keeping The Thing out of my chest, as i’d crowed a bit below.  it’s in my chest.  the coughing continues, and now it’s been a full week that i’ve had some manifestation of this.  it made me come home from the party today just after noon when i’d planned to stay until 6, because we were shunted into a side room with an unfinished concrete floor and whatever i was breathing in caused an asthma attack, of course.  why wouldn’t it.  not pretty.  so i came home and knit alone.  and hacked and hacked, and then decided, since i’d hacked my throat raw again to use some more of the throat spray i’d discontinued after just a few days, as my sore throat had mutated into Something Else.  and the think about the spray (chloraseptic-like walgreens stuff) is it seems to help my asthma, too, as i spray it on the back of my throat and it triggers the gag reflex and that relieves some of the pressure.  who knew?  i’m better for an hour or so after i spay it, and since i can spray it every 2 hours that’s good enough for me.  and then, it’s raining now, and it was a couple of hours ago, too, so it might just be a coincidence, the throat spray, when really it’s the atmospheric release or something.  but i’m hanging on the the spray.  gotta go pour cafes tomorrow morning, after all.  see if i can make my crust.  need that spray.

finished out the week at the studio, made up four new projects for the kiddies next week.  i’m still fast in my decision to enjoy this month of full employment—after all, i am actually fuly employed until july 28!  the electronics are home and functioning, i finished up a summer sweater to wear tomorrow to the party.  all’s well for a month, or pretty close.  coughing my head off still, but i’ve so far managed to keep it pretty much out of my lungs.  and (saturday) tomorrow is an entire day off!

i called the principal of the first school this morning.  she’d left a message on my machine that she’d chosen somebody else and my machine cut her off, don’t know what keeps happening with her there, it did it to her before.  her messages don’t seem longer than anybody else’s…. anyway, i called her back to apologize for that and also to pick her brain re possibilities and i’m sorry i did.  i had thought she was one of two “real” types i’d finally found in the process, but today’s conversation just revealed more school district obtusity that hadn’t really been apparent before.  like i asked her how i might get the experience i lack and she suggested substitute teaching.  well, see, i really can’t afford to work for $8 bucks an hour…...... and she immediately revealed herself as another of those clueless dedicated civil servant idiots with a guaranteed job: “yes, it would mean decisions,” she sniffed.

no, lady, it )(*#&)(*&% wouldn’t mean anything of the sort, there is no decision to be made. i borrowed my retirement six months ago to fund this already so far and that’s half gone and i still have to pay the quarterly payments on the load and there is no question that i can’t afford to live on McDonald’s wages.  what decision is it that’s to be made here? Decisions.  what is it about life that these people just don’t get.  then she said, when i mentioned that i’d been at this for awhile, that six months didn’t seem to her to be that long to be looking for a job.  yeah right,  YOU try it, lady.

and then there’s the bla-bla that they need 35, 000 teachers in florida.  is it any wonder?  they’re not doing much about getting them, are they.  decisions.  christ.  apparently it’s that I’m just not “willing” to sacrifice enough yet to be worthy of her exalted profession.  not that she’s particularly familiar with sacrifice, herself, mind.  but she sure has the market cornered on martyrdom.

which is why i’m thinking maybe i’m not cut out for this after all.  but what? i just took out language in this post that would be the end of me getting any kind of job.  but i really needn’t worry;  they don’t use computers.

well that certainly was anticlimactic.  lt’s the end of the first two-week session of the art camp we’ve all been preparing so for.  i can’t say it was successful.  i can’t say it was unsuccessful, either, i did the surveys and most kids loved me, a few hated me.  but the biggest problem was that, at the second park nobody showed up today.  i got there and set up and waited for the 3 o’clock class and nobody came. and nobody came.  at 4 i finally got up and walked across the playing field (100 degrees) to the main building and got somebody to sign my timesheet so i could prove i’d been there before going home and then on the way back a lone kid doing wheelies on a basketball court said “Ms. E, what are we doing today?”  Nobody’s there! I told him.  I want to come, he said, so i said come on, and set back up for one kid.  soon a dozen 6-8year olds came over from the main building, somebody had neglected to send them over.  i only had half an hour left, so i rushed through the project and got the stupid survey done (with 6 year olds. one little girl filled out three, using abandoned ones from kids who had already left, so she could be sure to say how much she hated me.  there’s so much rage out there, it’s amazing.  everybody else loved me.  go figure.)  then i had to shoo them away so I could set up for the 9+ ones at 4:30, and then at 4:30 again i waited.  kept calling out on the walkie talked they had given me after the first time they hadn’t sent anybody, to no avail.  finally just before 5 i packed up and drove back to the building this time, to return the walkie talkie, and again a kid ran up to me, one of my big fans, saying “when are we going to arts & crafts?”  nobody came, i said; i’m ready to leave.  she was outraged.  I kept looking for some coach, to no avail.  I called my supervisor back at the studio, but it was then about 5 to five and there was no answer.  I waited until about 5:15, it would have been too late to get anything done then anyway, and just left. and that was the end of summer arts & crafts at this park.  no pictures taken, no asinine surveys, no goodbyes, nothing.

the thing is, i had no real reaction when i didn’t get those jobs.  does that mean, in the back of my head, maybe do i not really want to do this after all?  i mean, maybe not getting the jobs was for the good, although i can’t imagine at this point what else i will do.  but if i’m not cut out for teaching, which i used to think was the case, actually, but was persuaded otherwise, then it’s probably for the best that i cut and run.  or am i just thinking that to protect myself from not getting the jobs?  or from something?

can i even change course in midstream again now?  what will I do?  today is 6 months since i left the U, i’ve gotten a lot done, an incredible lot, really, but is this phase now almost over, too?  or is this just a bump, like this mornings breaker blow out that i thought i’d have to call the electrician for only to find that i had forgotten to unplug some things.  what do i do now?

i put it away for a week, i suppose, like i said i would.  tomorrow is prep day and who knows what i will face as a dressing down for doing something wrong during today’s fiasco,not staying long enough, staying too long, who knows.  i need to set four fun projects for 6-8s and four for 9-11s.  then i have the big party at the yarn shop the next day, back where i came in.  I’ve done eleventy things since this time last year, and elenventy-leven in the last six months.  and i’m still not any closer to whatever it takes to survive.

i was wondering if i’d feel the thunk when i heard, but i didn’t.  i guess i really did expect it, although not so soon.  they both must have already had somebody somehow.  or something.  they both told me, pretty much, that i didn’t have enough professional experience for them. and to be honest, they were both top tier schools that could probably get anybody they wanted.  i dont’ know what that might mean for me for the future, though. i’m thinking if i don’t have enough i don’t have enough and i’d better start thinking of another something to do before the money runs out completely.  but them i’m also thinking that i can’t give up after the first rejections, the first two interviews.  they were both so positive, are they just shitting me?

i’m taking a week off from thinking about it.  i feel so much better now that my cold is receding, i’m going to try to enjoy the rec now for a bit; i hadn’t been able to do that because, i now realize, i was sick!  now that my mind is back and clearer i can actually have ideas and deal with the kids.

i don’t know what else to do anyway.  there aren’t any jobs around at present that i haven’t applied for.  i’m going to have to start thinking about what to do next.  but not right now. and i sure can’t afford to take any more days off to interview.

i don’t have enough experience in the business of teaching.  none, actually.  i have a modicum of classroom experience, but this business of teching business is something one can only get um, teaching, you see.  and i can’t teach in a classroom if i don’t get a job, which i don’t have enough experience in the business of teaching to get, maybe.  or so both well-experienced principals intimated to me today.  maybe something might be found elsewhere, at some point, or maybe they’ll hire me, but I’m not really (trying to) think about it.

The second one, the one i got yesterday at the last minute, sounds absolutely ideal.  he’s going to call my references, i think.  he seeed to like me and says there’s absolutely nothing more i can do to remedy whatever it is i lack at present.  he’s going to make a decision by early next week, he says.  i like this guy.  but i don’t really know.  i think he liked my maturity.  I called my supervisor at the park (who knew i was taking off for this) to tell her he was probably going to call and she sounded singularly unthrilled (i’m not going to worry about that much, though, as she often sounds thus when you call her on the phone, i’ve found.)  if, when he calls me next week, he’s not good news, i’m going to ask him what i might do to prevent such things in future, is it futile?  and he’ll say of course it’s not futile, but maybe he’ll give me some realistic advice on what the point is of all of this if I’ve got too much stacked against me.

meanwhile, the rest i was going to get today for my cold i didn’t get.  my first interview was over at 9:30, then i took myself to breakfast and then the knit shop to wait out the hour or so before i left to drive to the second one.  the second one was over by 1:30, and i stopped at a mall on the way back to pick up a book they didn’t have so i drove to another bookstore in the city where i’d first seen it but they didn’t have it either and i managed to lose my favorite sunglasses, then i drove home and got gas on the way, where i discovered the loss and drove back to find they were not there, then i drove home again and got in at 4:30.  that would have been about the time my last class for the day would have been starting, so i guess i did get some time off, a class-worth.  I called my super, wrote my two thank yous (electronic handwriten thanks yous) and here i am.  i gained maybe two hours.

but if…. if…IF…..oh, maybe he will see that i am the best choice, that i am the right person to teach his kids art, that what i lack i will overcome quicker than some 22 year old with an education degree that includes an internship.  o   o   O ?