Semantics...

This is one sleepy Sheepie typing out to the blogosphere tonight. The eyes are at half-mast, the chin keeps hitting the chest. The Maine Public Schools have worked The Sheep a bit harder than usual on this day.

My district "offered" a workshop today from 4:00-6:00. I use the quotation marks in the most sarcastic sense of the punctuation as said workshop was also mandatory for those of us who teach grades three through five. (voluntary for others...) I fail to see how that which is offered can be anything other than a choice. Mandatory is not a choice. Mandatory is, well... mandatory. I am one of those odd-ball employees who works in one building, but is considered to be between two schools and two schedules. It was unclear whether I was supposed to be there. But, I am new in this position and the principal seems to favor me at this point.

I took the high road. I went. I'm sure it was the right thing to do. Especially since I was unclear on whether or not the whole thing was mandatory. Besides, this could be a good knitting-in-public opportunity!

Unless, of course, your new principal is sitting right in front of you. And is sending scathing looks at some of the other participants who took advantage of this "offering" but were not necessarily behaving as well as they might have. (there is no group of professionals less inclined to good behavior than teachers once released from the confines of their classrooms.) This Sheep knows when to play nice. I put on the most interested face humanly possible as I entered the ninth hour of my working day and diligently took notes on the benefits of computerized testing protocols.

I'm something of a kiss-up... I'm OK with that.

Thus, my Feather And Fan scarf languished in my professional leather work satchel, untouched and unloved. I thought of it often as the presenter slogged through a Power Point presentation of epic proportions. By slide 3,872 I was giving serious thought to impaling myself on a knitting needle. Alas, I had naught but circulars and those, as we all well know, do not lend themselves well to the hari kari type maneuvers. I somehow found the strength to remain awake for the presentation, relocate my vehicle in the darkened parking lot, find my way home and snarf down something vaguely resembling dinner. I am tired, though. Power Point presentations are my own personal vampire-type entities. There is nothing better for sucking out my strength and will to remain awake.

On the plus side, there was a bit of the good news waiting on the answering machine. I had to delete my way through umpty gabillion messages from the local politicos who want to ensure my vote in this upcoming election, but I did manage to catch it. Despite still having a wee bit of the lingering rash from the bandages, my actual skin biopsy was benign. I don't know whether to be happy about the lack of the cancer or ticked off that I bled profusely and still itch over something that just could have stayed on my flesh without complication. And I'm really too tired to ponder it for any length of time.

Maybe I should just go rescue that scarf and see if I can't get it to forgive me for all the neglect.

SA