Pouting

Special ed. U.S. history. Fifth period. They had terms to define.

"May I use the restroom?"

The teacher had given me a list of "no go" students. They had "abused her trust" and had therefore lost out-of-class privileges. So, when the boy asked the question and I heard rumblings of "you're not allowed to go", I made sure to double check the list.

Yep, he was one of the three.

Oh, he was incensed. Angry at the others for ratting him out.

"It's not them," I told him. "Your teacher left me a list, and you're on it."

Oh he argued. And whined. And begged. But it sounded to me like he probably left the room and didn't return for half the period. I've had those issues. I'll trust the teacher on this one.

I got class started, and then I walked the room. The boy had his head down on his desk. I tried to get his attention, but he wouldn't budge.

He was pouting.

Okay, fine. I could let his teacher know this.

A bit later, he asked me if he could leave the room. This time he wanted water. He was thirsty, and he couldn't work because he was thirsty.

So, which was it? Did he need to use the restroom, or was he thirsty? And before you say both...

When I told him he couldn't leave, he said he thought he could only not leave for the restroom. He thought a water break would be permissible.

Sigh.

I let his teacher know all of this. Perhaps she'll have a conversation with him.

Powerless

Special ed. seventh grade world history. We were reading a chapter on the Middle Ages, St. Patrick, and Charlemagne.

Their teacher (Ms. M) was in the habit of projecting the pages for the class as they read along in the textbook. I have to admit, it made it easy to let the kiddos know where we were as most weren't following along, so they'd know where to start when it was their turn to read. Alas, setting that up...

Ms. M had checked out a laptop for me to use, and she even had the tech guy, Pete, come out to make sure it was all good to go. (No, Pete's not his real name.)

After Pete left, I noticed the battery was on red. But it was plugged in. It wasn't showing it as being plugged in on the toolbar. I jiggled the plug. I moved the plug to a different outlet. I called over the instructional aide (IA) to see if he could make it work.

(I've been subbing so long that the IA... I remember having him in class not too terribly long ago. As a high school student.)

There was no help for it. We needed Pete. But I had a class to deal with, so I had the IA call him.

Towards the end of the period, I asked the IA what Pete had said. Apparently, the battery on the laptop was bad, so it wasn't going to show that it was plugged in.

In retrospect, this made no sense. And if I hadn't had the class to deal with, I would have called Pete and we would have had a different conversation.

Because, after period one left, the computer died. It blinked out and wouldn't turn back on. Naturally.

And when Pete returned, he discovered what I had been trying to tell him. (He did exactly what I did, plugging the cord into a different outlet.) However, he had more luck than I did, and after about ten minutes, he had the laptop working again.

Whew. Because there were also video clips that went along with the lesson.

The Visit

At the heart of much speculative fiction (and fiction in general) is a question. What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out there and see what you make of it. Do with it as you please. If a for-instance is not specified, feel free to interpret that instance as you wish. And if you find this becomes a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉

Sometimes an article pops up (like this one about Oumuamua, which an astronomer hypothesized might be alien tech), and the what if writes itself...

What if we were visited by an alien craft that we all saw?

Home

I may not be very coherent for the next week or so. But before I whine, let me show you the pretty pictures.

The gray behemoth made it to its new home...

Niece seems to like it...

(If you want to say "hi" to my niece, you can find her on Instagram here and here.)

The rest of this post is me venting. It's been... Yeah. Consider this your warning. You might want to get out now.

Ahem.

1:15 AM. Saturday. I don't know what it was that woke me. But as I drifted awake, contemplating if I really, really needed to use the restroom or if I should just go back to sleep, I heard dripping. Kind of like rainfall. But the sound was wrong...

I jumped out of bed and turned on the light.

From that light, which was part of a ceiling fan just over my bed, was water, dripping onto my bed.

And then the dripping sped up.

I grabbed a couple towels to help sop up the water. Not sure what to do, I looked about for a bucket of some sort. I noted the time.

As the water sped up more, becoming a stream, more water started falling from a different part of the ceiling.

By the time I got my roommate (who owns the place) involved (yes, I woke her at 1:20 AM-ish), water was also streaming from just outside my closet. Landlady called it a waterfall. I called it a deluge.

Luckily, we had access to the water shut off for the building. Unluckily, the emergency line we contacted didn't send a plumber overnight (even though they said they were).

The water stopped after about a half hour. The plumber arrived 12 hours later.

I pulled all the sheets off my bed and put them in the bathtub. That's when I discovered that my mattress pad was awesome. My bed was basically a pool by the time the water stopped, but my mattress was only wet in a small spot right where the water had been dripping.

If I had been thinking, I would have taken pictures. I wasn't thinking.

Anyway, the plumber tried to replicate the issue. Above my room is a bathroom. He ran the shower. He flushed the toilet. No water. And this was after turning the water back on, and nothing happened.

(In other words, we turned off the water to our whole building--I don't know how many units--on a Saturday morning for nothing.)

What the plumber did find was a sopping wet bathroom. Wet floor. Wet clothes. Wet towels. And a stopped up sink.

The tenant above us? Yeah, he says no leak. No issue. Nothing happened.

Uh... Really? Apparently I'm a miracle woman, then. If only I'd known when we were in full on drought a year or so back. I could have single-handedly ended it.

So, it's now Sunday night. I've commandeered my other roommate's room. (She's out of town visiting friends.) My room has a dehumidifier going. Last I checked, it's 83 F in there. This is the stopgap measure until they can get someone to remove the ceiling.

They checked with their sensors, and the ceiling is wet. It's probably in the insulation. And we don't want mold.

I'm around. But my routine has been shot to hell. Hopefully I'll make the usual rounds this week. But we'll see. I'm taking things one day at a time right now. I have a bed tonight. I'll figure out where I'm sleeping tomorrow night tomorrow.

And hopefully things will get put back together sooner rather than later.

How was your weekend?

Pencil War

It was one of those classes that I'm only grateful for because it's good for the blog. Freshman math. On a Friday. With a quiz.

Girl: "Give me back my pencil."

Boy: "It's my pencil. I was using it in first period. Everyone here will back me up."

And sure enough, those around the pair did agree that the boy had the pencil in first period. To which the girl asserted that she had lent him that pencil in first period...

All I wanted was for them to stop talking and work on their quiz. This was the latest distraction to keep the kiddos from behaving. (I demand silence until all the quizzes have been turned in.)

It was a light blue mechanical pencil. Very nice. And if they couldn't decide between themselves whose pencil it was, I was going to take that bone of contention and let their teacher decide. On Tuesday.

(I believed the girl. In these situations, the person with the item who claims it's theirs is generally lying. But, the liar gets very vocal, and at this point all I wanted was silence.)

Once that was settled, there were other issues to demand my time. The day was bad. And in a bad day, this class (second period) was the worst.

So, of course, as they're leaving, the boy said to the girl: "Did you get your pencil back?"

Because, naturally. To my face he swore up and down it was his. Just to mess with the girl, I suspect.

Which State?

Earth Science. Mostly freshmen, but there were sophomores, juniors, and seniors mixed in. I had been warned going in that they could be a handful.

The assignment was an earthquake risk map. They were to color in each state based on how many earthquakes had ever been recorded there. They were given all the data they needed to complete the map. Well, almost.

The map of the U.S. didn't label the states.

(It turns out that I actually can locate all the states on a map. This shocked me. I assume I learned it via this quiz. Because, I can tell you for certain I could not have done this when I was their age.)

This was going to be a problem. These are the kinds of students who will make a whole lot of mischief and a mess if left to their own devices. And being unable to complete the assignment would have turned the class crazy fast.

I scrambled to find a labeled map in their book. I checked the table of contents, the appendices at the end, but to no avail. I mean, the earth science book had plenty of various maps, just none of the U.S. with the states labeled.

So... I let them pull out their phones to look up maps. This class had a strict no phones policy, and these were the kinds of kiddos most likely to abuse any lessening of the rules. But there was no way I was going to give them an excuse not to work.

And the day went surprisingly well. Only a couple students abused my trust.

Then, in fifth period, I glanced at one student's desk. His earth science book was open to a map with all the states labeled.

IT HAD BEEN IN THE BOOK THE WHOLE TIME!

I did not have to allow phones.

via GIPHY

To be fair to me, I don't look at their books often. And this map was a random natural resources thing buried in the middle of some random chapter. I probably could have found it if I had had time to flip through the book...

Still, it would have made things go so much smoother if I could have pointed that out earlier.

Sigh. At least I didn't have to let sixth period use their phones.

Raining

You may have heard that we had four days of rain last week. Or perhaps not. It's big news around these parts any time rain is even expected.

While looking for how many days it rains yearly for my area, I stumbled across this article, and I think it details quite well why rain is such a big deal for us.

Anyway, it was a seventh grade combo math/science class. It was Tuesday. It had rained Monday, and rain was (correctly) forecast for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

It had drizzled a bit before school, but while we had gray skies, it wasn't raining raining.

The kiddos were prepared, though. They had umbrellas. Rain boots. They were dressed warmly in sweatshirts with hoods. (Keep in mind our classrooms all open to the outdoors, so if it's raining, they get doused while getting to their next class.)

In other words, we all knew rain was coming. We were ready.

Halfway through first period, a couple girls asked to go to the library to print out some project for another class. The math assignment had been short, so they had the time. I let them go.

They opened the door.

"IT'S RAINING!"

Uh, yeah...

Suddenly, everyone is up and looking out the door.

Sigh. It's like they'd never seen rain before.