Ho Ho Ho (sarcasm)

In some ways I hate Christmas.  The whole happy family thing.  When I was younger (yet kind of a big kid) I was heartbroken they dumped Christmas Eve on Sesame Street for the crap called Elmo Saved Christmas.  That incessant voice of his.  And his grammar.  No wonder kids can’t talk or have  trouble with grammar.  I hope to $Diety they don’t let that poor excuse for a muppet on Sesame English (their ESL version).

I went to do my Christmas shopping.  Why I decided to do it at 4 on a Saturday afternoon?  Beats me.  I’m logical like that sometimes.  And what did I forget?  Tissue paper, though I’ll probably use leftover wrapping paper for that (I’m not wrapping my coworkers gifts.  They’re going in bags.)  Oh yeah.  Tape.  Unless, I was to use masking tape.  I’ll have to dig through a drawer where there might be some.

Maybe I’ll just celebrate Festivus this year.

I’d actually watch some Seinfeld or MASH (RIP Harry Morgan) but my Mac throws a hissy fit every time I plug in my external drive.  Something about it not being able to be repaired.  Obvious OSX did something stupid because I shut it down (properly) and the next boot up it was complaining.

No, really I’m grateful for having someplace to go for Christmas.  It’s the whole shopping thing that puts me in a bad mood.

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Bugger

I’m leaving my job after my contract ends.  Ordinarily I’d stay.  But my boss has cut our winter break from 5 to 3 days.  You don’t know how much I need those five days.  The franchise fed her some cock and bull story that hogwons don’t give five days in the summer and the winter.  That’s crap.  I’ve worked at two other and talked to other people.  You get 5/5.  I can’t believe my boss bought it.  AND she broke my contract.  If I were a vindictive bitch, I’d take her to the labor board.  I’m not.  I saw next year’s schedule.  I have even fewer hours.  I’m not working for half of what she put in my contract.  I should have insisted she put the original amount.  I let her put what I’m getting now.  So I’m going to try to get a job at the same school as some friends.  I like the franchise books, but once you’re out of their ESL course, they frankly suck.  They have some sort of online things for teachers.  There are twelve units in the book.  I’ve yet figured out how to get past unit 8 on the web site.  I managed to find the answer key for one of the workbooks and printed the chapter I needed.  There was like 90% overlap between the two.  Book used word A, key used synonym B.  There are more than the average number of mistakes in the books.  I can’t spell.  God knows I be up shits creek without a spell checker.  But one of the authors on the series is a native English speaker.  How you do miss dong for doing, two pages in a row.

Yes, I’m venting.  Before this shit hit the fan, I had to deal with doctor turf wars.  The rheumy gave in and took out the Prozac (which I was going to ask him to do anyway) and the sleep med he prescribed.  I had two blissful weeks of sleep.  Now I’m back to sleeping but not sleeping.  Psych has me on amitriptyline, probably enough to put a normal horse to sleep.  It’s not helping me sleep.  He has me on tiny amounts of Valium and Klonopin at night.  He said that whatever sleep med the rheumy prescribed had the highest abuse potential of any sleep aide.  Have I ever shown him addictive potential in nearly two years?  No.  And the man hands out Valium like it’s candy. I’m going to give it the weekend.  I’ve already spent the days sleeping because I don’t want to deal with the pain (and I wad tired as hell).  Yes, I have pain killers, but I’m afraid of tolerance (different than addiction, thank you very much).  I need to ask a doc about that.  It’s Tramadol + acetaminophen.  I don’t like the acetaminophen one bit.  But apparently it’s supposed to give the Tramadol a boost.

OK, I think that’s enough for one day.

WHY???

Really boss lady, if your son’s class is to start at 8:00 and go until 8:40, don’t start eating chicken with him at 8:00 and finish at 8:20.  Then, don’t expect him to still get a 40 minute lesson.

I need to grow a backbone.  I should have left at 8:40 just like the schedule says.

That is all.  Thank God Tomorrow Is FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

Do You Have a Brain?

Sorry, work rant again.

These new books.  I have one that I need two days to teach one unit.  I have one day a week with the class.  My boss is the co-teacher.  I initially asked for help, especially the reading comprehension section because it was difficult.  No problem she says.  We aren’t doing any comprehension now.

Today she comes by and says, you didn’t do the comprehension questions with them.  Me: speechless.  Uh, you were supposed to do those.  But they’re more conversation based and I think you should do them.  Me: speechless.  I only have one day and I need to do the vocabulary, speaking and grammar parts.  She says it’s better if the Korean teacher does the grammar.  Me: speechless.  The last unit of grammar?  “there is” and “there are”.  I can teach a blind, deaf, mute monkey how to use there is and there are.  So now the students have to translate the reading (hahahahaha, like that’s going to happen).  This still leaves me with trying to do 2 days of work in 1.  And my boss wonders why I get stressed out.  I have no idea.

Why the change?  She can’t keep up with the material she has to teach.  She put the class in the wrong level.  Not my problem.

Now I’m going to see what might be on TV but probably will watch a movie.  “Instinct” is queued up in VLC.

And someday I promise I’ll get back to the real reason I started this blog.  But in a way, it’s all relevant.  Stress makes the fibro makes the PTSD worse.  On and on like an oh so wonderful merry-go-round.

Shakes Head

I’m having a flare, mainly in my lower back.  Lidocaine injections.  The pain laughs at them.  Gabapentin isn’t made for muscle pain (though it works great on the nerve pain, that’s all but disappeared).  I tried Motrin (this is what my p-doc offered me when I told him I couldn’t sleep from the pain).  The pain chewed it up and spit it out.  This has been going on for a week.  The ortho offered me Tylenol.  TYLENOL!!!!!!!!!!  Tylenol hasn’t done crap for me since I was about 5.  I don’t think it’s going to start now.  I’m going to have to find a pain management specialist or something.  The lidocaine injections aren’t working (at least in my mind) because I’ve had too many of them.  I’m sensitized.  I’m going to keep up with the PT and try to figure out a way to unknot that muscle.

At least the day got better.  There was a typo in one of my text books.  “doing” was written as “dong”.  All of a sudden I hear “TEACHER ddong.  Hahahahahahahahaha!  Ddong!”  If you haven’t figured it out yet, ddong is Korean for dung.  It took me a minute to figure out what they were going on about.  And I admit.  I laughed.  You almost had to.  Only 1st graders would find that.  Case in point, the 4th graders later today didn’t even see it.  And I didn’t point it out.

Scream

Yes, another work rant.  I rant about work because it keeps me sane.  Well, sane-ish.  It’s the same reason I rant about the fibro.  I think I’m still coming to grips with my pissed off-ness at all the doctors that ignored me all those years.  Yes I was depressed.  I don’t fault them for that.  But please, I was coming and constantly complaining about pain.  It took nearly 30 years, but at least someone is listening now.

It used to be on Thursday, I taught 5 roughly 1 hour classes.  Then I had almost an hour break.  Then a 40-60 minute class depending on how much fun we were having (it’s an individual student who has the same warped sense of humor I have).   S0 Thursday before classes, my boss drops the bomb.  You have another class.  My jaw hit my chest as I asked when.  Oh, between McQueen and SuperHeroes.  Bye Bye break.  Now I basically teach from 2-9.  Yes, I realize most people in the real world work more hours.  But so do I.  Lesson prep.  Grading diaries with spelling and grammar worse than mine.  Writing and grading tests.  It all adds up.

Actually if a person told me my job was easy, I’d probably punch them.  Teaching it 10 times harder when you speak a fraction of the language your students do (though I do know most swear words and call out the student on them).

So that’s my rant for today.  The uh, humorous part is when you call the student out for swearing in class.  It’s usually accompanied by jaws hitting the floor and “Teacher, you know that word???”.  To which I replay “Oh yes I do.  And if I hear it again, you will go see Ellie Teacher (teacher, director, owner).  Incidence of swearing in my classes has definitely dropped.

Quick Stuff

I’m trying to fight off a cold.  I’m extra achy today.  I had to go out in the crappy weather to replace a book I lost.  Thank goodness, there was one copy.

My doc moved my full dose of gabapentin to before bed.  I’ve been having vivid dreams (not nightmares) and even some lucid dreams.  But it makes me so unsteady on my feet, taking it during the day is dangerous to me and walls.

Back under the blankets for me.

Lemonade or Apple Juice?

I thought I loved my mini.  But lately it’s been a piece of crap.  USB ports disappearing.  Just power cycling the device (printer / hard drive) doesn’t work.  Nope.  Got to power cycle the whole computer.

Let it go to sleep by itself, at least 5 times a week, it won’t wake up.  Either that or its losing contact with the monitor.

Of course, when I trekked across town to take it to the Apple retailer, they could reproduce the sleep problem and they didn’t have any random USB thing to try to replicate that.  So now….. I have to take a morning and go to the repair place.  That involves unhooking everything, boxing it back up and going god knows where.  The guy at the store wrote the address for a cab driver after I told him I don’t do subways.

I did get three tests written this weekend.  One yesterday and two today.  I think I can use some old tests as a template for three new ones.

I’m half watching Law & Order LA.  They just started showing it on Fox Korea.  I’ll give it a chance.  I’ve liked all the other L&O spin off.

Started sunny today, now its cloudy and looking at rain tomorrow.  These weather changes are sending my fibro into over drive.  In positive news I dumped stupid GP and found one who is an internal medicine doc.  I’m off the thyroid drug.  It was such a low dose that I’m not sure it was doing anything.  It was mostly me not wanting to see stupid GP and me wanting to know if it was responsible for the anorexia and taste perversion.  Nope.  I have to wait until about the first of the year before he can recheck my thyroid to make sure everything is out of my system and it has had a chance to stabilize.  I haven’t been able to do my workouts this week, the fatigue was too much.  When I saw cool IM I weighed myself.  Another 10 down.  That means I’ve lost somewhere between 60 and 65 pounds in the last year.  Oh and my pizza face seems a bit better.  *crosses fingers*

Long Day

Why do we have to have meetings at 11?  What’s wrong with 12 or 1?  Especially when I’m stuck there until nearly 9.

Here’s hoping I sleep well tonight.  I have to get back to the dermatologist.  I can’t go on with looking like I have chicken pox or something.  I went 35 years with perfect skin and than bang, less than 2 weeks before 36, the shit hit the fan.

Laters.

Grad School Flashbacks

We had a pretty good training seminar on the new books/curriculum we’re changing over to.  I understand people where coming from all over Korea.  Me, I was lucky.  A 20 minute cab ride and I was there (the benefits of Daejeon being pretty much smack in the middle of the country).  But 10 to 5 was a little much.  By the time we got to the part I really needed to know about, I was in pain and falling asleep.  Lunch?  A Korean rice/vegetable dish that’s just meh in my book.  So I didn’t really have anything to eat all day.  I really wish they would have left the feedback on the program to the end, instead of putting it in the middle.

I swear, it was like a bad grad school seminar.  Or maybe the first stats class I had to take in grad school with the 10 pound book.

On a positive note, I did do the stretch/sculpt workout this morning.  Somehow I don’t see myself being able to do the cardio tomorrow.  Actually my right Achilles tendon still hurts from the first time.  So I’ll probably do some stretching on my own or check out the ballet videos.

Now to feed the fuzzy masters.