Milestone of Parenting

Elli's been out of town the last couple of nights. This has happened before, and every time, Tegan would scream and cry for mama, often quite a few times in the night.

Both of the last two nights she's slept all through the night (yesterday she woke at 4am, but today she lasted until about 6am, which for me is a fine time to wake up, but I bet her mom won't think so). She's bright-eyed and sweet, and when she's asked for mama and been told she'll be home later today, she shrugs it off and plays with me just fine.

I took part of today off (I only teach one class today, so I took the parts of the day I don't teach off instead of my usual "run a study hall period" and "work during my prep period" Thursday.* She'll come with me to the class I teach (hopefully she'll nap during it; if not, no big deal, as my seniors will be working on their projects and I can set her up at my desk with a DVD) and then leave after that.

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* The ONE good thing about our current daily schedule is that on Tuesday and Thursday I run a study hall for one period, teach for the next period, and then I have prep the last period. It's great. However, the other days all suck because I don't get a prep and I teach intense courses those days. I'm SO looking forward to next year's more traditional six-periods-a-day; prep period every day schedule; it will make getting things done a lot easier.

Stuff I usually don't have time to post about...

Arranging this year's senior trip is becoming a nightmare. The office manager misunderstands half of what I tell her I need done, I'm not sure we have enough volunteer drivers (we did, but two of them flaked on us, and one student's supposed volunteer STILL hasn't signed on officially), which could mean the whole stupid thing is pointless, and the kids are taking their own sweet time paying up.

Normally this isn't a huge problem--most years we have enough students that we can afford to hire a bus. This year we only had 12 seniors, so the only way to make the trip affordable (at $170 a kid) was to rent three vans. The thing is, EVERYBODY wants to be a chaperone and get to go to Disneyland, get fed free food all night (Disney treats the chaperones quite well), and have fun. NOBODY wants to be a driver, who basically gets to drive to Anaheim, go to a hotel and have a free dinner, and then get up the next morning and drive back to Sacramento. I've tried going to the PTO, but that's really only six dedicated parents, and none of them are parents of Seniors, and none of them wants to do it, either. Feh!

I'm starting to think that maybe I should put one of my waiting-list Chaperones in my place, and be a driver myself. The kids don't want me to do that, and it would cause a few issues with Disneyland, since I'm the coordinator who they expect to show up, but it might be the only way, provided I can find a third driver.

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I'm almost as checked-out as my kids; I'm already thinking about how to improve my curriculum and teaching methods for next year; this year is basically done. I have to admit I'm kind of coasting with my Juniors; we only have three weeks left, which because of our weird schedule actually only translates to seven class days, so I created a film unit to take us through to finals. I figure what the hell; I've covered what I need to.

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I miss gaming. Yeah, I scheduled some more games, but I miss playing. No, that isn't a hint, it's a not-too-subtle poke at a few folks that it would be just grand if they ran a game. If I got to choose, I'd love to play either Pathfinder (hey, I transferred D&D to it because it's cool!), Arcana Evolved (I hate the non-human races in that game, but the classes are fun!), or Star Wars. If I didn't have to choose, I'd just want something where I could throw around some lightning or other cool stuff. I wish Dresden or Doctor Who were out already; both promise to be really good games aside from the licensed nature of them.

Someday I want to run a post-apocalypse game with a twist. And I have this desire to run (or better yet, play) a 7th Sea (Roll & Keep) game set not in the official world of Theah but in the Pirates of the Caribbean version of Earth. But that's neither her nor there; I'm already running two games. No more until one of them finishes. Or better yet, both of them.

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I suspect that the AP training I'm going through in July will be a requirement to totally rewrite the advanced Honors course I already wrote for next year. Bleah. I wrote the course for a CSUS program that would've enabled us to give CSUS units for the course. The English department at CSUS said it was a fantastic course design, but they didn't approve it because (as I knew would happen but my principal wouldn't listen) I don't have my MA yet. It was a difficult course to plan, and now I'll need to rewrite it for AP, which has very different requirements. Bleah.

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My daughter is the cutest ever. But sometimes I miss when she was tiny, and I could hold her in the crook of my arm and just stare at her as she slept. She's a lot more fun these days, but I miss infanthood.