Instructions? WHAT INSTRUCTIONS?

Have you ever been in bed and realized there is no realistic way that you can possibly, actually get to sleep? I hate that. I was tossing and turning. The covers weren't right. It was too cold or too hot or sleeping on my side was not right, nor sleeping on my back. Nothing seemed right. So here I am at 2:40AM. Awake. I think it may partially be drainage from what remains of my damned cold. I am going to sit up for a little while and then go back to bed.

So, what did I do yesterday? I subbed for third graders yet again. The day before I had experienced a teacher that left me 6 or more pages of instructions for the day. Yesterday, I got the whole other end of the spectrum. This teacher left me single words, from which I managed to pull several lessons and waste time until the end of the day. JOY. NOT. The first instruction was "SSHEET #19," and "TANK CARD 20." If this had been my first day teaching the 3rd graders this year...well, lets just say I would have been SOL and we would have spent the day doing drawings.

The ONLY way I knew what to do with this was I had done the exact same thing the day before, except with significantly more instruction. It wasn't hard, but she had not especially gone out of her way to be prepared for me. I ended up having to run down to the copy room a couple times, over to another teacher to verify what I thought she meant, and then I managed to pull some documents out of my ass(yes, it hurt) and the pen I had in hand(probably should have put the pen down first). I used these to instruct the kids.

Every time, I would sit down and look at the next item in her plan book and say to myself, "What the HELL?" "Reading TE341." OK, well, having become somewhat adept at shooting from the hip, my mind raced...TE, probably Teacher's Edition. Reading...only one book fits that...let's see...oh, look at this lesson that happens to be on pge 341! Yes, I am a genius! Shit. I don't have the copies of this handout...what to do? Fake it? As it happened, I only made copies of a couple documents and the other times the kids used their own paper, which they seemed unused to. TOUGH.

Despite my feeling of being behind behind the eight ball all day long, it turned out well and I feel like I managed to make a tree fort out of tooth picks, MacGyver style.

"Hey, MacGyver, all I have is a package of dried Bees, a box of tooth picks, some dixie cups, and a vague idea that this is a science lesson."

"Great! I love a challenge...um, did you say DRIED BEES?"

"Yep."

"Hmm, that's actually a new one for me kid, you better take this one on your own!"

"SHIT."

"Oh, and don't clip the red wire." And off runs my only hope at narrowly avoiding chaos...

Tick....tick....tick....SNIP!

Tomorrow...or is it today? I teach high school biology and science. I think I will not have to work as hard. High school students work differently...and it is a different pace...somewhat more relaxed. FOR ME.

Cora came home yesterday and needed to get gas for her car. She said her car's computer was saying her range was ZERO. She still had the tank above E, though. She had gotten 37.4 MPG on that tank. I suspect the car does not want to run out of gas...it would probably screw up the whole thing, computer, electric motor, batteries, engine, everything. We drove through town on the way home, and at one point had gotten 54.3 mpg on the new tank...which is kind of cool. By the time we got home it was a more realistic 45.3 mpg. It will go back down to about 37, which seems to be its honey spot. I like that car.

Saturday we go down to the valley and run through a geocache with my sister that my dad put up. I should just say treasure hunt and be done with it...semantics, I suppose. Well, shit, it is 3am and I need to get back to bed, hopefully I can sleep again. Maybe I just needed to get up and move around...