"Remind Me To Show You The Scars"

So, good developments on the work front. I found out why the director gave all the history classes to the student-teacher: it's her grade. Apparently she has to turn in so many lesson plans to earn her credit hours, and we'd rather not take those credit hours away from her just because I'm too damn prideful to let go a little. The girl (well, okay, she's maybe a year or two younger than I am, so "girl" is probably the wrong word to use) and I have an understanding, though, and we're going to treat this as an equal partnership/co-teacher situation. I'll gladly give up the tedious tasks of lesson planning and grading and all that crap if I still get to actually teach. I mean, hell, I was making most of my stuff up as I went along anyway, so now I at least have a decent reason for doing that.

I'm also going to switch from assisting in Geometry to assisting in Art next quarter (which starts next week). This seems like a much better fit for everyone involved, as God only knows how much longer I could've faked knowing anything about Geometry. Art, hell, I can fake my way through that until I fall over dead (I mean, I've managed it in the comic for ages now).

The student-teacher seems like she'll work out fairly well. She's a pleasant-enough individual, quick to smile, though a little soft spoken. I'm sure that'll change after a few weeks with our kids. Part of me is actually sad that she'll only be with us until April (mostly because it means I then have to spend the last two months of school getting the kids back under my control...just in time for school to end, of course. So it goes). Besides, she's rather cute, though I doubt that (1) she'd have any interest in me or (2) she's single.

Anyway, things're pretty good. Sounds like Vicki, my friend from the OU Writing Center, will be coming out to DC early next month for a job interview, so we're gonna try to get together a bit while she's visiting and tear up the Capitol Town a bit. Should be fun; I haven't seen Vicki since I left (of course, I haven't really seen any of my other Oklahoma friends since I left, but that's what makes the fact that one of them is coming out this direction a cause for celebration).

Dad is apparently moving up to Grove this weekend. I had a good, long talk with him about all sorts of stuff last night, mostly the way he's restructuring his accounting firm (by which I mean the old firm--Carlson & Cottrell, CPAs--no longer exists, 'cause his partner is retiring, and dad is starting a solo firm up in Grove) and what he's actually learned from this whole divorce thing (scale way the hell back on the workload. If he's taken nothing else from this whole situation, he's at least realized that part of the reason his marriage to mom fell apart was that he worked too much, too often. While this revelation may not benefit her, at least he learned the lesson). He also sounds happier than I've heard him in for quite a while, and maybe a little bit...scared, actually. He's making a very big transition--one not unakin to the one I made back in July when I moved up here--and he's making it alone. It's a pretty damn frightening thing, but he's an adult and he'll just have to deal with it. This is the path he's chosen, and I think he realizes that, so he's just going to walk it and see what happens.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Radiohead, "Go to Sleep"