Well, or titling one of my posts like this… either I’ll guilt him into it or allow him to stumble into it unwittingly…somewhat like the rest of you. Anyway, this is my latest (I haven’t written any poetry in a few months) and I just finished the raw draft today (I started it Wednesday). One of the kiddies inspired it. Any constructive criticism is welcome.

Gruff then looks at me with his huge green eyes smiling and crinkly in the corners and angelically grins.
“Again.”

So I hit the play button and we watch again. And it was adorable, especially when little Bravo with her vanilla ice cream mustache started giggling and spasmodically bobbing up and down, droppin‘ it like it was hot.

But around the tenth or eleventh time the shiny, happy cuteness wears off. You decide that you never want to ride a bus EVER AGAIN, especially if the driver is some dorky white Canadian dressed in a bellhop uniform and rapping.

When I was working in Room 105 with the wee ones, we had 2 mostly unscratched, somewhat useable nap appropriate CDs: Time Life guitar renditions of easy listening songs and Enya’s “The Memory of Trees.” I’m a huge fan of most things Irish or Celtic so I preferred Enya on repeat over guitar renditions of “More Than Words” and “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)” playing continuously over two hours of napping. When I left CHCC in May I got a Beatles Lullaby CD as a going away gift along with “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak. Musical and literary revolutionary, I was!

Anyway, the situation in 101 is pretty different. The lead teacher has amassed an endless supply of CDs, several of which are lullaby CDs. She does have 4 or 5 that she favors and they certainly aren’t bad. Sometimes I shudder at Michael Bolton’s rendition of Edelweiss, but only because it reminds me of a night where CB mumbled the tune under his breath spontaneously throughout the night. Funny? Yes. Annoying? Much more so than funny. Sometimes I cry at that Butterfly Kisses song (the cliche-ness of that song makes the sneering cynic in me a bit queasy, so don’t tell anyone that it chokes me up and makes me want to give my own dad a huge hug every time I hear it). There was actually one song that I insisted on looking up the lyrics for, simply because I could swear I heard the words “washing machine” in it and absolutely had to know the context of the phrase within a lullaby.
Suffice it to say, I am much more mentally stimulated by this naptime repertoire, in contrast to the prior routine tunes from 105. Interestingly enough, I noticed today, and not for the first time, that I keep hearing about cake in lullabies. In one of the lullabies (All the Pretty Little Horses)today I heard the refrain, “when you wake, we’ll have cake” and yesterday’s CD had a song (Fais Dodo) that said, “go to sleep, you’ll have a treat….mama makes a cake…”

Seriously yo, why are we bribing our children to sleep with cake? I find that to be a somewhat strange and sabotaging spin on the whole nap time concept. You sleep and we will feed you sugar laden , hydrogenated oil soaked blocks of artificial love. Damn.

Another thing that sort of impressed me was that everything I linked to here, I was able to find via internet just by entering a few lyrics I managed to remember into Google. I ♥ Google. I’m also going to openly praise my memory for random details. Mind you, I have absolutely no ability to remember anything important (see here), but when it comes to tiny, insignificant details, I’m a gleaming steel trap baby! Oh and yeah, so, like, if anyone knows a way to get paid as a freelance internet researcher, I think this post certainly gives a glimpse of some unearthed potential that is begging to be tapped.

No, really.

Today I hate my name. The children. The children have made me hate the very sound of my name. No matter what I did, where I turned, what was going on, every single one of the 21 preschoolers in Room 101 did nothing but squawk, scream, whine, cry, giggle, gurgle, or call my name. All. Day. Long.
“Kooooorieeeeee”
“Kowie! Kowie! Look at me!”
“Korie!”
“KorieKorieKorieKorieKorieKorieKorieKorie”

On and on and on until I actually cringed at the sound of my own name.
Why? Why is it that these small, grubby, demanding creatures find it so very crucial to show me every single thing they do? Why must they seek me out to tell me each specific detail of every minute of their day?

“Korie, I’m so sweaty, I was running so fast!”
“Yes Squirt, I was sitting on the bench…remember I asked you not to spit on people while you were running?”

“Kooowie! Come here! Look what I can do. It’s vewy dangewous.”
following APRF over to the climber…
“Oh,yes, um, that one step is very high off the ground….very dangerous. Be careful up there.”

“Korie, Korie I peed!”
“Yeah, so, flush and wash your hands.”
“But, I can’t!”
“Sure you can Dresden, just try.”
“No you have to come see it first.”
“Oh! Of course…..oh, look! It’s yellow. With toilet paper in it. Wow! Now flush it. Really.”

“Korie, sit heaw.”
“Not right now, Sit Here, I’m trying to write notes for mommies and daddies.”
“You sit with me for nap?”
“Yes. I sit with you for nap every day.”
“I hold your hand.”
“Yes, hun, I hold your hand all the time.”
“Korie?”
“Yeah?”
“Sit heaw.”

AAARRRGGGHHHH.

But sure enough, when it was sure to jeopardize the most, that’s when I pulled a serious blooper. While I can’t say this isn’t somewhat typical Korie style, it’s been quite a while since I pulled a royal boner and I had hoped that maybe my streak was broken. Of course, that’s perfect timing for a long overdue master fuckup of the decade (not the century, mind you, cause I may still have some reprieve here, but a massive mistake nonetheless). I was perusing the FBI website one last time before going to get my fingerprints tomorrow for my personal record (lack thereof) check for my student visa. That’s when I noticed a single sentence that I have managed to miss for the past 3 months: takes 16-18 weeks for processing. Uh-oh. My flight is scheduled for December 25th. That gives me 11 weeks from today until I need to apply for the visa. I’m getting fingerprinted tomorrow and can have the request to the FBI in the mail on Monday. I also plan on calling the CDJIS, or whatever the heck the department name is and begging any human I can get a hold of to put a rush on things. That’s about the best I can do, but I’ll have to try.

When I discussed this issue this evening with CB I got pretty flustered and borderline hysterical (he called it a tantrum…nothing like being compared to the preschoolers I teach every day but I’ll take it on the chin, after all, I am entirely to blame for this and he had a lot more right to start screaming than I did, but unlike me, he was entirely rational and controlled). This was right before I had to leave to go babysit some of my favorite kids (the elder of the two is in my class and let’s call him Gruff. He has a little sister who started walking last month and is saying a few words. We’ll call her Bravo) and I was basically mid-freakout when I looked at the clock and realized I had to get in the car and drive into Squirrel Hill to babysit. So I said I had to go, hung up, and flew out the door.

And I was so incredibly angry with myself. Like, wanting to tear off my own skin, so full of self loathing that it made me nauseous, my retinas began to hemorrhage and I went temporarily blind from the hate I felt for my own carelessness. I had to pull the car over for a few minutes to stop myself from flying down a small residential shortcut at 70 mph. I found an old NTB receipt and started writing about how I felt, and it kept me from pursuing other, more destructive compulsions, but if I put it in this blog I don’t think I would get a thumbs up from my physician in the mental health category for my visa physical. You all get the watered down version that is being filtered through three hours of caring for adorable blond haired, green eyed children. And really, that’s what brought me back from the brink of an imminent fugue; walking in the door and having Bravo wave at me with her little hand and run at me to say hello. I was even relieved when the kids’ mom asked me first thing to change Bravo’s diaper (which was poopy, even more distraction). Then I had to coerce Gruff to eat his supper of pasta and sauteed shrimp (I truly, truly enjoy this family, just for being them, but I can’t complain about getting awesome dinners as a perk) before his jam sandwich. Then I had to scrape a two inch thick layer of pasta sauce from Bravo’s entire face before taking the kids to the park down the street to play for a half hour. By the time we were on our way back, my anger had pretty much petered out and the kids were getting sleepy. Bravo went to sleep pretty quickly. Gruff also finally turned in after several stories and requests to go pee. So now, I’m sitting, waiting for the parents to come home, and thankful for being able to turn things around and make everythingI was feeling before a little bit easier to cope with.