one small corner of the universe

Dear Loyal Readers (all 2 of you),

When I started this blog I fully intended to post weekly, and for a while I didn’t fare too badly. But then May happened. Whew. Public school employees have no discernible lives during the month of May. In theory it should be a happy time: school is ending, the weather is gorgeous, “sumer is y cumen in,” yada yada yada. Remarkably, however, it’s the second most stressful time of the school year for me. The other is December, by the way, but that’s another story. In May, all those things that should be “happy in theory” make me crazy. The end of the school year incites acute onset psychosis in most of my students. Gorgeous weather causes extreme irritability for those who are inside and can’t enjoy it. The approach of summer causes scores of people to say things like, “You have the best job,” and, “You are so lucky to have so much vacation,” and, “I wish I could get paid to sit around all summer.” (I’d like to see one of those people DO my job, by the way. I teach high school freshmen who think that it’s cute to put rotten raw eggs in the lockers the day before finals, and that farting aloud in class is entertainment at its best–and I don’t actually get paid in the summer…but I digress) .

And as if the normal stresses of May aren’t enough, I added some extra stress of my own. Remember the “really huge life-altering” thing I was saving up for a few posts back? Well, it’s becoming a reality. Specifically speaking, it’s hopefully becoming a fetus in the very near future. Yep, that’s right. I’m trying to conceive a baby. In a clinic. With frozen sperm affectionately known as Joey. So I’ve been a tad preoccupied with my own fertility. Quite the complicated science, what with measuring basal body temperature, checking the position of the cervix, examining cervical fluid, peeing on sticks, and having a very long, very thin tube inserted into–well, that’s really enough about that.

And therein lies the point of this post: I’ve thought about posting. Really, I have. But given my level of stress and my general state of mind, I didn’t feel that my posts would be, well, appropriate. There would have been, shall we say, “off color language,” for example. There were days in the past month, in fact, when the only word I wanted to say was F–oops, that’s just what I was trying to avoid! And who among [the two of] you wants to hear about my cervical mucus? That’s what I thought. So forgive my absence. I’m cleaning the cobwebs out of my “small corner.” And who knows, the first new post may well be the story of what happens when one too many people tells me how lucky I am to be a teacher.