On being an Education Assistant Substitute in a Middle School.

 I could have called this one. How I learned what being invisible is like to the Teachers I was supposedly helping including the Special Ed Manager who barely acknowledged my existence.

When the teacher in the fourth period asked me to read a whole sentence on a test and then stopped me all without even attempting to say my name, I was visibly shocked. I pointed at myself, somewhat dumbly, to clarify that she, unlike 3 out of the other 4 teachers who actually bother to ask me my name, wanted my help.

I should note that I am wearing a name tag this whole time.

At the beginning of the day, the office staff hands me a sheet of paper, that has a schedule with times and names and no labels or explanations on it. There are no directions, room numbers or even when lunch is on it. I am then sent to Mz. Wiz's (that's the name I am giving her) classroom. I assume that I will receive instructions.

Mz. Whiz is friendly, explains nothing about what I am doing, and then sends me on my way to first period.

Teacher number 2, Mr. Hobby greets me, points to a desk, and then ignores my existence until I ask if he minds if I eat breakfast. He nods and walks into the hallway where he remains until class starts.
He never acknowledges my existence until the class is over.

We start the class with a semi-fire drill. I am given no instruction. so I just watch the procession of odd logic: here is a fire alarm that is not loud but will speak to you if you listen and then the teacher leads the students into the hallway and out of sight.

They soon return. We then go over Circles
I soon realize we are doing psychology and not math (hint no mention of Pi)
Mr. Hobby starts talking about True North by totally not accurately describing it. 
I am confused. There is a power point with slides that do not reveal True North either save that it might be a meditative trance/state. (this to 6th graders)
if any of these kids have a clue, I'd be surprised. 
next, we did something called "check-in" and I realized they are doing the circle (and I felt like I was back in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)
Mz. Wiz reappeared, looked embarrassed, or smiled at me? but then left with a student who might have been on the sheet I was given. She later returned and collected another student who I asked the math teacher about (who continued to ignore me)

Then they all sang Koombyah and started Math class (okay, no one sang Koombyah).

Math problem. 

A Pet store has 25 black kittens and twenty-two white kittens. Over the weekend they sell 16 kittens. How many kittens do they have left?

Solve using the K N O W S method.
that's
K- Know what the problem is
N- What you need 
O- Operation- what is your strategy
W- Work/show your problem 
S- Solve the problem

No order of operations is mentioned. The teacher forgets to include work.
the answer is (25+22) -16 +31

no cares how many white or black kittens are left unsold, they move on. I feel unfulfilled.

2nd period, I am about to introduce myself to the teacher when she suggests I sit at the back.

I dutifully take my place to watch Ms. Teacher of the Year, she has a trophy on the windowsill.

She starts with a powerpoint slide in which she proudly announces the the "Fist Grades" have been posted.
I am sure someone will ask or point it out.
Then I am sure, she will say it. 
No, she walks back and forth in front of the slide talking about the First Grades that we posted.

I decide to leave a note in her affirmation book point it out.

The second thing that hits me is that kids now can check on their grades at any time. I wonder how I would have done in school had I known these things. I mean high school. 

I went to middle school in the dark ages with torture devices and instructors who were turned down by the Spanish Inquisition for being too cruel.

I only had 3 weeks of social studies in my school career. 

These kids are learning about maps. different kinds of maps. 

Ms TOYr explains weather maps. Precipitation is rain, snow, mist, (makes weird magic fingers gesture) stuff. The jetstream gets no love.

She keeps calling topographic maps as Toup-a-graphic and now I wonder if I have called them the wrong name my whole life.

Politcial maps have lots and lots of colours like green, brown, gray and orange but bland orange (we do live in TN go big brialliant orange after all)

It occurs to me road maps only look impressive in the USA since we have so many types of roads, also so, so, many roads.

She shows a strange video cartoon about lattitude and longtitude that might as well be science fiction... since there is a malfunctioning robot and a guy in the arctic looking for a place in California and the guy uses GPS to explain in (very) brief terms how latitude and longitude work. The robot is no help at all.

We do learn (I mean it is told to us) that Latitude and Longitude are imaginiary lines, and we call it longitude because the north-south sorry up and down lines are long. She never explains what makes Latitude lateral...

She does mention GPS and explains that it is Global Positioning System but not how or why it is used. She mentions that Greenich is zero but nothing about time save that Longtidude in measured in minutes and you can find anyone using the two measurements.

Pilots and Ships will be happy to know their secrets remain safe, though.

Mz. Whiz reappears to collect students and studiously ignores me. I am concerned I have offended her with my mere presence.

I figured out where my next classroom is by dumb luck. I think it's reading (there are some books in there- nothing on the walls)
Ms. Friendly is nice, she does ask me where I'd like to sit, I choose a table at the back. She ask if I will stay in the classroom while they take a bathroom break, she struggles with my name, I tell her to call me Mr. V. She does so once.

I talk to 3 students about the books they are reading. one is reading about the holocaust and the other the Magician's Nephew. I get excited.
Turns out, both of them have just started and the class basically gets interrupted by lunch and Ms. Friendly spends the whole class talking about the most convuluted mess of apps to teach a "Lit class?" (still not sure that's what it was) via 3 websites, 4 pages, links that serve no purporse but have something vaguely to do with Harry Potter (in the most boring way imagineable) and the only thing we actually see is a word puzzle that results in the phrase "My Brain is a muscle"

I hope this is not science class.

4th period. Ms. "I can't pronounce her name and No one, not even the teacher told me either" science class

We have that test where I am asked to do that one thing.

then we have the actual fire drill. No one tells me what to do. I do decide to go outside. The teachers and students go to the far side of the parking lot. I give out at the parking lot and find a pole to lean against until we go back in.

Ms. Whatsit singles out a student- asks her name and then proceeds to missay it, and mispronounce it, for the rest of the class. She's nice about it. 

For the rest of the class, Ms. Whatsit shows youtube videos (with ads) describing things like scales with little to no real explanation as to why or how they work. I give up and go to check my school email and sub app.

The highlight happens when youtube autoplays something that Ms. Whatsit just barely catches in time before disaster strikes. 

Rule of thumb, never use autoplay on youtube in public. Unless you are prepared. No one ever it.

I get directions to 5th period, and hike there only to be told by Ms. Alt Arts that she doesn't need me and could I go away. I ask where "away" is and end up in the "Teacher's lounge" (which is anything but a lounge) and here I sit typing this blog. 

I know teachers are busy and overwhelmed but no one, and I mean no one even bother to explain what I am supposed to be doing, who I am supposed to be doing it with or why I am not following any of the instructions on the peice of paper the office gave me. 

I am not sure if I should go find Ms. Next's classroom for last period since my instructions read float.

or just sit here in the workroom until someone notices my absence (which I doubt) and I just go home.

So, what does this mean?

I really have no clue, but I won't sign up to do it again. I wasted the day. I mean i will get paid something for it. I just hate ignorance and no one to talk to about it.

It's very frustrating, well it would be if I didn't feel the semi-hysterical need to laugh about the absurdity of being invisible (I am a huge guy- unlikely to be missed)

Now that I think about it, I did accidentally creep up on Mz. Whiz last week on another sub assignment and scare the bejeezers out of her.

I am a big guy but I can move like a ninja sometimes.

So, My Dog Died...

So, My Dog died. Her name was Myrtle. She was a Pembroke Corgis that Mom bought from a couple who insisted on meeting us at a Walmart in Rutledge. It was obvious that we weren't being told the truth. I told Mom to get Myrtle anyway.
The couple came clean, later and admitted that Myrtle was a rescue. It was obvious from the time I got her home she had been abused. She would flinched at any sudden movement and a raised voice would send her running for cover. She had a lot of emotional issues.

We had her for about 6 years. I owned her on my own for little more than a year.

 

She was a beautiful dog. Damaged but in the end she loved me as much as she could. It killed me to put her down. I did it for her, I did not want to live in any more fear or pain. 

I wrote this for Myrtle.

My dog has died.
I watched her slip away into sleep
released from the pains of this world
after all the tears we cried
her asleep at my bedside
how I tried to reassure her fears
over the few years
each time it stormed
our comfort conformed

Perhaps we don't really own dogs as much as we agree to share the world with them. I like to think so. Myrtle gave more to me than I feel like I gave to her. Now she's gone and I would be totally crushed if it weren't for Sophie. Sophie is also a Corgi and thank God is healthy and hardy.

 Sophie is a retired breeder from Corgi Farm in Middle Tennessee. I love her and she has quickly filled the hole that Myrtle left. We spend all day together, wherever I go, she follows and I've made her several beds so she can be comfortable until we move again. 

Still, the pain of losing Myrtle seems to hard to bear.
I shall sleep then, promises to keep. I hope that Myrtle will live on the wolf dream that I believe all dogs have as they all descended from wolves...

except for Chilwowas (they're just grown-up rats)
(kidding)

don't bite me.

Some Good News from 2021

•  The latest data on AIDS (you remember, the other global pandemic) revealed there were1.5 million new HIV infections last year, a decline of 30% since 2010, and the lowest total number since 1990.
• One of the four major flu viruses that circulate in humans looks like it might have gone extinct this year thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Yamagata virus has not been detected since April 2020 anywhere in the world. Together with the Victoria flu virus, it used to be responsible for somewhere between 290,000 and 650,000 deaths every year.
•  The WHO approved a long awaited malaria vaccine, revitalizing the fight against one of humanity’s oldest foes, as well as a new polio vaccine, which was rolled out to over 80 million children in Africa. Other achievements included the introduction of a licensed Ebola vaccine and the launch of a landmark new global plan to tackle meningitis. Liberia became the first African country to introduce the typhoid conjugate vaccine, which was given to over two million children in just weeks, and a new study revealed that the HPV vaccine has reduced cases of cervical cancer in England by nearly 90% since 2008, with over 100 countries now using it as part of a global plan to eliminate the disease.
• China successfully eliminated malaria this year (it used to have 30 million cases a year in the 1940s), as did El Salvador, the first country in Central America. Globally, 40 countries have now achieved this milestone. Côte d’Ivoire became the second African country to eliminate sleeping sickness, and The Gambia became the third African country to eliminate trachoma, an amazing achievement given that in the 1980s it was responsible for almost 1 in 5 of the country’s cases of blindness.
•  Ecologists reported that the Mississippi River is the cleanest it’s been in more than a century, with pollution down to 1% of what it was in the 1980s, while the most comprehensive survey of the Thames in 60 years found that the river, once declared biologically dead, is now “home to myriad wildlife as diverse as London itself.” The biggest river success story however, came from China, which passed a landmark environmental law protecting the Yangtze, one of the country’s two ‘mother rivers,’ banning all industrial projects, sand mining and all fishing, including in tributaries and the estuary (more than 400 million people live in the Yangtze basin).
• A comprehensive plastic ban went into effect in China in January, including items like straws, utensils, nondegradable bags and postal or courier packages, and in July, the EU banned single-use plastic plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks and cotton buds. India announced a ban on a long list of single plastics effective July 2022, the Maldives kicked off the first phase of a plan to completely eliminate single plastics by 2023, and New Zealand announced that single-use plastics would be phased out by 2025, with bans on cotton buds, packaging, cutlery, straws, and fruit labels beginning next year.
•  In July, four women in South Africa successfully overturned a set of apartheid-era marriage laws, giving around 400,000 elderly black women equal access to matrimonial property, and Uttarakhand became the first state in India to grant women co-ownership of land, in a landmark amendment that affected 350,000 girls and women overnight.
•  A new report on cluster munitions revealed that more than 110,000 landmines covering 135 km² were destroyed globally last year, a new annual record, and that over a million landmines have been cleared in the last decade.
• Incarceration rates in the United States fell to a 24 year low in 2019, plummeted a further 14% in 2020, to 1.81 million people, and then fell again in 2021, to 1.77 million. There are now half a million fewer people in prison in America compared to 13 years ago, and empty prisons are being repurposed into homeless shelters, educational farms, and even movie studios. These changes are due to incredible, uncelebrated activism, and largely unheralded changes in criminal laws, sentencing patterns and a decline in violent crimes.

New Year's Resolutions are a good idea but a bad habit

 MAKING NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS ARE HABITUALLY BROKEN!

There, I said it.

We set goals often realistically unattainable motivated by our guilt such as:

• Lose X amount of body weight by Y amount of Time (usually a month) and result is Z (failure within set time period resulting in a X(Y+Z) equation where the scale initially went down by A and now increases by B. Who ever told you that you'd never use Algebra lied. 
• Go to the Gym (I don't even need to tell you how the depreciation of averages versus monthly contracts and membership bills accumulate on this sum! Maths, use 'em if you got them, but I will say that I like to call this the Rush/Gold's/National Gamble. They offer you a sweet deal on your first free visit and hum through that cancellation paperwork to see if you are gullible enough to sign up (Free Money!).
• Eat Healthier/Better. Cut those evil carbs. Avoid those Sugary Startches. Dodge those Fatty Fats. Give up all the goodness in Food and eat flat tasteless chicken with some yummy dried out veggies that are mostly green and SMILE while you endure such torture for you heart, kidney, liver, etc. You know how this ends in a pile of french fries and frosty cups with a Big Mac in one hand and a roll of cookie dough in the other surrounded by the detriment of your intentions.
• See your family more. Even if you hate them- I mean you "love" them because everyone keeps telling you that you have to love them but you really don't like them at all.

Anyway you get the point.

So in light of this revelation. I intend to set attainable realistic goals this year.

Sorry World Peace.

My 2022 Resolutions

1. Maker 7. Launch my 3D printing business with the goal of paying for filament stock and eventually a 3D scanned. Making it rich with this in not in my immediate plans.
2. SevenTech Sales. This is my eBay business. I had hoped it would become a storefront on Facebook but that failed. Alibris as well. So, my goal is to keep it going full steam as it is what is paying my bills right now.
3. Get back into writing my fiction and non-fiction. This is a matter of writing discipline that I have so far lacked being able to do with my focus constantly being pulled away by other concerns.
4. Continue to get healthier. I just passed a milestone with my legs (I had Stasis Ulcers and leakage). I have finally healed to 90% and hopefully will hit a 100% soon.
5. Making better Diet choices. I have lost weight again. This time feels more real as I have eliminated much of the foods that had contributed to weight gain, not so much by quitting them as no longer desiring them. I have all but given up soft drinks and the like. My tastes are for water and sparkling water (some minor flavoring). I might drink some coffee and tea but not daily.
6. Continue working with the Nutrionist (I have been doing this consistently for the last 5 months). Again its not so much about quitting certain foods as it is more about balancing my diet. It helps a lot that I no longer desire the fatty, starchy, salty, sugary foods I once did. It doesn't stop me from eating a donut or candy bar but I have little desire to consume them. I have gotten past grazing snacking and I have reached a point where I have to remind myself to eat instead of impatiently waiting for the next mealtime.
7. Getting Exercise. Gone are the dreams of weightlifting at a Gym. I hope my Neice's Husband will give me access to his gym when I am ready to make that my next step. Covid and quarantine wiped out all the progress I had made nevermind my leg problems contributing as well. I now must develop new disciplines to get moderate exercise.
8.  Socialize. Which still seems dangerous in this pandemic that just keeps going despite the willful ignorance of my fellow Americans. Going to work on this harder and try something like a Zoom friendship failing everything else.
   
9. Get more consistent sleep. It's important.
10. Learn to love my leaky old house. Home Ownership is a blast. everyone should do it!

And that's them.

I wish you all a Good Year in which you buy most of my goods and make me richer.

Merry Christmas to Everyone even if your not a Christian.

 Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas

(also make sure it is really yours, if it isn't return it to whomever you took it from, you know who you are, Someone is looking for their Christmas right now and wondering where it went, it was right there last night but now its missing)

May is be warm and bright. 

(unless you are in the desert, then maybe it could manage to snow just a tad, heck a cloud right now could be a Christmas miracle)

May your gift exchange be filled with thank yous, love yous and cheerful laughter

(instead of tears of shredded paper, cries of disappointment that they didn't get the keys to the Porsche that mysterious is parked outside which actually belongs to your cousin Frank who is waiting for a convenient moment to surprise you, he's going to give you at least another hour before he rings your doorbell.)

May your Dinner be cooked to perfection and well received.

(that way even the fire department can not see you again this Christmas... like last year and they will be relieved) 

But above all, remember that it is not the gifts, nor family, nor dinner that you labored for weeks and hours on end to deliver this moment of perfection. 

No it was all so we could keep the message as told by Shepherds in a field some 2000+ years ago that some "Angels" told them to rejoice in the middle of the night because a kid was born that would make the world a better place and not the commercially driven mess that it did become.

I mean. Peace on Earth and Goodwill to men...

(this is why no one invites me over for Christmas Dinner anymore.)

Love you all.

Especiallymy other friends who are celebrating a more sane version of this time of year (Yuletide and Kwannza and the Seinfeld thing to you too!)

Thoughts on a Monday in November of 2021

 My mother is dead. I struggle with it each day.
Some days, I even managed to see a way through the present crisis to find hope that I will be okay. Others I just stay in bed most of the day.

I knew that I was going to miss/mourn her more than anyone else in my life.
I know I will miss my brother more, should I outlive him.

I dream about her less and less. They're weird, waking dreams tied into my struggles with her house, my house, the repairs & renovations that I am making. Tomorrow, I have to find someone to repair the ductwork at an affordable rate. I know I will dream about that tonight.

I have never had medical problems until now. Over the last year and a half, I have had more issues, seemingly incurable at times than ever before in my life. I cope with them but I am not afraid of the situation. I fear diabetes more than anything. The rest I can live with.

I miss working out more than anything. I know now how to work out but still can't do want I want to do. I will return to weight training one day, but I know now that core building is more important than the other stuff.

I am tempted to try online dating again. I give up on that regularly, this time it will cost me. So, I am going to wait to see if the ductwork will be affordable. If it is, I am going to gamble on it, one more time.

Ironically for someone who loves food, I find myself less interested in eating than ever before. It might be age, it might be mourning my mother, but I have largely lost my sweet tooth. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before I left sweets and treats behind. I suspect I won't miss them either.

I am hoping that I am finding my ability to write again. I have largely stopped it. I am easily distracted by other things. So I find myself writing this here late at night, early on a Monday morning.

I have lost my faith.
I don't think I believe in God in the same way anymore. I don't know if I believe or ever believed that prayer works/ed. I stopped going to church. The pandemic played its part, mom's loss of faith affected it. I went back briefly before the medical problems started to play havoc with my sleep schedule and the depression and grief took away my desire for it.
I would like to believe in God and I still am going to live a Christian life, but Church is not really that relevant anymore.

I am going to call myself an Agnostic for the first time in my life.
I just don't know anymore.
Part of me wants to believe Mom is in Heaven
Part of me wants to believe My Sister is there with her
Part of me wants Mom's wish of reunion with her parents and family to be trrue.
Part of me thinks it's a nice story, because it doesn't give me any comfort.

It's what separates me from many Christians and other similar believers.
I am Christian (or was) because it's the right way to live. I never really cared about Heaven or Heavenly reward. Now, I no longer believe that Jesus is coming back. I mean I still want to believe in it, but I just don't anymore.

Nothingness no longer scares me. I feared death for most of my life because of that nothingness, but now I'd welcome the peace it would bring.

that's it for Monday morning.

She haunts my dreams

    This year has been so hard on so many people. I would not complain.
That being said.

My Mother haunts my dreams.

    Oddly, she is often non-vocal, merely content to wander through the dream her ghost has created in my mind leaving me to unravel the meaning of it all. By the time, I begin to unravel it all, I suddenly need to pee in the dream only to discover that the dream doesn't allow for actual peeing.

    This is my body trying to wake me up. This is normally hard enough, but I sleep with a BiPap ASV so it's like waking the dead. By the time, I surface, the original dream is a distant memory and I wake with a sense of loss, confusion, and the now desperate urge to go find open water.

The dream is almost always the same.

Mom is living in a new house (It's a recurring event since the divorce).

    I was seventeen, the divorce was underway. I was the last person to be told in our family unit. My mother used my brother and me against our father as a nuclear option. We all died that night, in different ways. Looking back, I hate her for what she believed that she must do, for her lack of understanding as my brother then me begged my father, who was a million miles away in South Africa from the new Condo in Knoxville, TN USA. But I also understand that Mom was facing the oblivion of being ALONE and having to raise me on her own.

She would move one more time after that, to Luttrell, to the house I now own.

In my dreams, she moves often, to yet another version of a house that is unstable or flawed. Dozens of dreams later, I find myself invited to my mother's townhouse where she now lives with her fiance who is half my age (as I find out) and what is more, my sister is now living with her new boyfriend across the hall from mom.

    Both of these women are dead.

Mom died in January. the date and time is burned into my brain

My sister died in June.

Mom was 89. My sister was 73. I am 52.