The Exasperating Case of the Insomniac in the Night Time

I am crawling through my day on approximately zero-point-four hours of sleep last night which, last time I checked, doesn't come even close to the amount of sleep I need to babble even semi-coherently at the Raving Rabble that still insists on inhabiting my classroom periodically throughout my day. I mean, the seniors are gone--other than the occasional ones who pop in unexpectedly to bring me senior pictures and tell me that I am awesome and they will miss me horribly and YAY! I CAN ADD YOU ON FACEBOOK NOW! and all that, which, hey, practically makes me miss the Mangy Maggots--

(can maggots get mange? somehow I doubt this, but I rather like the nastiness of the alliteration and will leave it be.)

(hey, it's my blog and I can even stop using capital letters OR WRITE ALL IN CAPS if I want to--so there)

(I really need some sleep)

(Where was I? Oh yes.) --but the juniors and sophomores persist. On top of expecting me to rehash every piece of text they've SparkNoted read all semester, little glints of hope sparkling in their eyes that I will give up and just tell them the answers for the test, they expect me to actually read and comment on and grade the massive term papers that I sado-masochistically assign every year. WHY DO I DO THIS???? I ask myself every single f***ing year at this time as I gaze in doomy gloom--or gloomy doom, whichever is dominant at the time--at the massive pile of seven-to-ten- (sophomores) and ten-to-twelve- (juniors) page papers that threaten to smother me in a paperlanche. Of course, this year I had them all submit their papers electronically to the wonderful electronic plagiarism catcher slash online grading service we use, so it's all threatening me VIRTUALLY, which is interesting. At least this way there's less chance of Death By Papercut.

On top of that, I have gradually gained a sense that I am Not At All Well over the course of the day, including feeling rather feverish, developing a sore throat, and (since that wasn't enough) becoming increasingly nauseated.

(NOT NAUSEOUS, which is the error everybody makes these days that drives me absolutely batshit insane, because being NAUSEOUS means that it/one/you CAUSE[S] NAUSEA, not that you HAVE it. People feel NAUSEATED, dammit, and while some people may in fact be nauseous, like the nasty-piece-of-work senior who burned his last bridge with me two weeks ago and will NOT be getting friended on Facebook thankyouverymuch, that is not what most people are attempting to indicate. THAT WORD DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS.)

Ahem.

To add just a little more spice to our day, we went into a level one lockdown a short time ago, which means they aren't allowing people in or out of the building because there's a perceived threat somewhere in the area. It's the lowest level lockdown, but I have no idea why it's happening or when it will end. Because, you know, today wasn't enough of a Mondayish sort of Monday already.

The silver lining in it all is that my fourth hour sophomores cheered me up with their depictions of starfish of varying ethnicity and religion on the dry erase board, something that originated with a perky Jewish Starfish in a markered mural that gradually developed over the course of last week. The mural started with a cartoon turtle (a rather adorable one, much like the turtle on our class t-shirt with the joke word "intelligous" we had made last semester) with a speech bubble declaring I'm a turtle!, and it developed from there. The Jewish Starfish (a six-pointed starfish, naturally) showed up toward the end, along with a School of Attici--the plural form of "Atticus" (from To Kill a Mockingbird), obviously.

It's an....interesting class.

Okay, fine, maybe I'll miss those pesky students a little bit after all.

But right now? Right now I just want some french bread, a snuggle with MTL, and my bed. Preferably in that order.

Crumbs are so uncomfortable when they get in the sheets.