Cranky hates the world

Woke up this morning. Walked down to my car. Stopped because there was a Chili's black book bill thingy in the street. Turns out it was someone's till or whatever, so we put it on the lawn across the street because I think that's where it belongs. Thought it was weird to see the Chili's thing in the middle of the street, but whatever.

Turn around to see my car door open. Trashed. Inside totally trashed. Glove compartment ripped open. Papers and things strewn everywhere. It looked like a wet rabid cat went into a frenzy in my car. The console was ripped open and tapes (yes, I have some Aerosmith and Whitesnake tapes in there) smashed. The backseat looked like it had been through a tornado. Important papers EVERYWHERE! Best of all, the lightbulb in my overhead light was stolen, as was the extra lightbulb in the little fuse box thingy on the dash.

No bags. My two work bags stolen.

Get to work. Email from front desk saying that the middle school near my house found the bags. Edgy picks up the bags at lunchtime but says stuff is missing and that the bags are soaking wet, as are the papers and books inside.

Had late meeting. Get home at 8. So excited bags are there. Look at bags. The only three things I needed out of those bags (attendance book, grade book, and lesson plan book) are missing. Hiked all over middle school property. Not there.

I'm buggered.

ROARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

The title is my spelling of the scream at the beginning of Sick of Life by Godsmack. And that, my fellow blog readers, is a one word summary of my day. Strap yourself in for another Cranky ROARRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

My day in bullets, shortened bc my roarrrrghs take too long to download:

• Coffee at work has been changed to decaf secretly for 2 weeks. Found out when they announced that coffee is a drug. [note: they've already limited the entire faculty to one shared pot of coffee a day--now it's one shared decaf pot]
• Walked in late bc my car is being fixed in the auto shop, and I had to drop off keys and talk to head mechanic. I don't have a first period, but they frown upon us not getting there early anyway. Was glared at by principal, who knows better than to confront me.
• 3rd period: students filing into class; bell hasn't yet rung. student asks me if she can run down to the counselor's office to drop something off. I say yes. She leaves and comes back right after tardy bell rings (no more than a min). I hear yelling in the hall. Think it's a fight. Student leans head in, "um, ms Corson, can you help here?" Prepped to break up a fight. Nope. It's a fellow teacher screaming at my student to follow him to the office. I speak up: "It's ok. I gave her permission to go. She doesn't need to go to the tardy room" "She's not going to the tardy room. She's going directly to the office." [he grabs her arm]. I say, "No, she had permission. She's not going anywhere but in my class." [mind you, this is all being said right in front of my open door, so all the students can hear and see]. He says, "She doesn't have an admit." I look at her, "Where's the hall pass." She forgot to take it. I said, "Well, it doesn't matter. I gave her permission to go, so everything's fine." "IT'S NOT FINE. AND WE SHOULD START THINKIKNG ABOUT USING OUR HALL PASSES FROM NOW ON FOR OUR STUDENTS, SHOULDN'T WE, HMMMM?"
• K, that was it. I can take a lot from people, but never do I allow someone to undermine my authority in front of my students and speak to me in the royal we by doing so. I told the student to go inside, start the video for my class, and walk out, shutting the door. I call after him, and he refuses to turn his bitch ass around. Another teacher is in the hall and heard the commotion: "OMG, what the hell was that? He was so loud!" So I explain the situation, and as I do, this fucking bitch whom I can only describe as a female Vern from Stand byMe (corpulent and tries to fit in with the cool stripys) stands at the end of the hall and eavesdrops with mouth agog. She runs off like a cartoon hippo in Fantasia and pulls the coworker over. At this point, I am talking about something unrelated, purposefully, to the other teacher in the hall, and we both listen to their conversation. Verngirl is telling PsychoCoworker that I am angry, and he goes off about me and my teaching style--that I teach literature in class and not TAKS and that I am not teaching math or science right now, when I know perfectly well that it is my job to do so.
• 4th period: A kid comes into my class, former student, during lunch and tells me, coincidentally, that she has PsychoCoworker for English this year and is pissed at him bc he gave her an F on a project. I asked her what the project was, and she said that she had to make a TAKS poster with "parallelograms and rhombuses and other shit on it" and that she "didn't do it right."
• 5th period: email comes out from Asst Principal: "As you may have noticed today, at the beginning of 3rd period, we made tardy sweeps on the 4 main wings of the building. This is something that we are looking to do more regular for multiple reasons. Please be in the hallways and close your door when the tardy bell rings, also don’t allow anyone out of your room for the first 5-10 mins even with a hall pass. This helps the sweepers in sweeping the hallways." [would've been nice to have had this prior to the sweep]. PsychoCwkr whined to AP.
• 6th period: Another coworker comes in crying bc Vern told everyone that she was having an affair with some guy at work who is always in her 5th period class. Cwkr is engaged and is teaching a coteach class, which means that another teacher is in there with her 5th period teaching.
• 7th period: Student comes in my class: "Ms. Corson, are they sweeping the halls because you got yelled at this morning by that bald man with a loud, squeaky voice?" Turns out, she was in the hallway, along with several other students of mine, while the confrontation went on.
• class tonight: I've already finished my big project for next week, but now I have to completely redo it because she decided to give us "the rubric we discussed last week in class." Um...no, this was an entirely new rubric, and we all stared at her in horror. Most of us have to completely redo our projects even though we spend 3 hours last week discussing exactly what would be needed on the project. I'm not redoing it. Fuck it. I don't need this class anyway since i have a new fucking job next year! Whoooooooo!

That's it. Now I'm drinking a homemade raspberry lemondrop and I'm about to watch a feel good movie--maybe Breakfast at Tiffany's; maybe Serendipity; maybe caddyshack; or maybe office space to get ideas for a new screenplay, Teacherspace.

Part 2

I was going to write part 2 later, but I'm too grumpy to wait.

Today's highlights:

• Leave house at 6:40 to get to work by 7:15 for meeting.
• Late to meeting--wreck on 288
• walk in meeting just in time to hear Stripy (named such because her hair looks like a dirty zebra's underbelly) bitching about me and about how she's going to turn me in to the prinicpals because i'm late all the time
• smile at Stripy with a smile that only a Scorpio can give. If you don't know that smile, heh heh, you will
• listen to her read from an email that she sent us previously (and that we responded to) and to her requesting that we respond again.
• meeting over by 7:30. Why did we have to be there so early?
• go down to get coffee. We only get 1 cup per teacher per day, that is if we can because they only brew one pot a day for the entire faculty (167); someone always has to make a comment about how coffee is a drug and that i should get off drugs; today, someone made that comment and offered me a free sample of Spark, a "product' she sells that will enhance my brain capability and energy level [Read: Amway for health fanatics]
• Consistent emails all day from salesteacher asking how I feel after taking the product. I didn't take it.
• go to teacher restroom--ongoing fight about how these goodies think that i'm an asshole for not pumping the towels out for the next person who might come in. Who wants a stale, germ infested towel?--towels are pumped down again despite the fact that yesterday, someone crammed the whole thing down the toilet in rebellion. There's a tip jar for the custodians now. What are we in, the fucking George V in Paris? From what I hear, the custodians make more than I do. Granted, they clean up shit, but i"m still not tipping them. Call me a bitch. I'm tired of tipping, especially for powdered large grained soap and brown paper towels.
• lunch--talked to a colleague about class last night--private conversation. An eavesdropping colleague screams out, "Do you realize that you've complained for the entire lunch period? We all can find something positive to say. I mean at least you aren't that person on TV last night whose skin is falling off." WTF? Do you realize I wasn't fucking talking to you, fuckmonkey?
• Ran into someone in the hall--"How are you?" "Fine." She says, "just fine? It's a "blessed" day." What the fuck is this with the word blessed? I get this shit on emails with little butterflies and happy music and threats that if I don't send on the happy blessed prayer, my ass will fall off and my family will grow mustaches on their inner thighs. I said, well how are you? She said, "Oh, blessed. so so blessed." Yeah, well I'm fanfuckingtastic.
• get back to computer with another email from the salesteacher and a second one from another salesteacher who guilted me into buying some stupid ring for 14 dollars. Jesus. What the fuck is with these people? This particular person sells mary kay, premier jewelry, candlefucktastic, and some other tupperware thing. I've said no so many times that she looked like she was going to cry as she sheepishly asked me. I fucking bought a ring. DO I FUCKING WEAR JEWELRY? NOOOOOO!
• I don't even know what else happened, but it all added up to the fact that i hate perky people, and I have to wonder if they are actually happy or just vapid people who actually read these little pamphlets PISD gives us from the National Emergency Association (or something like that) about how to deal with stress that tells you to pretend that you are happy so that your synapses really believe it.

Oh, and an addendum to part 1, I forgot to mention that the woman, an African American, spoke 1/2 the time in Spanish without translation because she thinks that we need to get used to a more bilingual education atmosphere. This elicited whispers throughout from Pasty and her buddies, "Whut did she sayuh?" Strangely enough, I understood her. I didn't think I learned that much from living in Mexico for a summer.