december 20, 2001. Today we had a half-day. The kids just about drove me bonkers - I had a million things to organize & complete before the end of the day, and they were all hopped up on sugar and eager to ask dumb questions like, "do we have to go to French today?" and "how much homework do we have to do?" I pretended to be really serious about working them to the bone, as I enjoyed their outraged pouting, but eventually I cracked and let them know that all they had to do was eat candy canes, clean out their desks and be reasonably quiet. The best part of the day was distributing the sweet stuff: I had a bunch of elfin volunteers to help me distribute candy to those who bothered to show up, and we killed several minutes in sugary endeavour. I gave professionalism a bit of a curve ball this morning - I was all dressed up in my purple & black striped tights, a proper black teacher skirt and a silky dark purple blouse. I like wearing the tights to school because it's the one thing I do that's completely me, and yet is acceptable in that context. My favourite moment of reaction came when one of the girls came over to me and said really seriously, "if you had pigtails, you would look just like Wednesday Addams." I clapped my hands with glee and hopped around the desk to hug her. She couldn't understand why I was so excited. Another kid told me I looked like a witch. I said, "black hair, striped tights...of course I'm a witch. What was your first clue?" He snorted and told me that if I was a witch, my tights should be white & green. Suggestion noted. Other than that, the day was a confused sticky ball of supervision during the morning "activities." I ended up babysitting a bunch of strange kids through a viewing of that lamentable piece of shit Cats and Dogs. Damien (a.k.a. The Worst Twelve-Year-Old In The World) was among them. When I saw him I thought I was going to be in for trouble, but as the movie unspooled and he watched in rapt attention, I realized that I have this kid all wrong. He spoke exactly once, when he turned to me and said, "this movie is pretty good so far!" I enthusiastically agreed. Like, I went to school with worse kids like this in the 80's. He doesn't want to be a bad kid or even an old streetwise teen. He's candy. And I can't help loving him a bit for choosing a kid's movie when he had the chance. Two parties tonight; a choir potluck shindig and a decadent student-teacher-only bash at Jerry & Kerri's following immediately after. The muffins I baked for the potluck are sitting in the kitchen, waiting for me. I feel all June Cleaver & shit. As for the other party, I'm looking forward to stumbling home at an ungodly hour, ignoring the cold with the massive imperviousness of the totally wasted. Hurrah! this time 2 years ago: There's nothing better than scathing confession played out in stick figure drama.