Illness

Today was the first day that I was sick enough to actually call in sick to a real-live job. I feel like death eating a biscuit and probably look like it too. I've got an array of symptoms that I've been fighting off for two or three weeks but lost my power over sometime yesterday morning. My throat is sore, my stomach feels queasy, and I've got a headache the size of Montana. So, I called our precious secretary this morning and asked very politely, and very pathetically, for a substitute. She was gracious and caring, but the bad news was that I had not planned to be absent today. As a first year teacher, I do almost all of my planning one day ahead. If I've got a full week planned before Tuesday afternoon, it is a most productive week. Needless to say, I did not have written lesson plans when I requested a sub at 7am this morning, so I had to go to school in my jeans with my wet hair to create lesson plans and make copies for my poor sub.

Don't get me wrong and assume that I'm a terrible teacher who never plans anything but just shows up and sees what happens. That's not at all the case. I'm just the kind of teacher who too often makes all the plans in her head (and sometimes in the morning in the shower), so they aren't the kind of plans she can pass on to another at a moment's notice. However, after about 25 minutes at school this morning, where I am sure plenty of people thought I was completely rude because I reciprocated their polite "Good Morning"s in a unenthusiastic manner, I finally made it back home to my chair where a large glass of ginger ale, a box of saltines, several chloraseptic lozenges, my ugly quilt, and the first season of Jed Barlett's White House awaited me. I enjoyed my morning as thoroughly as I could with Montana between my eyes, but the worst part about today, that I forgot to mention earlier, was that today was the day that final grades for the 1st quarter were due. At 3:25. I had finally finished reading and scoring all of the AP rewrites last night, but I hadn't put them in our online gradebook to be finalized yet, so I actually had to do a bit of work today. The sad news is that I, as a poor single private school teacher, do not yet have internet access at my home. So I was forced to venture out. Knowing that I did not want to have to be seen by people, my sweet Rob-Bob let me hijack her laptop in her office(after also bringing me lunch). Those of you who know Rob know how big of a sacrifice this really was for her. Fortunately, I was actually more caught up on grades than I thought , so it didn't take long for me to finalize things. Now, I'm back to resting and consuming fluids at a nearly alarming rate. I hope and pray that I feel better tomorrow and will be able to return to Room 2 at full capacity.....or at least a capacity where Montana has shrunk to New Jersey and I can think about something besides the activity of my intestines.

I never cease to be amazed at how quickly time passes when I'm sick. After lying around all day, I have no idea how it ever got to be 4:35 in the afternoon. I have done almost nothing productive all day. Wow.

Anyway, I'm not sure that this was of any interest to all of you, but I've felt rather lousy and lonely today and needed to at least pretend that there were some people out there who might at least like to read about my illness. At least from your computer screen, you aren't likely to catch it.