A Tiny Bit Skinnier

I’m just going to hit publish at 11:00.  Be prepared for more mistakes and less of a main idea…kind of like fourth graders.

I had a kid say today, “Well, I don’t think Mrs. Proffitt is fat.”  Why, thank you, friend.  I guess I should offer the back story, huh?  I was enjoying my key lime yogurt at lunch and a student plops down next to me and says she’s going to offer me a fact.  She continues to tell me that eating yogurt every day will help me to lose weight.  I, jokingly of course, ask her if she is trying to imply something about her teacher.  She has stopped paying attention by then…on to the next thing….but the boys sitting across from us are now listening.  One boy declines to comment in the conversation.  Wise man…his mamma taught him well.  The other says I’m not fat.  I’ll take it.

It’s amazing how far the bribe of one cookie can get me with Chica.  Some supernatural willpower descended on me today, and I managed to save the last chocolate chip cookie for Chica as an afterschool snack.  You’ve never seen an attitude turn around so fast as when I mentioned what was waiting for her on my desk.  She then told me that she has a little mouse named Gus that goes to find her good attitude when it goes missing.  Like in Cinderella.  Thanks, Gus.

Tomorrow I’m actually going to use a lesson plan out of a book, pretty much as it is written.  I’ve decided to join the rest of the world and stop trying to reinvent the wheel.  My teammates (lovingly…I think) told me that I was trying to be the overachiever last year.  I’m passing that torch on to our newest teacher if she wants it.

Tonight driving home from dinner out I started to feel that suffocating feeling that happens when I think about all that is undone.  Papers to read, phone calls to make, laundry, plans to write…uh…it’s happening again just typing this.  I so wanted to just crawl into bed at 8:30 and sleep it all away.  I read somewhere that when this happens, the best thing you can do it to just do the next thing, whatever that may be.  So I loaded the dishwasher.  And made two lunches.  And planned for tomorrow.  And now I can go to bed and not panic in the morning.  Every single night when 8:30 rolls around I have to pep talk myself into the next thing.

And finally, tonight Chica prayed something like this, “Dear God, thank you for my papa and for making him so big so that I can sit in his lap and get warm and snuggly when I’m chilly.  And thank you for my daddy who is a tiny bit skinnier.”