lowering the bar

I had one of those days yesterday.  One of those days that sets the standards.  Low.
I woke up extra early.  Not exactly sure why.  Maybe it was the time change or maybe it was just a desire to dawdle more.  In any case, I woke up early and then proceeded to be late to work.  Later, in fact, than I was the day before.  It really is pretty hard for me to be late to work.  It's not like I have far to drive or need to be there at some unseemly time.  It's ridiculous that I can't get to work on time.  But there it is.  Late.

One of the kids read me her story.  It was about a lady who croaked and she was going to the feneral (funeral).  She smiled while she read me the story.  Croaked?  Yup.  croaked.  I had nothing.  What the heck do you say to a kid who is smiling when she reads her story about somebody croaking?  That there was a teachable moment.

Then we had our first field trip of the year.  Herding cats in a grocery store.  These varmints can't behave in the cage of our classroom.  I gotta admit I dreaded taking the show on the road.  I had low expectations.  They met them.  I got a big headache.

I did manage to vote.  Yay, me.  But I needed remedial voting instruction since I filled in 5 circles instead of 4.

Let's see.  I'm playing piano for the little munchkin choir.  This may not seem like a big deal, excepting that this is not my thing.  I've accompanied singers exactly twice in my whole life and both times were with one or both of my kids.  The elder spawn is quite skilled at rearranging her singing to match my playing (a skill we have worked on).  That song was short too.  The last time I did this was with both kids and I was so bad that little loud one laughed at me in the middle of the song.  Bad.  Like horrible.  Like colossal failure.  Like when the song was done, I collapsed in a heap of giggles (in the middle of church, in the middle of the service) that lasted pretty much until the end of the service.  And I decided then and there that playing piano while someone sings along was something I could just cross off my bucket list for all eternity.  Apparently eternity only lasted a couple months, because when choir director asked if I would, I didn't say "hell no".  So yesterday's rehearsal went just spectacularly.  Not. Choir director was very kind and didn't explode.  I guess it's a real good thing the kids can sing loudly.  I'm hoping for divine intervention on Sunday.  Or something.

The evening did not improve.  Went to class, quite apathetic.  I needed to deliver a piece of paper 4 feet away.  I crumpled it up and threw it at the recipient.  Professor observed that she'd never had that happen in a grad school class before.  I explained that I was trying to lower the bar.  I did apologize.  And laugh.  And really, that was probably ok.  Then we were making up hypothetical questions to ask the author of this article we'd read- an article that really kinda bugged me.  My contribution was the most unpolitically correct question you could possibly ask.  I do walk of shame.

Class over, I'm walking out with classmate who is also in tonight's class that I skipped last week for spawn's concert.  Classmate instigates discussion of where I was.  I proceed to mention the things I was supposed to do to make up for missing class- that I still haven't done.  Then she tells me that we got out of class an hour early last week anyhow.  This launches my little tirade about how that professor had given the speech about giving us our money's worth and would never let us out early and then she hasn't kept us until 9pm since (not that I'm complaining about that).  I'd forgotten one detail.  Wed. prof teaches a class on Tues. in the same building.  The building I am currently walking out of talking about the professor.  Who is 2 feet behind me.  Who proceeds to walk with me for the next 10 minutes as I'm trying to engage in intelligent conversational smalltalk with very large feet in my mouth. 

I was hoping that she hadn't heard me.  Yea, she did.  Because when she revisited the money's worth speech tonight, she was looking right at me.


The bar is very low.