violating mine own tenets of the essay form

I am, for the first time, someone who lives for Friday. I used to live for Sunday, or sometimes Thursday, or Tuesday when I closed at the BookSnore, but never have I been so enslaved to a schedule: 8:20 is purgatory, 12:46 is the next one, and 2:30 on Friday is heaven. Catholics, tell me if I got it wrong. Which one is the inferno?

48 hours of freedom! Before Monday, I must decorate my bulletin boards with motivational materials, create seating charts for six classes, start reading 3 different textbooks and their matching boxes of teacher resources, internalize the discipline plan, and plot out every minute of the next week so I don't suffer interminable silences when I run out of material. But 16 hours of work will be two days at the beach when I can be alone with my own thoughts, free of the responsibility for 85 lives.

So tonight, Benicles and I are eating mahi-mahi and ono (leftovers from last night, pilfered from the parents' fridge) and watching a whole season of The West Wing (Dub-Dub if you're in the know). If the name or face of a student pops into my mind, I shall shoot it down with a shot of tequila. Just kidding. I am already twenty years older and forty times dorkier since assuming the mantle of teacher, or "Miss!" as EVERY SINGLE STUDENT at my school calls their female teachers. Last night I turned down a glass of wine at dinner, because I needed to wake up at 5:30 this morning and was afraid of having a headache. I'm a shell. (I changed my mind halfway into dinner, but still.)

And today when Bennifer picked me up from school, he was blasting Cypress Hill. I shrieked at him to turn it off...and I meant it! I am quickly losing my tolerance for profanity and insubordination of any kind. I mean it, and don't ask why. Because I said so!

They made the new teachers do a silly dance at the welcome back assembly today. That is all.