Strip Suicide Spades

If that isn't a sexy blog title, I don't know what is. Kali, one of the many sexy ultimate frisbee ladies from Tacoma, who recently relocated back home to Boston, joined me for some Spades online over at Yahoo this afternoon. Spades is a card game, if you haven't played before, and there is an option to play it on "suicide" mode, which means one person on each team HAS to bid nil each hand. It spices up the game quite a bit, and Kali and I had a strip bet on the side. Unfortunately, we were on the same team and kept winning, so the robots we were playing had to strip, but I think they were clothes-less to begin. Sorry for the let down.

GOOD GOD the Pearl Jam show was amazing. They played all their new songs from Backspacer. My favorite song on the new CD is "Just Breathe", which is an acoustic song by Eddie. He came out for the first encore and played it--it was the perfect setting, coming out after a few minutes back stage. He grabbed his bottle of wine, took a chug, said something insightful, then started in on the song. Erin was with me, and the world felt right. The band also played a few of my favorite older songs, including "Given to Fly" and "Insignificance" and "Alive" and "Even Flow" and "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town" and, and, and, and... yeah, it was a good show. I belted out as many lyrics as I could, and was a little surprised I had a voice the next day.

The concert was kind of Erin and my last hurrah. She left Wednesday afternoon, and I took a sub job down in South Seattle on Wednesday. I intended to call her at lunch and wish her a safe trip, as she would be waiting for the plane around noon. I didn't get a lunch, and completely forgot about calling until I checked my phone after school at 4pm. The one-day assignment turned into a 3-day assignment through today, but I chickened out and passed today. I went back on Thursday and it was rough. The commute was terrible, the kids were tough, and the situation sucked.

Their original teacher was ill, and had been gone all week, and left no sub plan. I tried to appeal to the kids' fun side, which got me steam-rolled in the classroom. Kids were doing what they wanted with little regard for learning. I tried to get control Thursday, but it never really happened. We had some fun in the afternoon, but I had given up on trying to get them to learn math concepts or literacy. I had made up my mind that I wouldn't be coming back Friday, in attempt to give another sub a shot at establishing better behavior standards than I did. Lesson learned, hopefully. It felt horrible to realize that only a few kids were on task and learning over the past two days. I think I made 25 new fourth grade friends, because of how easy I was on them, but I'm not in the business of making friends.

On the plus side, I used my day off today to interview at two school districts for subbing positions closer to home. The added frustration of rush hour commutes both to and from South Seattle, coupled with the tough kids and crappy subbing situation were all just too much to keep my head on straight. I longed for a beer when I got home the last two days. I don't want to dislike teaching like I did the last few days. I'm glad I've been able to reflect on the experience and I know a few things I will try and do differently next time I am in a similar situation, to focus more on learning, which will keep my guilty conscious at bay.