Heating up a skillet of plastic soldiers

I am sick (but getting over it) and I am tired (but planning on sleeping well tonight) and I am feeling inadequate as a teacher (but that is because of lack of organization and that will "soon" be fixed).

I wish I had taken over a stellar, professional, well-laid-out journalism program. That way, I could just worry about keeping the high standards set out before I ever came along. Instead, I have wandered into the deepest reaches of journalistic hell, with an ads billing system that does not work, students who do not seem to understand that time is money, several Macs that have their own distinctive/vindictive personalities, and a student server that does not like to cooperate. These are all reasons why next year will be better than this year, and I just need to pop a vicodin now and then and remember when all I had to teach were beginning art classes.

David Sedaris is my new outlet. Last night I read one of his short stories, "Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist" (from Me Talk Pretty One Day). I had a strange compulsion today to build a nest of human hair, but instead I spent an hour after school drawing (granted it was for a demo I was doing for my AP class, but nevertheless it was art and it felt good). While I was drawing, an English teacher from my school came up to chat, and mentioned that someone looked like a cocktail onion on a toothpick... my eyes widened to hear a phrase from the very story I had read last night, and he told me that his advanced class was reading that story, too. This gave me hope.