Nooooooooooooooo!!!

It's been one of those weeks. Not the good kind. The kind that is full of angst and stuff. The kind that makes you wonder if perhaps there is a hidden camera somewhere and that you will be featured on some sort of survival program. "The Endangered, Grumpy Sheep of New England" perhaps.

The coffee maker died on Sunday night. I lived with instant for four straight days. People could tell. There were comments. Fortunately, the situation is now resolved and there will be coffee flowing thick and dark through the veins of this Sheep tomorrow morning. Thanks to all for your suggestions and commiseration. And I'm giving a big shout out to Mel for his offer of his spare machine! Had I read my email sooner, I would have taken you up on that one, dude! That was unbelievably thoughtful. Knitters are the best kind of people no matter what the mean guy in my class might say. I'll bet no one has ever offered him a coffee maker...

Speaking of the AntiKnitter, I ended up taking the high road and not bringing my needles to his class today. I figured that this could maybe backfire on me should a random principal or superintendent of schools wander by to see if we were all hard at work teaching the masses. But I thought mean thoughts about him the whole time and made no eye contact whatsoever. The fact that he did not appear to notice this does not necessarily mean I was ineffective in my message-sending. I'm sure that, deep down, he was terribly contrite.

I need to believe this. It's been a bad week. Let me have this one thing, 'kay?

Frankly, it's been the kind of week where you just want to run away and join the circus. But I can't. I've been tagged and numbered. I'm no longer able to just disappear into the mists and become a hermit in the hills. The school pictures have come back to haunt me. If you were a reader back in September, then you will recall the school picture debacle. Instead of the usual skimpy freebie package that the picture company sends along with our mandatory school ID badges, we received about two thousand school portraits. I began sending them hither and thither to anyone who had ever mailed me anything. Bloggers stopped having contests for fear of my Sheepie visage showing up in their mailboxes. My family received multiple copies in various sizes and there were a few black and white "artsy" shots thrown in for good measure. Poor Mommy and Daddy Sheep had to feign the happy when they received a 2007 calendar with my face smack in the middle.

And I still have some left over. It's like a curse. And it is not finished with me.

Today in my staff mailbox I found two cards. Both have my picture on them and my name, Ms. Sheep, clearly imprinted at the top. It seems that, along with all the students who had their photos taken at school, I have been registered with a ChildFind service. Should I ever attempt to cast off the shackles of my day to day existence and go run with the radishes, all Mommy and Daddy Sheep have to do is call the phone number, give out the identifying information and my face will be posted all over them internets. It will only be a matter of days before I am dragged back, kicking and screaming, to my job, life and credit card debt.

Like I said...it has not been a good week.

SA