"I traveled half the world to say you are my muse."

I was going to ask who wanted to hear about my first two official days of teaching. Then I decided that I didn't care if you wanted to hear about it or not because you can't hear typing.

So whether or not you want to hear anything is irrelevant. Whether or not you wish to read about it is a whole other matter.

But that doesn't matter either because a post will be the result of these end of day musings and you can decide whether or not you wish to read them.

Onward then upon my trusty steed which is running on brain energy fumes left over from those early weekends of relaxation.

Thursday was one of the longest days of my life. I've had 13 hour days before when I was working at Bob of the Evans. But days like that were merely physically taxing. I have not had a day that taxed me as mentally AND physically as Thursday did since never. It all began at 4:45am.

• 4:45am-Woke up to first alarm. Reset it. Rolled over and went back to sleep with music in my ears.
• 5:00am-Woke up to re-set alarm. Set it a second time. Rolled over and went back to sleep with music in my ears.
• 5:20am-Woke to third and final alarm. Spent 15 minutes stumbling around, getting things together, debating a belt, etc.
• 5:35am-arrive at the Lodge for sprucing up.
• 6:10-Emerged from the bathroom cocoon a beautiful, clean, teacher-esque butterfly. Boots laced and all (By the way Beckie, these boots are the best things ever. In love.).
• 6:25-having hastily prepared a tuna and fresh mushroom sandwich, granola bar, fruit leather, and water for lunch and scarfed down a small bowl of raisin bran, I was now ready to submit myself to the bowels of one of the grey beasts we drive to town.
• 7:20-I am now thoroughly van-sick, but awake and feeling anxious as we exit the belly of the elephantine behemoth (yes I am aware of the redundancy of this-it was used to put emphasis on how I feel about these 12 passenger vans we have to use) and make our heroic entrance into Hillside Middle School.
• 7:45-Computer hooked to the projector, copies of outlines in hand, we prepare for the wave of our first students to crash over us.
• 1:00pm-After 5 classes in which we had one 40 minute lunch break, we felt like we had accomplished a lot. (You were expecting some sort of play by play of each class and the whole day? Not worth the time it would take to type. If you are that interested you can take steps to participate in the aforementioned "hearing" of the events by calling me on my still shiny and new cell phone. Though depending on where I am when you call I may or may not receive it. You would do better to call me and leave a message for me to call you back and give a brief list of the times you are most available).
• 1:00-2:00pm-data pertaining to events at this time has been lost within the apparatus containing it. It is possible that said apparatus shut down in this one hour period. Please excuse the malfunction.
• 2:00pm-(Apparatus working normally, you may now continue reading)-We received and invitation to attend an eco-club meeting that one of our students is the president of. After a lengthy and suspenseful time in which we waited to RSVP (three seconds) we agreed and attended said meeting at this time. Many good things were talked about.
• 3:00pm-We arrived at the Salvation Army (not the thrift store) and entered unsure of what to expect from our first time.
• 5:00pm-having spent the last two hours reading Enders Game and looking up the word "hipster" in wikipedia, I help prepare for Kids Cafe (3-5 is tutoring time and there were more tutors than kids. I had no-one to tutor.)
• 5:45pm-dinner (mung like macaroni with ground beef and tomatoes, a buttermilk biscuit, a carton of milk, and a choco-chip cookie) is over and we cleaned up. Then it was time for activity time. I got my trash kicked at air-hockey, pool, and foosball. No I will not tell you how old the kids were that beat me. Stop asking.
• 7:15pm-the day being done and our bodies and brains mush, the three of us climb back into the lumbering rhino vans and turbulated* our way back to bear brook.
• 8:00pm-we arrived back and Bear Brook. I pottied. Then I went to the cabin, ready to fall asleep before my head hit the pillow, as they say. To my dismay, it was freezing because no one had managed to start a fire. I spent the next 45 minutes making the fire perfect so that the cabin would be warm and toasty for everyone else. THEN I fell into a blissful sleep.

*Turbulated-verb: to move in a turbulant manner.

Thus ended the first day.

Day two (today) started just as early but did not end as late. We put in a good 8 hours when you include commute time. We taught six classes, had 20 minutes for lunch and another earlier 40 minute break. By the last class we were laughing at unfunny things and stumbling over our words. Much like drunk people.

I revealed to my teammates my slightly vague reasons for not drinking coffee. They will now leave me alone. It does bug me that their performance is dependent on whether or not they have had their coffee quota or have nicotine in their system (in the case of Jonathan (now Jo to me) it's self-rolled cigarettes. In the case of Nate (Now Na to me...not really. I'm just kidding on that one) it's chewing).

I am tired.

And did I mention that I misplaced my wallet? I have looked in all the places that I can at Bear Brook (The Lodge, My Car, The Cabin, My Cubby, The Lost and Found). There are only four place it could be.

1.The barn where we went to the barn dance last weekend. In that case, I have e-mailed the people who might know where it is.

2. Church

3.The Concord Public Library

4. On the street somewhere in Concord or in some random persons hands.

I am really hoping for the first one. The second and third would be acceptable. The 4th is something I don't want to think about until the first three hypotheses have been proven false.

I really hope to receive a reply soon. I'm not sure I want to go to Portsmouth without an ID or anything else. I wouldn't be driving so I suppose that it would be good that I wouldn't have any money. No spending. On the other hand, I am sure that others would want to go places to spend things (mostly food, maybe a museum or something) and I would not be able to participate. On the other other hand, I might not have time to go there on my own. How fun would it be to go with people to Portsmouth and see the winter ocean? My mind isn't made up, but I am going to go to bed early so that I still have that option.

And her I end with this perplexing thought: If you write a blog post and no one ever reads it, do you actually exist in the blogging world? (We all know that the point of blogging is really validation).