My week in review, well just Thursday

This week was hard at school. We have four kindergarten classes, two in the am and two in the afternoon. I work in all of them. In one of the afternoon classrooms there is a boy who is obsessed with Tinkerbell. Everything is about her. He flits around the room with his arms bent at the elbows and his hands flapping. This week he's started to burst out laughing over something that must be going on in his head. He will go up to a student and jump at them and grab them, shake them and then push them down. He needs someone to reign him in and that someone is me. I am tired when I come home from school. Every Thursday I have his class alone from 3:00 until dismissal while the teacher is in a meeting. She hates leaving me because he's not the only difficult student but the most difficult.

This Thursday at 3:10 my direction was for the boys to get their coats and backpacks, bring them to their seats to get ready to go home. Then it was the girl's turn. While I'm zipping a jacket I look up in time to see this kid flitting around and then trip. He is heading head first with momentum into the edge of the table. I saw and heard him hit. By the time I got to him (think of O.J. Simpson in the airport in the Hertz commercials. Okay, so I didn't leap over the table but ran round it pretty darn quick!) the first few seconds where there is silence was over and he was screaming. With blood all over his face. Then all over his hands. Then all over mine. He had it smeared everywhere. I thought I had encountered all the body fluids that a kindergarten may bring forth but I forgot about blood. Now it's complete. I hope. I clutched his arm and told the other students to continue to get ready to go while I went to the nurse's office. On the way there I grabbed an adult to cover my adult-less room. Turns out he had a cut under his eyebrow and was going to need stitches. We got him and me cleaned up and by this time I had to leave, I was late for intramurals.

Every Thursday after school until 4:30 I go to intramurals in the gym to be with a fourth grade girl with Down's Syndrome. It figures the one day I'm late she has an incident in the locker room and the regular PE teacher, a woman wasn't there, she had a substitute and it happened to be a man so he couldn't really go in. He was rather put out. I had to pull her out of the volleyball game, speak with her and deal with her wrath. I worried about both of these episodes all evening and finally emailed my principal so she would be up to speed first thing in the morning if she had to deal with any irate people. Later that day there were two Mallo Cups (my fave) in my mailbox from her. She told me nothing is that important that I have worry all evening and email her at 11:10 pm. My student did go to the doctor and the cut was glued shut rather than stitches. He came to school Friday with an ugly cut and a swollen and purple eye but was fine.

We went out to pick our youngest up from college Saturday and he'll be home for a week. On the way I saw these trees with beautiful red berries. Our oldest son will not be able to come home from New York City for Thanksgiving. Welcome to the real world, his nursing schedule doesn't allow enough travel time. I hope he will be able to get home for Christmas. Keep your fingers crossed.