Mother's Day 2018

  The week before Mother's Day is Teacher Appreciation week, so you could say we teacher moms are spoiled. You could also say we're exhausted, and if we are trying the keto diet, we are grumpy that everything in the teacher's lounge this week is bread based.
   Every year a teacher or two will have their kids write a thank you note to one of their teachers this week.  Since these are my actual, last moments as the theatre teacher and possibly my last weeks at LHS ( but the kids don't know that), I think I received more notes this year than in past years. Or that's hyperbole because I'm all Emotionally Unstable and such. Also these bifocals suck. I wore those gradual bifocals that transition for three years and they were never quite right. I would still remove my glasses to read, there was no such thing as a "sweet spot" from which I could comfortably read. I bitched about it for three years, and Harper decided she'd had enough and bullied me into going to a different eye doctor. The prescription this time seems to be better, but the transition lenses are $150 more than the lined lenses, and with job stuff in the air, we need to save money. So I opted for the lined biofocals, how much different can they be?
   Well...my lang arts kids think I'm both drunk and old, because I can't find the proper distance that will work for the computer, so reading their google.doc essays and entering their grades has become a circus act entitled "Watch The Crazy Old Lady Try To Navigate Basic Technology". I have to hold my glasses with one hand at the proper distance while navigating infinite campus with the other. The movement makes me dizzy and disoriented, so in addition to my regular issues with tracking the stupid teeny tiny boxes in IC and forgetting names because I can't remember to take the Ginko that helps memory, and the remaining effects of a major concussion three years ago when I wrecked  my motorcycle and gave my already addled little grey cells serious damage causing headaches and light sensitivity and don't tell me concussions aren't real ...what was I saying?
 
   My first thirty minutes of Mother's Day this year began with Genoa calling me from Durango where she is house/dog/child sitting for her former prof who is in NYC. The dachshund of the house was pooing blood and G was, of course, freaking out. She called me in a panic after calling the emergency vet line, her former prof and another prof in Durango who did not answer the phone.

    "Mom, I'm freaking out. She pooped straight blood and is hiding under the couch. I tried to get her and she bit me."
     "Okay, that sucks."

  This is the kind of stellar help my children receive from me, which earns me such high accolades on Mother's Day. Based on this short snapshot, you can only imagine how successful I am as a teacher.
  So when I do receive a note of thanks, I am a bit confused, as the above exchange is pretty much how I handle things at school:

  Lang Arts "Can I turn it in late?"     
                    "Nope."

  Theatre     "I don't know my lines."
                   "That sucks."

  These are the responses that have managed to not earn me any titles, such as Mother Of The Year or Teacher Of The Year. Yet I have the nerve to be incensed with I am not thrown a parade, unable to get to my office due to the bushels of roses left in my path or flown to New York for a week of Just Theatre by my loving and rich family.

   Instead, the massive dog that supposedly belongs to G but is here and not in Durango is sighing deeply on the floor, his breath expelled at my foot like the steam from a train smokestack because he is beyond bored. Marty is jumping everywhere and refusing to go outside because he will not pee in the rain, a quirk of his that is not cute. Indie is upside down on the couch, awaiting his morning gnawing from Zippy, who is instead bored and sighing. The day does not begin until someone says "Zippy, drop it" which also means "Stop chewing on Indie". No other humans are up, and the cats all came in, scarfed their food and fell asleep. Gatos Diablos are not very active when it's rainy. So,  I'm alone in the living room, trying to type with one hand because you know, bifocals, but occasionally able to adjust to the end of my nose so I can actually type, drinking coffee and choosing to spend this day avoiding the rest of my life, which is waiting for me tomorrow, crouched at the edge of my addled concussion brain and shattered heart like the clawed spider monster from A Quiet Place.

    It's fine, I'm find, stop looking at me I'm fine.