Pretty Much a Dead Dog

PMDD for short.

Hi. I'm Jane. I suffer from PMDD. My mood swings would make an angry water buffalo turn and run back to his mommy.

The first step is to admit that I am powerless over my hormones, and my PMDD has become unmanageable. (Isn't that the first step?) Whatever. My brain hates me and always has. The chemicals and I, we don't get along.

Today has been a very sucky day that way. I am grouchy and energetic by turns. The girls and I raked the yard - so fun! There are pictures!! The sun! The fresh air! Then I threw a petty fit and had to go put myself in time out. Bad Mommy. Then we played. Yay! Then I took a three hour nap. Boo. (I tend to sleep a lot when I'm depressed.) Then I made soup! Yay! Then bathtime was a disaster. Guilt. Living with me must be like riding a damn rollercoaster. The kind where you get stuck hanging upside down for three hours, or where you hit a bump and get decapitated, or where small children are thrown from their harnesses.

I am the Carnival Ride of Death. My family must love me.

I went on the Pill at 14 to help control this, and stayed on it until I found out I was pregnant with the Bear. (Yeah, you read that right.) I went back on briefly between kids, went back off, went back on after Tank was born, and then went off a year after Husband had his vasectomy. I was all, why put artificial hormones into my body, why not let my body do what it was intended to do, why not embrace all the aspects of my womanhood, blah blah fucking blah. And at first, it was not bad. My cycle finally settled back into a regular pattern (31 days exactly), my periods are shorter than ever, the cramps are almost nil. I could love this. But a week before my period, I am like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Seriously. Just that one week. For the rest of the time, I feel like I'm pretty stable. I don't know. Husband, what do you think?

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I'm considering going back on the Pill just to control the damn hormonal fluctuations. It has worked for me in the past, but I really don't want to if I don't have to. Still, if my pretty impressive drug regimen doesn't control the raging PMS, what else is out there?

Meh.

Fed up

You know how much I love my job? You should. I've been blabbing about it the last two days in a row. A few stats, if you will:

I moved to a city that has a cost of living three times as high as the one I left.

The cost of a house like ours, if we tried to buy it in Chicago, would be over a million dollars.

I went from paying $120 a week for daycare to $255. That's an extra $1350 per year.

It will likely cost us at least $5000 to put the Bear in a decent preschool next year. An almost equal amount for Tank, too.

Husband took a 5% pay cut when we moved.

I work for a wonderful school in a wonderful city, and I love what I do. I make $4000 more here than I did before we moved.

Full tuition at my fancy-pants private school is 40% of my annual salary.

My annual salary, before taxes, would buy me this car, and probably a tank of gas and a grande chai latte.

I'm okay with that. If I had wanted to make the big bucks, I never would have gone into education. I don't hang out with 12-year olds all day for the money, that's for sure!*

Recently, the news has been covering this story about Township School District 211 in Illinois (western suburbs, to be specific).** An hour and twenty minutes before the negotiations were set to expire, the teachers accepted a temporary contract and decided not to strike.

How magnanimous of them.

The average annual salary of a teacher in Township School District 211 in Illinois is $85,766. That's in USD, people. And they were going to strike. For more money.

Greed has taken over the human race. When over a thousand teachers, teaching in cushy white-bread suburban schools making nearly $100,000 per year want to strike to get more money, it's time for a revolution. And those fuckers better the the first against the wall when it comes.

I don't deny that teachers, like any other group of workers, have the right to collective bargaining to achieve the things that they need - I was almost part of a CPS strike four years ago over a number of factors, including a cap on class sizes (at 30!). That's fairly realistic, when you have a class of 36 and some kids have to sit on the floor for lack of space. Go on, hire more teachers. The current teachers don't want more money for themselves, they want more teachers and therefore more attention for their students. Good. I would walk a picket line for that. But for a raise over my $85,766 salary? To bring it to an even $90,000, for example? No. Staying in class with my kids is way more important. What kind of message does that send?

"I'm not here for you, I'm here so I can afford the payments on my McMansion."

"I don't care about your education, I care about my paycheck."

I'm ashamed to even be a part of a profession that spawns people like these. This man, John Braglia, the president of the Township School District 211 Teachers' Union, works in a *very* cushy white-bread suburban school, making at or above the $85,766 average salary (I would assume, based on his education and years of experience). He teaches four sessions of the same class (1 PREP, kids!), which only takes up half a day. That's it. He does union stuff and sits around his office for the rest of the day.

To all the teachers of District 211 - go fuck yourselves. I hope your children go to school and have teachers just like you. That's the worst (and most fitting) retribution I can think of. And especially you, John Braglia. I'm keying your Lexus with laser beams from my eyes.

*I'm really trying not to give out specific numbers or details. My mother always said it was vulgar to talk about money. I'm being intentionally vague here.

**These bastards don't deserve it, though. I don't care if I plaster their names all over here. I'd post mug shots, if I could.

Affirmation

Some people call them parent-teacher conferences. I call them affirmations of how kick-ass I am. Who doesn't want a chance to sit in your own room and have people come in to tell you how fabulous you are? Just another reason that my job rocks.

I had many pleasant things to say, and many pleasant things said to me. Even the tough things I had to say were quickly and easily done. Good time had by all. And, for icing on the cake, the one conference I was dreading (Hi, Lady - You're Batshit Crazy!) was a no show, so I didn't even have to break the bad news there. All in all - a success.

Of course, I'm tired as all hell, and I haven't seen the kids since 5:30 this morning, but I'm off at noon tomorrow, so I'm going to try to do something fun with them, if they're not super-sick still. What I can do with two sick kids and no money in 40 degree weather? I'm drawing a blank on this one - any thoughts?

There. That was a little more positive than the last two days. I am nothing if not uplifting.

You're welcome!

Oh, screw it.

Well, the picture that goes here is freaking not there, where I left it. Whatever. It was a picture of the ginormous pile of shit on my desk at work. It's huge. Organized in my special "piling" system. Get it? Like a filing system, but with piles? A piling system?

Work is crazy right now. I am super tired and getting sick, I think, courtesy of my children, who bring home germs from other peoples' children from daycare, and courtesy of my students, who bring their damn germs from home and cough them all over the room. Still, I love my job. Love it. How many people can truly say that? Highlights from my day:

A 7th grade boy (let's call him Kumar) working on his homework in my room after school. He looks up to ask if he's phrased his sentence the right way. His sentence? "I am a communist." Rockin.

Same 7th grade class, earlier in the day. The question? "Is 'Catholic' a religious affliction?"* Priceless.

A 7th grade girl, leaving my class at the bell - "I'm so excited! I think I actually get it!" Seriously. She had a little tiny breakthrough right there. It was so sweet!

Giving phonetic pronunciations to my 6th graders, who are learned to count to 100 today. Foniks R funn!

A 6th grade girl asking me if I would promise to stay and be their teacher until they graduate.


*We were talking about the correct verb used to indicate religious or political *affiliation.* Covers Catholicism and Communism - afflictions both, I guess! :)

Fuck this.

Hi. It's day 6. I'm tired. I'm snuffly. I just ruined my new green sweater. It got bleach on it. My MIL was doing the bleaching. Ergo, she's really the one who ruined my new green sweater. I only got to wear it twice. My children are sick and pissy. I myself am rather pissy. My in-laws irritate the ever-loving shit out of me. It's cold here. I have parent-teacher conferences this week. They're going to make me miss Grey's Anatomy. I can't stop eating. My face is covered with zits. I'm tired. I wish it was Friday. This is all I can manage today. And I really don't care.

Fin.