Sunday, September 9, 2012

Wow, summer is over - finally. Not sure I could have tolerated another week of the intense heat!

It's been a little bit since I've posted anything here...been far too busy. I am up at 6 every morning, out the door by 8 or earlier, at work by 8:30 where I immediately start entering attendance and grades, then class starts at 9. I teach from 9 to 11:00 and then from 11:00 to 12:00 we do assignments in class. My patience is wearing thin because students don't come to class and then hand in "make up" work which resembles ... well, most people know what I mean. Or, they don't hand in anything when its due but want me to accept work a week or two late.

Anyway, I'm supposed to have from 11:30 to 12:10 for lunch, but I've been giving up my lunch period to help students so they can understand how to do assignments. Then I drive like a bat out of you know where to the south side of FW to the Tx Workforce center where I go through it all again with the afternoon class. Except the afternoon experience is far worse than the morning experience. I've been yelled at by students, told everything is my fault they don't understand something, been expected to give them credit when they've done NO work, and on and on. I've resolved I will never do this again although I've been assured they've never had a class like this before. Well of course they haven't! I'm teaching the first one!

I finally get home about 4:45, strip down to just about nothing and crawl in the bed where I want to stay but can't because immediately upon arrival home Ken starts in on, "What are we going to do about dinner?" Quite frankly, my dear, I don't give a rat's ____ about dinner! Shove it! He's had all day to have done something about what the HHHH is going to be done about dinner, but he waits 'til I get home...because he's been busy all day either going to have breakfast/lunch/whatever with Chuck and Dave or playing on Farmville, or otherwise piddling around. I will give him credit for something -- he finally did get bored enough that he made his way down to First Street Mission (part of FUMC where we are members) and has been doing volunteer work there as well as Goodwill. But most of the time his time is his own.

I spend about 2 hours in the evening grading papers. Don't know why I bother...students are cheating (copying) assignments. For Excel they have to email their work so I can see if they have the correct formulas, functions, formatting in them. I got one that sweetly says, "Here is my assignment for ________. Hope you find this acceptable." I immediately returned it saying it was unacceptable. The email I got back wondered WHY it was unacceptable. My response? "You failed to remove ____________'s name from the bottom of the page before you sent it to me." Obviously copied. And I constantly get papers from two students that are identical errors...they live 5 minutes from one another so of course they cheat. They think I'm stupid. Welcome to the world of teaching adult education!!!

During all this time I've been very ill, of course. Glucose/blood sugar levels have been extremely high...raging at 450 plus (normal is 75 to 125). I went to endocrinologist (Wilson) on Friday after classes bawling because I am so sick with this. I'm on a strict watch til Tuesday when I will send numbers to him so we can continue to adjust the amounts of insulin I am taking. He says my "receptors" are just so numb with the high sugars for such a long time (years) that it is going to take a LOT of insulin to get them in line (whatever the hell that means). But he also says that we can get it to happen...we just have to find the correct amount of insulin and that once we can bring the sugars into a more consistent lower level that we can then start reducing the amount of insulin.

Haven't done anything fun -- been far too hot. Haven't seen family of course - nor heard from them either. No point in crying over it...they don't give a damn what happens to me. Other people all around me talking about their children and grandchildren and family things and I never join in...so they asked me if I have any children/grandchildren. I just tell them I used to. I don't have any pictures any more to share with anybody, and the ones I have are so old that I just took them all down. Youngest daughter's high school graduation picture fell off the wall and the glass/frame broke so I took that as a sign and just took down all the pictures of the kids and grandkids so that I don't have to cry every time I see them.

Hopefully, now that it's fall, we can do something. We look forward to going to the fair (need new batteries for the scooters), and maybe a trip to the coast. We have to save money this year and early next year because we will be going to Colorado for a while because of granddaughter's high school graduation (still in contact with son and his family). She's excited about her senior year and I'm in a state of shock that she's a senior! All gifts this year to her are to be $$ because son and DIL are planning her senior trip, considering the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Gotta run -- really nothing going on in my life worth telling. I've got to scoot over to the office this afternoon and get grades entered. This class will finish in about two weeks so trying to get caught up. Afterwards I'm coming home and going to make an old taco salad recipe...the one using crushed fritos, hamburger meat, cheese, tomato, salad, onion, whatever, and catalina dressing. That will be it for my cooking this weekend! Then I'll do a load of laundry so I can get back to work tomorrow.

Adios. Take care.