"What a week I'm having!"

A favorite movie as a little girl was Splash. The mermaid, the romance...all added up to a great movie by me at the tender age of 5. What I didn't realize, however until I was an adult was how vulgar it is! She shows her bum while naked at the Statue of Liberty, there's cursing, and John Candy talks about his article in a dirty magazine. Still a classic I suppose though...

Anyways, there is a line from the movie that sums up the last several days of my life...."What a week I'm having!!"

Yet again it was a rough week. (When isn't it a rough week?) Yet, we are persevering! With at least a fake smile on my face that Stephen always says will turn into a real one.

Here's the day-by-day rundown.

Monday: At least 4 fights at school. Most of which occur outside of my room. At one point, I could not exit Stephen's room so I had to use an alternate door - not before getting a glance of butt crack though from one of the girls fighting! The fighting was really bad - by the end of the day we had a Code Yellow (Red is the worst) and half a dozen police officers on campus. Sure beats the one security guard we had the rest of the day.

Tuesday: During lunch, the fire alarm goes off. At first we think it's just a drill, but then the fire trucks pull up and the rumor starts that a student set the auditorium on fire. Turns out it was just some dust in the heater, but it still cost me part of my planning period.

Wednesday: During my planning (why does my planning always get messed up?), we went to Code Red. Code Red basically means we could be facing the next Columbine. Not having any of my own students to worry about, my own safety became top priority. I quickly locked myself in a storage closet with only one high window. I brought my computer along to plan a lesson for the time being. This ended up not being the greatest idea. This storage closet has a healthy supply of random chemicals and an even healthier supply of rat poo! So, after breathing in these delightful fragrances I ended up with a nasty headache.

The Code Red was called off after about an hour. The cause was a suspicion that there was a gun on campus. To be honest, there probably was, but the gun made its way from person to person and was never found. The only weapon found was a knife in someone's wallet. Really boosts the morale of the school, eh?

Thursday: Perhaps there were some more fights, I didn't see any, but knowing our school, I wouldn't put it passed our kids! The only highlights of the school day were an extremely sore throat on my part, for yelling at my kids so profusely that my face went as red as the lockers and I ended up writing 4 students on referrals. It would be safe to say that I am not looking forward to seeing my A-day students on Monday.

The really exciting part of Thursday was a trip to the library to return some movies. While we were pulling up in the driveway, I realized a very sad truth: neither of us had a key to the house with us!!! And although it has been on our list of things to do for a very long time to give our neighbors an extra key, it has not been done, so we were officially locked out. We also turn out to be rather safe homeowners. All of our windows were locked, our back doors locked, and our lock is hard to pick!!

After conferencing in our dear friends house down the way, we decided to be cheap and not have a locksmith come to open the door for over 50 bucks. We stayed the night at Alison and JT's and planned on talking to the lady at the model home the next day. Our key is the same as the model home (yes, we need to get it re-keyed...also on the list of things to do), so we figured that we could eventually get in.

Friday: The district came to visit my classroom...stressful. I wore Alison's clothes to school (thanks!) and I anxiously waited to hear from the model house lady. She never picked up, so after 11 am, I called the other model townhomes in the neighboorhood built by the same people. Turns out the model house lady takes Friday's off. UGH! But! The other model home lady offered to come and open the door for me.

Success! I was able to get into the house during my lunch and get our key.

Kicked a student out of my class for being disrespectful...nuts.

Saturday: Grading - yuck. And only 12 of Stephen's 70 biology students scored at least a 70 on the last test. Depressing.

Stephen wants me to add that he is currently battling a virus on his computer.



Life is good in so many ways! But certainly not perfect in all ways. As Sheri Dew says, "If Life Were Easy, It Wouldn't Be Hard"....right?

Here's praying next week goes a lot better...