Sitting pretty in the shallow end or drowning deep in the Mariana Trench?

Lately my husband and I have been asking each other to rank how underwater we’re feeling. 1 is sitting pretty in the shallow end and 10 is drowning deep in the Marianas Trench. Lately we’ve both been hovering around 7 or 8.

It’s hard when neither of us have any margins to pick up the other’s slack. It’s hard when everything, EVERYTHING feels like too much.

We have new admins this year and they put together a crazy schedule for the first three days of school. Each day this week (we started on Wednesday), a different grade level is meeting for an assembly to review school wide expectations. They put this assembly during 1st period and since each grade is going separately they added 30 minutes to each 1st period this week. That means we see that one class an extra 60 minutes this week (not counting the assembly), even though just lengthening one 1st period would have been enough to give each class the same number of minutes over the week. Also, the teachers who have 1st period prep (they aren’t teaching that period), got 90 minutes more prep than the rest of us, who all get less prep than usual because all the other periods are shorter to accommodate the longer 1st period.

I took serious issue with this arrangement and let my admins know. I even offered several possible ways of rectifying the situation. They of course dug in their heels. If there is something I hate more than a thoughtless, unforced error, it’s a refusal to fix it. I’m finally getting over it now, but it was not a great way to start the school year.

And I’m sure it bothered me as much as it did because I feel so underwater that 90 minutes of extra prep would help me out so much. I could use that to watch my mandated trainings, or review the dozens of IEP and 504 plans sitting in my inbox, or just get ready for my classes. I have such big classes this year – 27, 32, 35(!!!), 31 students in my four 7/8 classes – that just regular prep work is taking longer than I’m used to.

I got to write this post because I worked out on the elliptical machine tonight mostly so I could get my Back to School Night slides done. And now I’m trying to get this post up.

This weekend my cousin is in town and I hope to see him briefly Saturday morning, and my husband and I are seeing Sigur Ros in Berkeley(our alma mater) on Saturday night. Sunday we’re Right now I have my eyes set on the long weekend coming up after next week, but I know it won’t provide the margins I need.

And I just spent over an hour looking for $150 worth of gif cards from Costco. I must have left them in the cart? I’ve never done that before but I’m such a mess lately I guess I did. I’m so mad at myself. I hate losing things. I feel like such a failure when I do shit like this. I’m never going to stop doing shit like this. I’m never going to get better.