I hate being a LIbra...

You all know the birth sign Libra, right? The scales? The justice? I hates it.

I have a temper (shocker) and I have a spine, and I know how to use them--but it's hard sometimes when you see the other guy's side of the story. But that doesn't mean it doesn't piss me off. (You can see how this can lead to stomach ulcers and/or eating your feelings, right?)

See, the thing is...

I was leading my second period (again, shocker that it would be this class!) back from the library and almost everybody was inside when suddenly two of the girls started shrieking at the top of their lungs. "Holy shit! What the fuck! Oh my God!" I turn back around to see what the problem was, and there's a five inch praying mantis on the rail of the ramp to my room. I snap, "Oh, Jesus, calm down!" but I can see their point--one of the girls had almost put her hand on the thing, and yeah. It would freak anybody out a little, right?

So they're almost calmed down when here comes the two biggest bozos from my class room--except, they're not really being bozos. They're trying to be HEROES. "It's just a bug! I'll kill it for you!"

And I've got my hands on their shoulders and am pushing them back inside, when...

My curmudgeonly colleague comes out of his classroom. He's pissed off. He was giving a quiz, and suddenly there is screaming and shrieking and "What the fuck!" interrupting his class and he automatically assumes (and this is wrong of him) that I don't have things in hand, so he starts ordering my bozos back into the room.

My bozos are bozos. I've sent them to the office more often in the last two months than I sent anybody in all of last year. But they are MY bozos, and they were actually GOING BACK TO THE ROOM, and suddenly curmudgeonly colleague is out on his step yelling at them, and they get mad. That's MY job. They go, but they're grumbling, and then one of them says something HIGHLY inappropriate.

And suddenly they're both being referred. And they're mad at me for not standing up for them. Except they've just told another teacher "That fuckin' niggah do too much!" so they're screwed.

*sigh*

And I can see everyone's point. Curmudgeonly colleague has a right to keep his door open without worrying about my kids kicking up a ruckus. The girls were being teenaged girls--it was a big skeery bug. The boys were not actually being bozos--they were trying to be heroes. I get it. I wrote an e-mail to administration saying just that--the boys said inappropriate things to a staff member--I support any consequences. But the admin should know that they were reacting to other circumstances--they felt like CC was getting into their business when he shouldn't have.

To an extent, they're right.

I resent having someone order my kids around. And I walked into lunch with every intention of calling CC aside and saying as much to him. But lunch was... crowded. And rowdy. And people were enjoying themselves, and the weekend was coming, and... and my spine deserted me.

I managed to say something like, "Hey, Curmudgeonly--the next time I need a bug killed, I'll be sure to go into your room and get you first! Because, you know, God forbid we should kill them ourselves!" And then I left it at that.

Because he's a friend, and he may have pissed me off, but when the bozos are gone, we're gonna be stuck with each other and it would be nice if we were speaking.

I hate being a Libra.


And on the lighter side of things? (And also relating to Curmudgeonly bossing my kids around, but this time didn't piss me off.)

Another class of kids was going off to the library, and one of the girls was being pretty loud. As I took off after the class (after shooing the stragglers out of my room) Curmudgeonly said "Hey, could you quiet her down a little!" and I was planning to anyway, so I walked up next to her and asked her nicely to not shriek across the quad.

Now Sweetie's a big girl-- as am I, and I wobbled a little as I was walking and bumped into her. I apologized, and she laughed, "That's why big girls like us aren't supposed to walk together Ms. Lane--we'll rub up together and start a fire!"

I was cracking up over that one all day.

And I'm sorry the post was late--I had another oops moment where I went to put the kids down to sleep and fell asleep with them. *happy sigh* I'm starting to enjoy those.