Today was: OK

I've got to say that I started out at a disadvantage this morning because I was awoken at 5am by the sounds of our neighbor playing guitar in his kitchen. Just as I was falling back asleep at 5:30am, he yelled at one of his cats and then kicked it down the stairs. I was so upset that I ALMOST got up and went to his door to talk to him, but, I wasn't really feeling confrontational. More about this guy some other time.

SO, I was dragging a bit this morning. Overall, though, the day was OK. In the morning, I worked with one half of the kids, and then the other half, on their search for 2 new books for their Browsing Boxes. There were a few minor skirmishes over who was going to get the "David" books, but, for the most part things went well. There is one girl, who is just beautiful, who seems to be a bit down on herself. She's constantly saying that she can't do things, and she procrasinates so that she won't have time to finish projects ("Can I go to the bathroom?" "I'm cold. Can I go get my sweater?" "I'm hot. Can I put my sweater in my cubby?"). Today, she picked out a Tomie dePaola (one of my favorites) book called "Pancakes for Breakfast" which has only pictures - no text. She asked me to read it to her, but I told her that I knew that she could come up with a story that was better than one that I could invent. Sure enough, she went to town with the book, coming up with MULTIPLE sentences per page, perfectly describing what was happening in the pictures. Small victories.

Oh, and there were NO URINARY ACCIDENTS today!

The girl with autism had a REALLY LOUSY DAY. Everyone is pretty much at a loss with her - she won't listen, she won't pay attention, she endangers herself, she endangers others, and she's just, obviously, not benefiting from being in the classroom AT ALL. For her, trying to get her to do something becomes a game - when you ask her to come to the rug or to sit at her table and do the activity that the rest of the class is doing, she'll start laughing and begin to run around the room. When you grab her to force her to do something (which I had to do MANY times today), she'll go limp and start giggling. At one point today, she ran over to the supply shelves, grabbed a pair of scissors, and ran over to the play center where she began to cut at one of the doll's hair. This was when I really started to freak out. It's all just sad and frustrating in so many ways, the major one being that I feel like I'm failing her by not getting her involved in the classroom. After school, one of the "mommies" of the girl in the wheelchair was giving advice to the autistic girl's mother - ways in which she could demand a one-on-one assistant. It was really cool, but I could tell that the "mommie" felt like her words were falling on deaf ears.

We did an activity with the kids today called "Stand Up, Sit Down". Miles and I, because we are just about the same height, had to model it for the students. It's the thing where you stand back-to-back with another person, interlock your arms with each other, and then try and sit down and then stand back up. It's SO much more difficult than it sounds (if you don't believe me, try it for yourself...), and when I heard that we were going to be doing it with the class my first thought was, "Someone is going to get hurt". Sure enough, one little girl slammed her face into the shelves at the Block Area - no blood, just tears... THANKFULLY...

I just spoke to a woman in my program and I'm SO glad to hear that she is constantly exhausted like me. She mentioned that she already knows that she's not going to be planning any social activities Monday-Thursday nights because she knows she's going to be pretty tired every day after school. I know exactly what she's talking about. I was supposed to do something with a friend tonight and had to cancel when I got home from school and I could barely stay awake. It's only a 5 hours with the kids (8 or 9 hours from showing up in the morning to leaving at night), but it FEELS so much longer. It's not like I run around the room attending to student after student, it's really just about an ENERGY that runs throughout the day - an energy that wears you down.

The back porch is supposedly "done". I got home yesterday afternoon, after having been gone all day at my cohort cookout in Golden Gate Park, and looked down the hall - it seemed slightly BRIGHTER at the back of the apartment. We have porch that looks like it is out of a STANLEY KUBRICK movie. The old guy painted EVERYTHING BRIGHT WHITE - the walls, the trim, the ceiling, THE PLYWOOD FLOOR - ALL WHITE. Naturally, the paint job is crappy - it really looks like it's just a primer coat - and the kitchen still has a layer of white dust on top of a layer of blackish-brown dust.

I found a new favorite pizza place last night (sorry, Mr. Pizza Man...) - it is called PIZZA EXPRESS. Coincidentally, my favorite pizza place at Indiana University was also called PIZZA EXPRESS. Maybe I should go through the San Francisco phone book and see if I can find a restaurant called "Dragon Chinese". After pizza, we walked next door to this new ice cream place and I got a cotton candy flavoured milk shake, despite the "Are you sure you really want that?" looks from the women behind the counter. I'm currently obsessed with cotton candy - and, now that I think about it, it was always the kindergarten teacher at my elementary school who worked the cotton candy machine at our school carnivals. Is this what I have to look forward to?