Holy hallelujah, I have a snow day! Actually, probably 2.  The nor’easter only started at 4 am, and I got called at 5, so it was a preventative snow day more than anything.  It is snowing, but not THAT hard.  Yesterday, I was cleaning up all of the dissection tools in the science lab, and the other science teacher was cross-referencing five different websites forecasts to see what the chances were for cancellation, and when I left we had it at 50 percent for today, and 100 percent for tomorrow. So, yay! This is EXACTLY what I needed.

Most annoying thing of yesterday:

I have to register my car. It expired in December, but we were going to buy a new car (ha! ha!) so I stalled.  I went in on Friday of last week, drew my ticket and saw that the wait time was longer than the office was going to be open, but I saw some people I knew — a guy who student taught with me last fall, and one of my special ed directors — and talked to them a bit before throwing in the towel.  I had meetings and class and blah blah blah, so I decided I’d go on Wednesday, yesterday.  After frog dissection in the afternoon (so fun making the kids squirm, more in a second) I washed out all the trays and tools with the help of a kid in detention (who I really like, but I love the bad kids, as you know), packed up my stuff with the expectation that I wouldn’t be back til Monday, and went to the DMV. I pulled my ticket and had an hour to wait. I brought a book, which was good, but I also had to pee, because I hadn’t since noon and needed to hold it until I got home to use an OPK.

I waited for an HOUR. I got to the window, and the lady said "Have you paid your excise tax at city hall?"

MOTHERFUCKER.

Now, see, the last time I registered my car in Bangor, I had to go to DMV because I was getting Maine plates again.  Then, every other time I did it at the town office in Levant, where we lived. This is my first time registering in Bangor since ’98, and I’d forgotten about that whole ‘City Hall’ bit. So. Most annoying thing this week. In a close second, Freddy and Kendra winning The Amazing Race, and Kris and Jon being second and stalled by a train.

Frog dissection was fun.  Kids had to be paired up with a cutter and a note-taker, and they did so good! One girl had her sweatshirt pulled up to her eyes she was so squicked out, and after ten minutes of watching her partner cut, she begged for gloves and an apron because she wanted to cut, too.  When I handed out the frogs, as kids reached in, every once in a while I’d make the bag jump, which freaked them out. Heh. There’s also this thing about me being half-frog (long story, but it’s a joke the kids like, and that probably confuses other people when I walk down the hall and "ribbit" at my students) so one kid who is very into the Mrs. S is a Frog thing started asking if I knew the frog. Which led to me singing "Grandma got cut open by a student" to the tune of "Grandma got run over by a reindeer" which is really a good snapshot of how my teaching style is. I ribbit and sing and wave magic fairy wands at kids when they are talking during assemblies.  That’s what people see, anyway. They don’t see the conflict resolution, or the encouraging words, or the quiet conversations after school. And you can’t measure that on tests, it doesn’t increase funding, and it doesn’t prove shit. So, I’m not a ‘good teacher’ because of that. And yet, it’s what makes me the ‘best teacher’ my kids call me.

ANYWAY. (I’m getting a lot of entries down in one shot here, basically.)

Before this morning, the most exciting part of my week was deciding to switch grocery stores.  I’ve been loyal to Hannaford forever, but lately I find I have to toggle between two of their stores to get everything I need, so I went to the downtown Shaw’s and fell in love. Part of my Hannaford loyalty is that they have better bags (I reuse them) but now that I have Target, I can still get the ‘good bags’ there and take the hit at Shaw’s in favor of being almost certain to not run into people I know, and have access to more of the food we like, all at one store. Pretty sweet, eh?  But that is now the second most exciting thing, the first is that…. I ovulate!

I had splurged on the Clearblue easy OPKs for this month because they were on sale for 16 bucks (down from 25).  I had tried the cheapies before, but never felt really confident or that the results were really clear, and CBE also claims to be able to be used at any time of the day.  I peed on one this morning, and right away, clear as day, got a positive OPK result. No doubt about it, the test line is WAY darker than the control, and it came up instantly that way.  We also cracked open the PreSeed for the first time last night, which is good timing, and while I want to just leap on Dave when he gets home, I am trying to be patient and let that 36 hours elapse so that we don’t overdo it. So, tomorrow. Don’t call tomorrow morning, mmkay?

So, yeah. I ovulate, I love my kids and hate my job, dead frogs are funny, and Shaw’s is better than Hannaford, now.