Crazy Juice

All the children I had to deal with last night survived, but it was a close call. Even the good kids were being kind of naughty. The other teacher whose twin daughters are in the class had to go "mean mom" on her girls, who are usually quite well-behaved. I asked the kids if they were served crazy juice for lunch. We could get them quiet, and then they'd be going nuts before I could finish my next sentence. I'd planned to play musical chairs, but I said they weren't behaving in a way that showed they could handle it, and we didn't have enough time because of all the time we'd had to spend waiting for them to stop talking long enough for us to give directions.

I may have lost my problem child, but a new one is rising to the occasion. He really doesn't want to be there but his mom is making him go (she's involved in another activity for adults during that time), and so since he doesn't want to do these things, he tries to make it impossible for anyone else to do them. We're singing in church on Sunday, but he can't be there, so he decided we didn't need to practice. He complains if we sing any song more than once or do any activity more than once (and by that I mean once, ever, not even more than once in a session -- meanwhile, the other kids want to do the things they like over and over again). Last night, he brought a pencil with him -- a very sharp, long pencil -- and when the other teacher told him he needed to put it down, he put it in his pocket, where we could just see the imminent disaster, so she confiscated it and said he'd get it back after class. He spent the next ten minutes whining about his pencil (it was just a yellow #2 pencil, nothing special) and started crying because he was afraid he wouldn't get it back after class and we'd forget it. I finally got tired of the whining and crying, got the blue painters' tape and taped it to the door frame so he couldn't forget it. His mom was mad at him for having the pencil when she came to pick him up (he'd apparently been told not to bring it), but she found it hilarious that I'd taped it to the door frame after confiscating it.

Unfortunately, that tape isn't strong enough to hold a kid, and we're not supposed to use anything else on the newly painted walls. Otherwise, I'd have been tempted last night.

Today, I had a calendar freakout when I realized how full my next week or so is. I've got a very early start Sunday, with two services and the preschool music, then a dress rehearsal for Easter that afternoon. Monday is free (yay!), then dance is Tuesday, an extra-long choir rehearsal Wednesday, church services Thursday and Friday, possibly a meeting Saturday, and three services on Easter Sunday. There's a social gathering this Saturday that I'm thinking of bowing out of because it's a long way away and I wouldn't be able to stay long. I figure you should at least stay longer than it takes to get there and back, and that would put me getting home later than I'd like, considering how busy Sunday will be. I could use a day to just chill out and not have to be anywhere.

I sent the book off to the editor yesterday, so now I'm down to just doing some formatting for the global release of the early Enchanted Inc. books and writing the first draft of the second book in my new series. I couldn't concentrate yesterday, so I'm hoping I can get something done today.