Now that I have to be at work at 7.30 I have to pack lunch the night before (if it's my turn), even pick my clothes the night before, try to get to sleep early. That's not easy ... because it's summer my brain is programmed for relaxation. I HATE that I'm working. I love the job, but I hate that I have a job. You know? Shit. ESY stands for "extended school year" and it's designed for those kids who are academically at-risk. I guess to try to get them up to grade level. As far as I can see it's having absolutely no positive effect on the kids except that they're in a safe environment for six hours a day and sometimes they get to play with plastic tennis sets, which they really like. Luckily E's B is very tenacious and he has a lot of good ideas (and I'm going to lend him my 10-pound math methods portfolio) and HOPEFULLY some actual good will come of the kids being forced to spend their precious summer hours shut indoors.

I'm happy because I moved next door back to preschool where I love it most and where I'll be full-time next year. It was lucky for me because 1) I was not happy in big-kid SPED, mostly because everything was so rigidly structured and I feared being stuck in those kids' memories as oen of the mean teachers who ruined the summer of 2003) and 2) I was working with E's B all the time. I don't know why it was arranged that way -- maybe because we look like a good team? We are, just not in the kitchen and not at work. Actually, it was starting to click for me in the classroom right about when I got moved next door, but all the same I'm much happier with the pre-K's.

Yesterday was E's B's birthday. His family took him (and me) to the restaurant that used to be Cascada but is now Chez Michel. He and his dad and his oldest brother (who is younger than he is) talked about the yard that E's B is hellbent on finishing this summer. He and his brother have actually made a lot more progress than any previous summer. Last summer they tore up the lawn, just completely got rid of all the grass, in preparation for something they never got around to. This year so far they've already made a nice curvy wall out of arborstone (is that supposed to be one word or two?) and there are markings all over the place for where things are going to go, what's going to be leveled, etc. The shame of it is that his house is at the end of his street so not many passers-by will actually see the finished product. The good thing about it is that probably nobody will steal vegetables from the garden. Then again, someone did steal a big gardenia plant from right in front of his yard sometime last year. So I was making him litle coupons for his birthday to stick in his card and I thought of making some that said I would help him with the yard. Last year he asked me to help him a lot. Asked a lot, that is. I helped maybe once. I work in my own yard frequently enough as well as do minor "landscaping" at The Apartment ... but I decided against yardwork coupons because I dunno, I hate yardwork maybe more than any other kind of chore there is. I realize the point of a birthday present is to do something nice for someone else, something you wouldn't ordinarily do, but I couldn't do the yardwork thing. I hate weedwackers, I hate staying in the sun too long, I hate shoveling dirt, I hate pulling weeds. So instead I thought of some stuff that involved gettign up early, another thing I have a problem with. I like being up early, I just hate getting up. So I gave him coupons. And after much hemming and hawing I decided he just might look good in linen (and it felt so good! and the sales person was so pushy!) so I got him a linen shirt. Also something that makes him smell nice (not that he doesn't smell good all by himself.) We had lunch at the Secret Park. Then I had to go work at The Apartment (sad face.)

time to sleep. in order to get to work at 7.30, I have to leave the house by 7.10. in order to leave the house by 7.10 I have to wake up at 6. (I move very very slowly in the morning.) in order to wake up at 6 and not want to die, i have to go to sleep by 11. it's way past 11.

Next entry: the departure of Father Mike O. :(