The past few days have been a severe drag. Nothing is wrong, persay, I’ve just been blue. I think I have the smoking kicked for real this time. The first time around I couldn’t accept that quitting meant not smoking ever again. “Ever” is a big word. I kept thinking, “Can’t I just smoke one more? I know people who quit and then just smoke on certain occasions. Can’t I just have one more?” So, after over a month, I did. I smoked one. Then two days later I smoked one more. Four days later I bought a pack and in the week following I was back up to my former pack a day habit. After a month I had had enough of the guilt I felt and the dissapointment of some people plus I was getting very poor so I quit again, and again, it’s been a month since my last cigarette. This time I am having much less difficulty with it, but that’s probably because I’ve been eating instead. To the point where I put back on everything I lost in March and April. Granted, it wasn’t that much, but it’s still noticeable and it’s bothering me a LOT. I’m not even hungry more than half of the time I’m eating but I’m still eating. So after everything, the thing that bothers me the absolute most, and always has, my weight, is still the problem. I hate it. I’m sick of it. It is frustrating beyond all belief and it drains a lot of the happiness out of the increasing amount of good things in my life.
I-C-U-P. Haha, get it? I see you pee! ahahaheh…yeah, I never found much humor in that one either. Even less so now that I’m in room 101. When I called CHCC, crying piteously and pretty much begging for my job back, I was pretty happy to land a spot in the preschool side of the building. Don’t get me wrong- I enjoyed working with two-year olds. It’s a fun age and I enjoy teaching them, but to work in the mythical preschool? The land where children become capable of doing chores and more importantly; the children are potty trained! What more could I possibly want out of life(besides my very own personal cabana boy of course)?
At first, I was uber enthused. It was okay that five or so kids were still in diapers…after all, I’ll take 5 diaper changes three times a day to 17 diaper changes 4-5 times a day and the highly unstable molecular composition of toddler poo.
By this time I have realized however, that less diapers means a lot more accidents. There are at least two a day, on a good day. And I never found urine so highly offensive until I was constantly up to my elbows in it, continuously swabbing the deck of 101 with my trusty bottle of bleach water and environmentally friendly paper towels, snapping rubber gloves on and stripping pee soaked preschoolers of sodden skirts and dripping jeans. I can only hope that the next few weeks bring some solidarity to these kids’ bladders and I come back from Belgium to a more confident, drier group of kids. They damn well better be, cause it’s gotten to the point where I don’t even like it when I pee.
Clean up time in preschool- let me set the scene.
Three or four kids have heaped every single unit block on the floor, calling it a stage. They are jumping around on the jumble, tripping on the cylindrical blocks, falling into the rubble, giggling and doing it all over again. Several other kids are rolling (bouncing, tossing) matchbox cars across the floor. Some girls were playing “babysitter” earlier and dragged a baby, 3 purses and about 75 plastic pieces of food across the room to the book area. The carpet is invisible-hidden under a layer of books that had been read to the babydoll by her doting babysitters who are now planted by the CD player listening to “Fire Truck” by Ivan Ulz for the 347th time today (and it’s only 9:45). And let’s not forget the fringe children, quietly playing with barns and animals at the table near the door. And while they appear harmless, make no mistake, they will mercilessly tear the face off of anyone who gets the baby elephant before they do, so we always have every animal of every size available in triplicate out on the table. This is room 101 as morning snack time approaches. I stand up and authoritively anounce, “Clean Up Time!” andthen stand, hands on hips (cause I’m the teacher, dammit) to view the grandeur of 14 little people communally tidying up in united Oompa Loompa fashion.
Only it never really happens that way.
In the reality outside of the one I’ve created in my head, all the kids scatter, doing everything in their power not to have to place a single item back on a shelf. I mean there are those priceless few who do actually start to clean up but usually they get trampled faster than a paraplegic in Pamplona in the scramble to avoid the dreaded clean up time.
Usually one of the teachers sets up snack while the other three manage a relatively timely clean up. The lead teacher is on vacation this week though, so there were only two of us today to facilitate clean up time. Forunately there were only 14 kids instead of the normal 20 or so, which meant we had to individually instruct 6 less children for every single individual thing they had to pick up.
“Go over there and pick up the matchbox cars,” just doesn’t work with 3 year olds.
“Go pick up the red car and put it away. Ok, now go pick up the fireman and put him back in the ‘People Box.’ Thank you! See that round block there? Go put that away…” and so on and so on until each toy is picked up and put somewhere that resembles its proper place. While I was wading knee deep in a tangle of kids all trying to put away the same block I looked over and saw one little girl (hereby dubbed Cheeto)staring dreamily up into the ceiling, one hand draped into a large container full of dollhouse furniture.
“Cheeto!”
She jumped and looked at me.
“Get your hand out of that box and help clean up some blocks please.”
Cheeto was cool with that request and crawled over to clean up. I, on the other hand, was doubled over and turning purple almost as soon as the words had come out of my mouth. See, Cheeto is one child who discovered pretty early on the joys of, um, let’s call it “self exploration.” She started doing it last year in my old classroom. So did a few other girls but in the others it has pretty much extinguished itself. Cheeto, on the other hand, has yet to pick up on the social cues that should indicate that people do not “explore” randomly throughout the day in public settings. We don’t say anything about it. It’s totally a natural and normal occurance amongst young children and there is no reason to discourage it or draw attention to it.
I’m sure no one picked up on the fact that I told the class “self explorer” to get her hand out of the box.
Except for me. And I’m pretty damn twisted.
Well, not Elm Street. Penn Avenue. Fucking Penn Avenue.
Explain, you say?
Well alrighty then.
Right now the parkway west (I-376) is closed every weekend for construction from Churchill to the Squirrel Hill tunnels. The detour basically funnels three lanes of expressway traffic down the one little lane of the Churchill Exit, down Penn Avenue which, while a main artery through the city of Pittsburgh, is also only one lane either way and is still made partially of brick. Needless to say, on the weekends Penn Avenue looks like the artery of a sweaty guy named Veto who’s been eating nothing but fried bacon and butter sandwiches dipped in mayonnaise for the past fifteen years.
And who do you think lives right at the top of Penn Avenue just about a mile from the Churchill Exit?
That’s right. Me.
And who works, babysits and attends class in Squirrel Hill, the place where all the detourees from the parkway are going?
Right again. Me.
I thought I had it beat. By this late in the summer I have worked out a decent system in which I head down Penn Avenue for class every Saturday morning before the traffic has backed up too incredibly badly and then when class lets out at 12:15 I head all the way out to Allegheny River Boulevard via Washington Boulevard and follow the river all the way back up to Penn Hills and then cut the back way through Churchill on Sandy Creek Road, ending up right at the Churchill exit, but without touching any of the construction or traffic. Granted, this is like, 30 miles out of my way, but it still gets me home faster than sitting in traffic all the way back up Penn Avenue. So this is what I did today. Only when I turned onto Sandy Creek, it was closed too. I ended up having to take some assbackward detour that brought me out several miles east of where I wanted to be and added an extra 45 minutes to my trip home. You haven’t lived until you’ve marinated in a puddle of your own backsweat on a 90 degree day while some bald dude in a red SUV cranks his subwoofers all the way up and your Elantra, which is weakly trying to play Dave Matthews, is bouncing along to the rhythm of Fifty Cent.
I took refuge in the sanctity of my apartment till about 5:20 when I decided it was feasible to begin the slow trek down Penn Ave to go babysit in Squirrel Hill. Normally I would have gone the back way, but it was closed, so I was pretty much limited to Penn Avenue. Little did I know there was a Steelers game tonight. So I sat in traffic again, oozing down Penn Avenue at a rate of a quarter mile every ten minutes. I called ahead to the family I was sitting for and told them I’d be late. A trip that, during the week would take about 15 minutes, took me 45. It wasn’t as bad as the earlier trip home from class-it only resulted in a semi permanent grimace of pain as opposed to a quart of sweat and a low threatening growl emanating from parts of me previously unknown.
I felt pretty good coming back home. It was almost midnight and I figured I had missed the post game traffic. Smooth sailing from here, right? RIGHT??
I had noticed earlier I was low on gas but opted not to stop for gas in the ghetto after dark, figuring I could just wake up early tomorrow and fill up my tank. But alas, there was a major accident blocking the half of Penn Avenue that would take me home.
I was pretty close to tears now. There was no way I was going to venture into the ghetto in the dark late at night with almost no gasoline in the car so I turned around, went back to the nearest gas station and fuelled up, before wandering into the back roads of Wilkinsburg in an attempt to get home sometime before sunrise. I’m being entirely honest when I say that it is not inconceivable that driving through Wilkinsburg after dark could result in getting car jacked or worse. It happens there all the time. So I drove in what I thoguht was the right direction, getting more and more nervous as it got darker, less street lights, worn street signs with no names. I started getting nervous when the signs pointing towards Penn Avenue were so covered with graffiti that I couldn’t see an arrow pointing anywhere, so I kept going straight, missing Penn Avenue entirely. I finally ended up finding an entrance to the parkway east, got on that and got off at the Churchill Exit east, again going several miles out of my way to circle back to a Churchill exit in order to get home.
I don’t think I’ll be leaving the house much tomorrow. I’ll be too busy clinging to the nearest pillow and thanking the gods of PennDOT that I don’t have to be out on the roads.
