the day that should've counted as two days: monday, may 24.

shoot, i should've gotten a day advance, and today should've been wednesday. it was caaaaraaaaazaaay yeseterday!

getting up at 4 am: THUMBS DOWN. dark, cold and miserable.

getting to school at 5 am: kids everywhere with all their war gear (ie, water guns out the wazoo, and 2500+ water balloons.)

fielding parents, getting kids ready for battle (weigh them in, pin their tags, make dog tags, etc.): insanity. but in a controlled way, since meredith is my star and supports my many type a neuroses. we were as prepared as we could be.

the actual battle: actually really interesting to watch. the british really sucked at rushing no man's land ... it was more like a straggling saunter. they had a monster trebuchet that only shot one round, but the germans kept killing themselves because their water balloons couldn't get past their own fortifications. hilarious. lots of casualties. there was a lot of shouting, but not a whole lot got done. only 3 british got up the hill; no one captured the objective. german victory.

after the battle was heinous. trying to get kids to stop slinging stuff at each other for fun ... misery. trying to get them to clean up the detritus of 2500+ balloons off the field: near impossible.

but we did it. the kids really surprised me, in a pleasant way for once. there were some screwups, of course, but by and large, they were very well-behaved and they helped clean up pretty well. hooray for them. given that this is the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL, truly phenomenal.

shoutouts to: booboo, jenie, olivia, and hideyo for coming to watch the madness. and especially for helping to clean up afterward.

realization: i have a "thing." i totally did not know this about myself, but seri, o, jenie and hideyo say that when i'm yelling at kids or something, that i have "the finger." it's sort of like a pointing finger, but not as accusatory as a closed-fist pointing thing. you'll have to ask me to see it. i am so aware of it right now ... it's weird. i didn't know i pointed so much. and accented that with a "HEY."

yeah ... the battle was momentous, but not nearly as horrible as i imagined it to be. it made me really tired for the rest of the day, but i think the kids really enjoyed it and they did have some reasonable comments and observations to make. it was really really hard to teach when the bags under my eyes headed one degree south every hour on the hour ... but it was a-ok. special thanks to hideyo for staying and helping me grade quizzes and organizing my crap and generally being good-natured about the crazy children.

i just did a debrief with my supervisor about the year. i can hardly believe that it's almost over, but yet, believe me, SO GLAD THAT WE'RE ALMOST DONE. and while there were a lot of low points and dark days, i do think i'm ending the year on an upswing. the kids have been really good about doing their oral exams and taking them seriously, and they've been as well-behaved as they can be this close to the end. some of them are making really strong eleventh hour appearances, and i want to honor their effort. i hope i don't regret saying that.

coming to a bookstore near you soon: "cheapass weddings." one of the things that i love about hanging out with ev is that it's always SO FUN. we eat (bacon on EVERY pasta dish) and we talk and we hang out and laugh and cry and giggle and all those kinds of girly bondy things. we were talking about the wedding tour 2004 last night ... and we decided that we are not detail-oriented people. while this may seem contradictory to my type a nature, i'm not all het up about vellum and ribbons and tulle and color themes. especially a nix on that damn tulle. i hate that stuff. evelyn and i will pen a book (to counter jessica simpson's efforts) called "cheapass weddings," as soon as we are done writing "quarter-life crisis: the second adolescence they never told you about."

stay tuned!

geez. is it still tuesday?