Black Cats and Horseshoes and Birthdays

 Predictably, now that I've finished the book review posts, I am feeling a magnificent disinclination to blog. Or rather, I think "I should blog" and then think "but about what?" How do I begin, if not by cutting and pasting book titles and plot rundowns and looking up quotes in my book notes? 

January is always a slog for me. I almost invariably have a headache for most of the month - a few things have been investigated, but it seems to come down to some weird combination of atmospheric pressure and my body chemistry being, well, weird. I still had a headache at the very beginning of February, but then it stopped for a few days, and now it's intermittent, which is an improvement. My mental health plummets no matter what I do to shore it up (to be clear, what I do is not all that heroic - drink lots of water, get a bit more sleep than usual, try to move a little more but fail often because just getting to and from work is exhausting). 

I forget where I was going with this - I swear I think I was going somewhere other than Whine City, Population: Me (quick, somebody tell me to take Highway 52 to Copetown). Oh, maybe I kind of remember. So it was the first week of February and things were looking up a little and I had done some cleaning and organizing and cooking in addition to working and then reading and stuffing an assload of carbs in my face. And then yesterday SUCKED. I woke up with a weird headache at the back of my head. So many kids were annoying ("I'm looking for that book with a bug on the front". "Sorry, I don't know what you mean, do you know that title?" "What's a title?") My two grade six classes in the afternoon who are usually lovely had a sub instead of the teacher that I love. The substitute looked about seventeen and was wearing track pants and a white t-shirt with sneakers - I thought he was a high school co-op student. It would have been funny if he then turned out to be surprisingly competent, but this was not the case. In the first slot, he held court before a group of adoring sixth-grade girls while the rest of the class did cartwheels and screamed their heads off. In the second slot the kids were basically okay, but this was probably not due to his behaviour, which consisted of sitting at a table with one other kid and looking at Guinness World Record Books. 

It seemed like every road I tried to drive on was blocked by someone driving weirdly. Lucy, who hadn't peed on the stairs once in Matt's long absence, peed on the stairs. I finished a puzzle and there were two pieces missing (actually that one didn't bother me as much as I would have thought, especially since it was a regift and not a purchase).

I was pretty cranky at work, until one boy asked me how my day was going and then said he hoped the rest of it was good and I got over myself a little. By the time I went to bed it was seeming fairly amusing, but I hoped today would be better.

It was almost freakishly better.

I was getting ready for work, wherein I start stacking all the things I need at the top of the two stairs down to the entrance. My purse, my bag with the seat cushion that saves my back, my fan, my water bottle and my lunch bag, another water bottle for my longer commute on Thursdays, and the bag with my boots to change into at school. Today there was also a table fan that I needed to leave in the mailbox for someone from the Freecycle group to pick up. So there was a lot going on, and I tipped over my water cup, which had a lid, but the lid had a hole, and a fair bit spilled. But it spilled in the one direction where it got absolutely nothing wet, and there was a towel right there that I was about to throw downstairs for the laundry.

I got a really good parking spot at work. The first two classes are grade sixes and come in groups, and they were all happy and chatty and asked me questions and thanked me for every answer. Then my challenging class showed up. They've had a new teacher, starting last week. 

You guys. I don't know what the hell she did, but holy shit, it was a one hundred and eighty degree difference. They lined up quietly. They came in and I congratulated them on that and handed out their cards. They got their books and sat at tables and read or drew bookmarks. I had cordial interactions with many of the boys who could not have been more jerkish a few weeks ago. I'm trying really hard not to think that other teacher was bad. Maybe they just didn't click with her. Maybe all the good will evaporate and it will be back to crappy normal next week. It was a really nice change anyway.

My last class was awesome - we read a book about a dog who does ballet. 

After work I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. I walked in and tried to pull out a cart, already bracing myself because at this store you have to pull a cart out by its front, not its handle, and they almost always refuse to separate from the one behind. There was a woman getting a cart from the next row, and without missing a beat she reached over and held onto the cart behind mine so I could pull mine out smoothly. I thanked her profusely after I picked up my jaw from her insanely well-timed act of thoughtfulness. 

ANYway, in the midst of all this, my youngest child turned TWENTY-ONE, *stacks my dusty bones on ice floe preparatory to being shoved off into oblivion*. After her hellish week of being sick she had a hellish week of catching up on all the stuff she had to do less of while being sick, culminating in an organic chemistry mid-term at SEVEN O'CLOCK on a Friday evening, which seems like a wholly dickish time to plan an organic chemistry mid-term. And then she went out drinking AFTER IT (this is not unusual for most university students but is somewhat for my early-bedtime loving homebody). They went to a speakeasy with a door behind a bookcase that you needed a passcode for, just in case you weren't already feeling like your life could be way cooler than it is. 

If that wasn't trippy enough, she went out AGAIN on Saturday, although she had to chug a mini-Coke to stay up until they went out at eight-thirty. 

When she lived here, we would always take a picture of her the night before her birthday, on her last night of being the age she was. Now she has to send me one, sometimes with bonus housemates.

On her actual birthday yesterday I ordered fancy cinnamon buns for the house instead of a cake. 

She's home for reading week week after next, when we can do the family celebration. My Facebook memories yesterday were a parade of birthday posts.

Now that she can legally drink in the United States (which she celebrated by drinking fake-illegally), perhaps I will raise a glass in Canada. Or maybe not - my head kind of hurts again, maybe I'll just go to bed. But look, I blogged and didn't talk about books! Much!