TGIFFinally

This week has been trying. Really trying. I'm exhausted. Truly, utterly exhausted, to the point where I fall into bed at 8:30 every night. Once Luke is asleep, I'm asleep. And speaking of Luke, my usual happy sweet boy has been abducted. He is replaced by a drooling, screaming, crying, hitting monster who has four sharp, giant molars about to erupt through his gums. As a result, he wants to nurse nurse nurse, and mama wants to cry cry cry. I canceled on plans last night because he was such a wreck that I felt awful leaving him with Shane. I thought about canceling my hair appointment tonight, but no. I need this. I need the head and neck massage. I need to put my feet up and get new highlights and just relax. Lsat night, he woke up crying at 2AM, which he hasn't done in ages. My head is swimming this morning.

Wednesday, I had a student behave so rudely. Much more rudely than I've ever had a student behave (except for when I was seven months pregnant and a kid ran into me, then swore at me), so much so that I took her out in the hallway and yelled at her. And I feel awful. Really, horrible, bottom of my stomach awful because I don't like to yell at kids. I could say that she yelled at me first, but I'm the adult here, and I shouldn't yell, no matter how many buttons are pushed. Thursday, I spent all of 9th hour in Guidance with this same student, who insisted I was bullying her. Not because I yelled at her, but because I didn't believe her when she said I wasn't allowed to give her a tardy and she would tell my principal on me. She was completely, totally lying about the tardy issue, but STILL. When I spoke to her in Guidance, I said, "I'm really sorry for yelling, I shouldn't have done that. But I hope you can understand that even if you thought you were right in saying that you didn't deserve a tardy, you came across as very rude and disrespectful." She still insisted that she was not and is merely opinionated, without so much as an apology to me. She wouldn't even look at me. This is a girl who, just a month ago, asked if she could call me mommy because I was so nice to her. I won't even go into the whole sordid story of why I yelled at her, but suffice to say, she probably did deserve. That doesn't make me feel any better about it, though. It's like those days when you're short with your child, and you feel awful about it later. Only I have 100 children, and they can all be intensely irritating, yet I still love them and want the best for them.

Sorry for such an emo blog. I promise I'll be back to myself on Monday. I feel like less of a human lately. Like I need a really big hug or a spa day or time to just sit and giggle with someone, because I've forgotten what it's like to not be burned out. Sometimes I joke about yelling and scaring 8th graders, but I don't like it. Of course if I have an entire class out of control, I yell at them to settle down and knock it off, but that's not singling out anybody. Lately, I've felt so worn down by this job that I can't imagine doing it for the rest of my life. I guess I just haven't had that moment this year, the one where I feel like I know why I'm a teacher. I hope it's still out there.