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2002-04-14 - 1:17 a.m. Baby, I'm back! First off, I have to say that I had no idea that there was such a thing as diaryland boyfriend/girlfriend. Apparently, epiphany is already taken, but maybe I can be the "diaryland other woman" because I want him for myself! :) So, the reason I haven't written in awhile is just that I've been surprisingly busy. Where to begin? I guess I'll start with Justin's birthday. We went to Portland last weekend for his 24th birthday. We ended up going to the mall that day so he could pick out his present. He ended up getting some shoes, but couldn't find anything else he wanted, so I guess we will be going back again sometime soon. Mark was in town with his friend we hadn't met before, Cody, so they wanted to go out for Justin's birthday. We ended up going over to Mark's parent's house first because they had all of this alcohol, and Mark's favorite thing in the world is pre-drinking. Let me just say that Cody was really hot. I had one drink, but at that point we were planning on driving back to Corvallis that night so I wasn't going to drink. Eventually Mark and Cody convinced us that we shouldn't go back until the next day so we could really go out. Anyway, I decided to be the designated driver. I hardly ever am, but since it was Justin's birthday I thought it was the right thing to do. Driving three drunk guys around all night doesn't really sound like the most fun activity in the world, but it actually ended up being pretty entertaining for me. They were extremely drunk so were acting very loud and crazy and were cracking me up all night. I can't remember any amusing stories to tell you, but it was the most fun I've ever had as a designated driver. After the club closed, we ended up going to Denny's and having breakfast. It was the night of the time change so we were out until almost 5 am. Justin had a good time, I think, so I was glad about that. This week has been more stressful and tiring than usual for a few reasons--the time change has me all out of whack, and it was actually worse this week than last week after spring break was over. The other thing has been planning this sleepover at school. We were doing a number of activities to prepare kids for reading tests. I had to plan a mock trial for the book we had them read. Luckily, Epiphany told me about how he did the trial for the book so I had a general idea. It still took me about four hours to plan it, though, as I wrote up role sheets and trial procedures for it. That kept me stressed out all week, but it actually ended up being a pretty cool plan. I think I might try teaching that book next year. I also was stressed out about the sleepover because I wasn't sure how many kids were going to come (the mentors were supposed to talk to the kids about it, but that wasn't a very effective method, apparently), and I also had to order food for it and organize it with another teacher. Also, two of the kids were in the senior plays, so we incorporated the whole evening around the plays and planned on having the kids who came attend the plays as well. Overall, it was a successful night! We started with dinner and at that point only five people were there--five girls (three of them were my mentor kids, so I felt pretty good about what that said about our relationship that they all came), plus two other teachers were helping but not staying the night. I felt a little bit bad about it only being those five, but they were all friends and didn't seem the least bit concerned over the prospect of them being the only ones there. I did feel upset because some other kids had told me they were for sure coming, and didn't. I guess, though, that the math nights they have been having have only had 8-10 people each time, too. After eating pizza, we went down to watch the senior plays, which were really fun. At that point two of my other students, boys, arrived. They were late because of sports. One had told me before that he would come but wouldn't be spending the night. The two boys are sort of friends, and I saw the look of desperation in the boy who was staying's eyes when he saw that all the others were girls (and they aren't really in the same circle of friends). So when I took the second boy up to get pizza during intermission I talked him into staying the night, too. I had extra blankets and pillows so it wasn't a big deal. The first boy was very grateful to me. So after we ended up going to the plays, we came back up and started doing some literary terms stuff, that the other teacher, Mr. Spanish-Teacher, had planned. This part of the evening was very cool for me because Mr. Spanish-Teacher is really a great teacher and it was inspiring to watch him teach. Then, right in the middle of that, a fire truck showed up at the school! Everyone looked nervously out the window, but I reassured them that it was fine--then two of my students from seventh period, who are fire cadets walked in in full fire-fighter outfits. It was really funny. Mr. Spanish-Teacher and the other kids were shocked and asked them what they were doing and they said they came to bug Ms. Boombastic. All week those two kids had been teasing me about how we were sleeping over at the school (they aren't part of the group) and that they got to do something cool with the fire department, which was burn down this old house for practice. They had joked with me about crashing the party, but I was still surprised to see them. I thought it was funny they showed up. After that part of the evening, we watched the movie version of the book and had ice cream. The kids were all spread out in sleeping bags while we watched and it just was really fun. The kids thought it was especially funny to see me in my pajamas. By the time that was over it was past midnight so we went to bed. The kids stayed up about 1 1/2 hours after that and I was surprised by just how silly and immature they were. There were many fart noises (some fake and some real) and cracking up and pillow fights. I felt like I was with middle schoolers, not sophomores, but it was nice hearing them have so much fun. The boys actually slept apart from the girls, which was funny since they didn't have to. But then another interesting thing happened at almost 2 am. The kids were finally settling down and everyone was almost asleep when three figures appeared and shined their flashlights around then settled on Mr. Spanish-Teacher's sleeping bag. Everyone looked over in shock and the men announced, "We're with the Sheriff department, who are you , sir?" Mr. Spanish-Teacher jumped up and told them his name and they said, "Come with us." so he followed them outside of the library. I was near one of the boys and he asked me what was going on. I had no idea and everyone was sort of freaking out. I thought maybe it was some sort of a joke. Well, Mr. Spanish-Teacher came back and said the police were doing nightly rounds and they always stop by the school. I guess they saw all the windows that we opened in the library and called the morning janitor. Even though we wrote the sleepover on the calendar and told the night janitor, the morning janitor didn't know anything about it, so he drove to the school and let them in. Luckily the Sheriff people believed Mr. Spanish-Teacher, but it was pretty weird. We woke up at 8 am this morning and had breakfast (we made it in the Special Ed. room), then we did some practice test competition and finally did the mock trial. It wasn't as good as it would be in class, because the kids didn't have as much time to prepare, and there weren't enough people, but it was still fun. Finally, the kids got gift certificates to a bookstore for $35.00 each, and we went home. I think overall it went really well and I could tell they all had fun, even the boys said they did. I was really pleased with the boys for following through with it. I wish more people would have come, but I had fun anyway. If you ever get a chance to hang out with high schoolers, you really should do it. It is almost guaranteed to be a good time. When I got home today I watched that movie O since I needed to watch it before taking it back to the video store with the other video. It was pretty good, but I was expecting it to be even better. However, it had a number of beautiful men in it--Mekhi Phifer, Josh Hartnett, and Andrew Keegan--so it was all worthwhile. Then, I decided to take a brief nap and I slept from 3 pm to 9 pm! I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't have even woken up except for my mom calling. It was really quite odd. I did only get six hours of sleep last night, but that's pretty normal for me lately. I am really loving the storyline on Felicity lately. It is really interesting having the whole Ben-having-a-baby storyline. When he was at the place where he didn't want to have the baby, it really reminded me of the whole thing with my father. He was the same age as Ben, when a slightly older woman (my mother) said that she was having a baby. Lauren, on the show, also told him he didn't have to be involved. It made me feel a little bit more sympathy for my father's situation. I really think if I was Felicity, I would probably break up with Ben at this point. I know that is really awful, but I don't think I could deal with Justin having a baby with another woman, even if it was conceived while we were broken up. I also don't want to be in the situation of step-mother. Hopefully I never will have to--I just want to get married and spend the rest of my life with that person. I guess that's what everyone wants, though. I have a day of grading ahead of me tomorrow because I've let myself fall behind this week since I was so busy trying to get this reading thing together. I really hope I can get it all done and feel on top of things again. This week won't be too bad as far as planning goes because we are doing reading testing this week with the sophomores. I hope they do well. I hate standardized testing but it reflects on our schools and also I know students feel bad if they do badly, even if they don't show it. I know how I felt about not getting higher SAT scores. Even if you know that they are biased and unfair towards certain groups, I always thought about myself as a very intelligent person, and my SAT scores were a blow to my self-esteem. Well, I think I've written enough and should try to get to bed.
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