Monday, February 23, 2009

I'm a Survivor! (cue music)

Yes, I have survived an entire week without the internet at home. In the process, I suffered excruciating withdrawal symptoms and discovered there are about four or five more hours in a day than I realized. :-) Now, it's back to business as usual, of course, and there are no longer enough hours in the day.
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Computer gremlins were not the worst thing about last week, unfortunately. Mr. PBMX drama continues ad nauseum. In his bid to show me when I asked him to procure a copy of our marriage license, he got himself hospitalized and lost his apartment and was homeless for a few days. Apparently, his mother is trying to divorce him as well. Or else, sleeping on the street was preferable to spending time with her. She's a pretty miserable bitch, but I think I could suck it up in those circumstances.

So, I am now waiting with baited breath to see if he will actually send me the paperwork (which he claims he has in his possession) so that I can finalize our divorce. I hoping to keep our separation under three years, if possible. I dream big.

Karl is helping me to keep it all in perspective-- I've never been hospitalized against my will, therefore, my life is pretty good. :-)
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I have a new bon mot from school: a summary of a book apparently involving Nate the Great and a drug dealer. :-) I'll try to get it posted in the next few days.

Monday, February 09, 2009

The Catcher in the Rye, not middle school reading

Once again, my admin's lack of reading has had interesting consequences for me. Last semester, I had to deal with the relatively minor issue of explaining how an unmarried woman could be a mother. You may recall that I got out of that one when the students decided it was a miracle. Romeo and Juliet of course uses poetic language and euphemisms that I could glide right past...

This time, I may not get off so easily. The Powers That Be have determined that my middle schoolers need to read The Catcher in the Rye. Sigh. Clearly, they have never read the book or even a review of it. On the upside, I'll definitely know who did their reading this weekend. The ones that DON'T have questions about why the woman took off her clothes in Holden's hotel room and then a guy beat up Holden to get ten dollars for the woman, what horny means, and why was Holden so upset that the girl he knew sat in a car with his roommate, etc etc will be a dead giveaway... Sigh. I'm warming up my jazz hands as I write this.

I understand that not everyone likes to read as much as I do, even if I can't always see my way to dating them :-) , but there is really no excuse for not at least reading reviews before assigning it to students. Barring that, open the book to page one, which has no less that four curse words. One would think after the Kurt Vonnegut Incident a couple of years ago, things might have changed...