Puzzling school situations, Puzzling dreams, Puzzling Puzzles

 My husband is leaving this afternoon for a week (then home for a few days and gone for two weeks). For a nice change of pace, the massive snow dump happened just before he left instead of just after - bad for him, good for me. March Break is one week earlier than I thought it was, which is... neutral, I guess, I'm not gasping for it the way I was for the Christmas holidays. Funny thing about my Thursday school, I was almost ready to give notice and then I went in last week and it....suddenly didn't suck anymore. It's almost like it was my vicious winter depression that was the problem and not the school. 

I do have to say, it's been startling and humbling working in a K-8 school (my other two are K-6). There's something about the boundary-testing and defiance and general VERY MUCH THERE-ness of pre-and-early-teens that I'm struggling with how to address. Part of the problem was that I was trying to act from a position of 'there are no bad kids', knowing that sometimes neurodivergence and anxiety is misjudged as bad behaviour. I moved from this to 'there are no bad kids, but there are kids whose needs outstrip my resources', articulated wonderfully by my friend Sasha (HI SASHA). And then my extremely wise friend Kerry (HI KERRY) jumped in with 'uh, of course some kids are assholes, just like some adults are assholes', which blew my tiny, over-idealistic mind. SOME KIDS ARE ASSHOLES. This doesn't mean they're evil or destined for a life of unremitting dickishness, but sometimes they're just being assholes and need to be told to knock it off. (I should have just talked to a teacher, they would have set me straight in nothing flat).

Speaking of friends who are smarter than me, everyone who commented on my last post about the one teacher at my new school who didn't talk to me at all during library period and left without half her class, and said 'maybe she was a sub'? Never even occurred to me and guess what? SHE WAS A SUB. The new school is turning out to be a pretty chill gig. Not to mention I found this while shelving:

Angus had one of these when he was four or so, and it was a Precious Beloved Object. He called it his Masseen Book, and we actually bought a second copy in case anything ever happened to it. He took it everywhere, and would have to come down and get it if he accidentally got into bed without it. 

I have not resumed my organizing/decluttering mission, even though Christmas 2.0 has come and gone, so it well past time (times two) to put away the remaining Christmas decorations. Do you have an addictive personality? I tend to think I don't - drugs and alcohol are fun and all, but I've never once woken up feeling like I needed to blaze (no idea if I said that right) or toss back a shot of vodka. However, there are certain things that at certain times I feel very much that some kind of compulsion is involved.

After Eve and I did the puzzle, I took out another one. My friend Nat (HI NAT) gave it to me for my birthday and it's beautiful and also almost broke me. The picture is upside down because I had to spin it around to work on the top. I tried rotating the picture but then the pretty cylinder container was sort of upside down and it gave me a headache. Anyway. Here's me last Sunday thinking "I will put a puzzle out and every day I will work for the puzzle for half an hour and it will be a calming, Zen activity and it will soothe my nervous system, *gentle chimy music playing*. Here's me every other day last week looking up from the puzzle and realizing three hours have gone by, my eyes are bloodshot, my back is jacked and I'm dying of thirst. But I can't get up until I find this ONE FUCKING PIECE. Oh thank god, I found it. Okay, just one more. I have a sickness. I'm a little afraid that when Matt gets back on Friday he will find my skeleton slumped over at the puzzling dining room table.

On one of Suzanne's (HI SUZANNE) recent posts, in which she was talking about remembering your dreams, I commented that I do sometimes remember my dreams, and when I do they are bonkers, but then I go long stretches without remembering any. Very soon after, I had the craziest, most vivid dream about coming home from some errands and finding that Matt and a bunch of our close friend group had gotten high as fuck while I was out and destroyed the house. Furniture was upside down, stuff was spilled, Matt had poured spaghetti in my Doc Martens. They were all apologetic but incoherent. I have no idea where that came from, it's been like a decade since we celebrated Michael's birthday and broke the coloured shot glasses and discovered exactly how many Burt Reynolds shots are too many and whether or not a toilet can be peed in and thrown up in at the same time. 

To close on a less debauched note, Nicole's (HI NICOLE) last post mentioned not wading into the top sheet debate, which made me laugh because I remembered this post that was practically my most-commented-on post of 2020, and even though only three small paragraphs were about top sheets, that's what most of the comments referenced. I still use a top sheet, my kids still don't.

And now I'm going to change my sheets because not that he's dirty or anything, but every time Matt leaves I revel in the fact that I can change the bed and sleep in the nice clean sheets and read a paper book with the light on for a few nights. 

Now that I've made the word 'puzzle' incomprehensible to myself, happy weekend everyone.