yaaaay, let's buy stuff!

I haven't bought a whole lot of stuff recently, just stuff I've been meaning to buy. For example, some more teacher clothes. I found some good deals at Target and I have my eye on some stuff at the outlet mall. When that stuff goes on sale, ohhh my! Will I have some teacher clothes? I love clothes.
I also bought the fancypants camera you see above. I got it for a killer deal on amazon.com and also managed to snag a memory card for a good price, too. It was sent yesterday, so it's already headed my way! Once it gets here and I make sure it's what I want and everything works correctly, I will be sending Miss Katy my digital camera for a few dollars (price still to be determined. I'll see what she's will to pay for it. The whole camera works except for the zoom.) as well as a book that I suggested to her before I left Kzoo.

This morning I was having this wonderful dream about not having to get up because it had snowed! It felt so realistic: I got out of bed, shivering, and looked out the window to see more snow than I'm sure they're used to here. I was jumping around for a while, all excited about not having to go to school, and then went back to bed. Then my alarm went off and I realized that none of that actually happened. I was sleeping really good, too. It ended up being a good day in school. The classes were kind of unstructured because of the essay due date being today. Half of my more rowdy class on the "B" day (today) was in the library, finishing typing up their papers with my co-teacher. I was stuck playing babysitter to the already finished (and bored) and the completely unmotivated (and sort of whiny about having to write a paper). I had to explain multiple times things I've already explained and I had to explain why we're writing this paper and how, basically, no- it's not very fun for anyone and no- it's not a very good way to start off the year, but if we get past it, we've all overcome a big, boring obstacle and the rest of the writing for the year will seem soooooo easy. Ah well. That class needs more structure on most days, otherwise they regress into children. Which is usually managable for me, but the crushing weight of essays finished and unfinished and having to read so many of them the past week gave me a big, fat headache. Most of the students were pretty understandable and told others to quiet down. Since the season's changing, quite a few of my students have had some major headaches that we can do nothing about since I can't give them any drugs and they can't take any in school. I told them, basically, "Listen. I have a headache. You'll have to excuse me for any snappy attitude I may give you at this moment. I don't mean it and you'll have to show a little maturity and patience that I know you have. We all have those days, as I've seen from you-- now you're seeing one from me. Next time, we'll all be back to 'normal'." I'm glad most of them understood. I still felt pretty much like a failure at the end of the day and I knew I could've done this unit a lot better. Next time, I know exactly what to do. Lucky for me, I have an amazing department head and two great co-teachers who understand this is the first time I've ever done a unit all on writing one specific type of essay. Whew.