A Near Miss

The last month or so has been something of a battle of wills between me and the clocks.  I just can't seem to find one that is even remotely close to the ones that are in charge of me.  It's the school clocks that matter.  They hold the key to my success but the hour on all my other timepieces just never seems to match them.

 The clocks at home?  All completely different.  Each one suggests that I have varying degrees of leeway in terms of when I have to leave the house.

The clock in the car?  That one was way off.  I think it happened the last time I had the thing serviced.  It wasn't helping me at all with my daily routine.

Wrist watches?  Don't have a single one with a working battery to my name at this point.

Every Thursday morning, I must get myself out of bed and pull myself together in order that I might make the 7:00 a.m. bus duty for which I am scheduled.  It is generally expected that duty teachers be on time for this and clad.  In fact, I'm pretty sure it's in the teacher handbook.

I have had a difficult time with this.  The clocks have all been out to get me.  They don't want me to remain employed.  They want me to stay home and spend my days trying to set them for the right time.  

I've been working on it, though.  Although I've yet to get the timer on the living room lights set correctly since that last big power outage, I have managed to fool several of the clocks around here into playing the game with me.  It all started with setting a back up alarm clock that talks to some other clock somewhere in the west and which is bound by a great, moral code to be correct.  Then I set the "regular" alarm clock ten minutes ahead of that one.  The car clock was finally coaxed into something resembling five minutes ahead of time and now, while I don't know what the actual time is, I tend to be a bit early for morning bus duty.

See?  It's simple...

Of course, the whole thing hinges upon my remembering to set the "regular" alarm clock to go off at the designated time of awakening.  That is really the linchpin in the master plan.  It is also the one thing I did not do last night.  It could have been a real disaster.

However, I got lucky.  The clock that I forgot about saved me.  That would be that mystical thing we call the "internal clock."  Somehow, my internal clock knew that I couldn't pull off one more late arrival to bus duty and even hope that my fellow cafeteria monitors would buy into my excuses.  The internal clock, unlike all the other clocks, has a better understanding of the situation.  I suspect it might have something to do with the fact that it is a biologically based system and one that knows we need to stay employed if we want to keep feeding the battery.

Even better, I was the only one who managed to show up on time this morning for bus duty.  One guy never made it at all, for heaven's sake!  When the Assistant Principal happened to glance in, he saw naught but Ms. Sheep diligently doing her duty and keeping the children of the school district safe from possible cafeteria-induced injury.  I was a hero.  He expressed his grave concern regarding my taking on this great responsibility all by myself and vowed to rectify the situation immediately.  

He doesn't know about the three previous weeks during which I have been hopelessly tardy for my morning duty.  And I'm not telling him.  I simply cast my eyes downward humbly and said that I didn't mind being left alone to bear the weight of this awesome task.  I was certain that my duty-mates had valid reasons for being late and that they were probably on their way even as we spoke.  They are, after all, only human...

If you're not just a little bit ashamed of me, then you should really take a minute to look deep inside yourself and maybe check the settings on your moral compass.  I'd do it myself if I didn't have to put so much energy into looking all humble and self-sacrificing.  I don't think I can manage both things at once.  I don't even know if I have the time for that sort of thing what with the whole clock situation going on around here.

Yes, this has been a most confusing week.  There was a holiday on Monday, a change in my regular routine which kept me out of the classroom on Tuesday and any number of other scheduling dramas which rendered me incapable of figuring out what day it was after that.  But I do know that the day I have bus duty is the second to last one of the work week.  I now have a full and complete grasp of the situation.  Tomorrow is Friday!

I do believe that I will celebrate the arrival of the weekend with a little bit of sock knitting and maybe even see if I can't finish plying up the rest of the stuff on the spindle.  It's not every week that you get to work less time than usual, fake being a punctual sort of person at the expense of your colleagues and outsmart every clock in your life.  Heck, it's a regular fiesta around here!

We can also celebrate Daddy Sheep's most successful experience with eyeball surgery today.  The eyeball doctor was also having a good day and there was no near miss on his part at all. We are pleased with Dad's clear vision and the ease with which the whole thing was done.  Yay for Daddy Sheep!

I even had a little slice of chocolate cake tonight in honor of all this good fortune, a thing I rarely do on a week day.  But it seemed appropriate.  The Absurdly Gi-normous Kitty was also slightly more jubilant than was usual this evening, although he didn't want any cake.

The AGK makes his happiness known through the wild flinging and cavorting with his Dollar Store Cat Cave.

Less calories than cake, I suppose.  Although I personally prefer the chocolate.  Besides, cavorting around in a nylon tube might make me overly tired and then I'll forget to set the alarm for tomorrow...

SA