Posted with permission :)

Barbi bought Jorden some new summer clothes and he was really upset.

Why was he so upset, you ask?

"Mom," he wailed, "why did you have to buy me new clothes??? Why couldn't you buy me beef jerky???"

I like that kid. :)

I am drug free, and so is my 5-year-old niece.

Apparently she came from from school wearing a bracelet that proclaimed that she was drug free, but when her mommy asked her if she knew what that meant, she had no idea.

Aah, the power of education.

I, however, KNOW what it means that I am drug free - it means that I have not taken any pain medication since 2:45am Saturday morning - woohoo!

What, you haven't either? Ok, fine, but here's why mine is significant:

So I went to the emergency room at about 12:45 am on Monday morning. My left ear had been hurting for a couple of days, and Sunday night when the pain woke me up, my BFF ibuprofen helped me get back to sleep, but Monday night - no such luck. I called the Nurse Hotline to which I have access with my health insurance, and after ascertaining that I did not have a "foreign object" in my ear (and how could you tell if it was foreign, you ask? by the accent, my friend, by the accent), she said that "the protocol suggests that you seek medical attention within the next 4 hours." I'm not a math major, but 12:30am + 4 hours = the middle of the night. So after sitting on my living room floor crying for a few minutes (no couch to sit on, as of yet) (and no, that's not why I was crying), I decided that this was why they invented emergency rooms, and so I went.

The ER was fast (read: "empty") and by 2:15am I was home with amoxicillin for the infection and vicoden for the pain of the partially ruptured eardrum. (The PA told me they'd give me amoxicillin for the infection, and then he looked at his watch (1:30 am) and then at me, and said, "And since you're here now, we'll give you something for the pain, too." I about fell off the hospital bed with gratitude.) The PA that gave me the vicoden told me that it would make me, and I quote, "drowsy," and asked how long I would be able to sleep the next day. I said that I had class at 9:30, and he looked at me like I was an idiot, so I said, very insincerely, "...but I'm not afraid to miss class." I mean, come on, I know I'm kind of a wimp when it comes to pain, but miss class?!?! Whatever, dude. Give me the drugs and let me go home. College students go to class feeling "drowsy" all the time.

Well, he was right about "drowsy," if what he meant was "totally incapacitated." Oooh, the nausea, the nausea!! When I got up at 9:30am and called my boss to tell her I would not be coming to work, I had a hard time staying vertical long enough to call her. She was like, "Uh, I'm going to hang up before you throw up!" They had prescribed hydrocodone, which I took as prescribed until that afternoon, when I decided that if they said, "take it on a full stomach" and the taking emptied the stomach, that was not acceptable. Then I called around until my doctor (who I've never met) told her nurse to tell me to stop taking the hydrocodone (duh! yeah, I maybe could have thought of that on my own if I hadn't already been totally out of it!), and to resort instead to my BFF ibuprofen. LOTS of it.

So I alternated ibuprofen and Tylenol, as even prescription-strength ibuprofen didn't kill the pain long enough for me to make it from one dose to the next without being in considerable pain. And this worried me, because the PA at the ER had told me that the antibiotic would take 24-48 hours to kick in, and I assumed that that meant that I would then be able to reduce my pain meds. But no. Whether the amoxicillin kicked in or not, I was taking full doses of pain medication all through Friday. (I'm going to the doctor this afternoon to make sure that the healing is proceeding as it should.)

Side note: After walking around for a couple of days cupping my hand over my left ear (the pressure helped alleviate the pain a little), I laughed outloud when I realized where I had seen people doing that before--on trains in Romania! There is this old superstition in Romania about "curent" - a draft or blast of air, or a cross-breeze. The idea is that you don't want a breeze to blow "through" your head--that is not good for you. So, for example, you can have the two right side windows of a cab open at the same time, but not both front windows - the cross-breeze is bad for you. So we'd be riding on trains in the middle of the summer, and when we'd open the window to the train AND the door to the compartment, any old Romanians around would cover their ears, and often their whole heads!, to avoid the badness that would come with the "curent." Apparently they didn't hold with our feeling that surely any "badness" would be more manageable than the discomfort of suffocating heat and still (and usually smelly) air. We now return to the regularly scheduled program.

And as fascinating as you find your field of study, throbing pain in your ear is a LEEEETTLE distracting. I was fine until I'd try to sit in one place to read (oh wait, that's all grad students DO!), and then all I would think was, "language learning...PAIN...Contrastive analysis hypothesis...can I take more medication yet?...midterm next week on this stuff!...PAIN."

Yeah, it was pretty rockin' awesome.

So when I woke up in a GREAT mood on Saturday morning, it took me about 15 seconds to figure out that the reason I was so cheerful was because my first thought was not "PAIN." What a glorious feeling that was!

And so gentle readers, I have now been drug free for two and a half days, and while I am not pain free, I am so eager to be drug free that I'll put up with the minor pain that kicks in now and then.

And this is already really long, but I have two final thoughts.

First, I really need to not get sick for the next, oh, 5 years. I was comatose for one day, and not good enough to be up to studying and attending class the next day, and I am AMAZED how far behind I got!

Second, I have no idea how an eardrum can be only "partially ruptured." I feel like that's a binary (that word's for you, Jer) condition--an eardrum is either "ruptured" or "not ruptured." Whatever. It hurt A LOT.

A few funnies, to demonstrate that I am still blogging :)

My niece was talking about how her baby sister rips pages out of the scriptures, and eats the pages. And I made some comment about how it's no good to eat the pages of the scriptures, and my niece said, "Why not? It says we're supposed to feast upon the word." FAR too clever for a (just turned) 9 (today) year old.

A few minutes later in our phone conversation she said, "Well, do you have anything else to tell me? Because my arm is getting tired, and I even switched a few times."

A little boy in church today, pseudo-whispered during the meeting: "Mommy, if I went outside, Jesus would help me get back inside the church. He helps me."

My hilarious darling Grandma, a month and a half ago, I can't remember the context, but it doesn't matter, it's still 100% Grandma: "Don't be right ALL the time; it's dull."

My youngest sis and her husband are on the west coast for grad school, and we have agreed that it would be really cool at some point to talk on the phone when she is standing in the Pacific Ocean and I am standing in the Atlantic. So on Friday night, when I couldn't bear the thought of just going back to my apartment, I wandered until I found the Potomac River. And I had been so excited to get to the WATER that when I got there I called my sis to tell her. And AS I was leaving a message I realized that this was NOT quite the "event" that I had been thinking, because I was only next to a river, not the ocean. So I left her a kind of sheepish message about how here I was, next to water that is CLOSE to the Atlantic Ocean. And on Saturday I got a reply voicemail: "We thought maybe we'd call you while we were standing in the bathtub - then we'd be in water that was NEAR the ocean." Little snot.

And I need to post Kate's meme, and I had a FABULOUS weekend, such as I have been WANTING to have ever since I moved to this state, so I need to write about that, and I just FINALLY got a batch of pictures off my camera, so I'll get those posted SOON. Really. :)

So maybe I AM an idiot. Or maybe I am just hungry.

So I have lots of things to blog about! Like:

• my students' responses in the culture bowl. (Did you know that C.S. Lewis invented the printing press? or that New Jersey is the capital of Columbia?)
• yesterday was the last day of school.
• I'm REALLY excited to only have ONE job this summer.
• I am leaving for France in TWENTY-FOUR DAYS.

Or maybe just:

• my job hunt led me to a bunch of REALLY depressing information about how much EFFORT it will take to get a teaching license in Massachusetts.

Arg.

It makes me wonder if:

• it's even worth getting one, since I only plan to teach for a couple of years anyway.
• I have the time to get it done this summer.
• I should even bother applying for jobs before I have done all the licensing crap.
• I know enough to pass the content exam.
• I spoke too soon about moving to Boston.
• It's time for me to leave my office and go home and eat dinner before I decide that I should just apply to work at Wendys and totally give up on switching states, teaching, and life beyond hot French fries and a cold Frosty.
  

Arg.

The verdict is in.

AHEM.

I have been accused, by people close to me but whom I will, in the kindness of my heart and for their own protection, refrain from naming, of wearing clothes simply "to avoid being naked" and not because the clothes look nice or have any redeeming characteristics.

HOWEVER!!

I have received word from one who is, in most universes, the undisputed expert on fashion (and everything else, really, just ask her, she'll tell you) - THE FEMALE JUNIOR HIGH STUDENT. A representative of this renowned body wrote, on a birthday card addressed to ME:

"...you dress great!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.

Other, less eternally-significant comments on the card my students made for me while I was skipping school on my birthday include:

"Thanks for being nice to me, even tho I talk! and talk and talk and talk!"

"thanks so much for putting up with our big mouths! But we love you! your my favorite!"

"Happy B-day Senora Merrill you'r so cool, like a fresh drink in the hot summer beach, don't change you'r funniness!"

"You rock at French so enjoy some fries"

"You are so great at teaching us, you try really hard!" - ?!?!

"Thanks for helping us learn french, and please don't ever leave us with a substitute again!"

I'm like a well-dressed fresh drink in the hot summer beach. Ah yeah, baby. Would you like some fries with that?

Years of famine, apparently

The rest of the story:

In fourth period today, pretty much right after the bell rang to begin class, all my students were in their seats, with their hands in the air.

Yup, you guessed it - they all wanted to go get a drink of water. :)

It's kinda fun to have an inside joke with my students.

Third period drought

The back-story:
There is a drinking fountain about six feet from the door of my classroom, so I let kids get a drink pretty much whenever they want, but they DO have to raise their hands and ask.
And also, I have a class of all seventh graders during fourth period.

The story:
During a presentation of new vocabulary in 4th period today, approximately half my students, one at a time, raised their hands and asked if they could get a drink of water. Since I kept thinking that they were raising their hands to answer my questions about the new vocab, I kept calling on them and having the flow of class totally interrupted. GRR. Finally I said, "What is the deal?! Was there a DROUGHT in 3rd period today??" to which all my students, at the top of their voices, responded, "YES!" So I said, half-kidding, "Shall we just ALL go get a drink??" to which all my students, at the top of their voices, responded, "YES!"

So we took 3 minutes of class time for them to quietly pile into the hall and get a drink, which is fine with me, if it allows class to carry on without 25 individual requests to go get a drink.

I was attempting to restart class by saying, "Now that we're all well-hydrated..." when one of my students piped up, "Now I have to go to the bathroom!"

...

DYM should try this game for Laylee's faerie party

Speaking of four-year-olds and sugar and "best ever" and "orbiting patterns," I feel like I should tell you all about the game I played once with my 27-yr-old bro-in-law and several young nieces and nephews. (The BIL is not the dad of these kids.) (Or any kids, for that matter.) It consisted of one of us sitting in the middle of the room and the others running in a circle, or, shall we say, "orbiting pattern," around them, chanting "ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow."

You should get rid of your TV so that you, too, can create treasured family memories like this one.