La locura no para

I bet you were all just astounded that I didn't update the day after the VP debates to freak out about the Governor's g-dropping, winking, long ums and pauses, weird down-hominess and the shout-out the the third-graders, weren't you? Lo siento, mis queridos, I was just too stinking tired. Can-saaaaa-da. Too tired even to bitch about the statistical-inacuracy pitfalls of evaluating the economy from the junior-hockey league sidelines. That's some serious exhaustion, folks.

I'm only writing here at the moment because I desperately need a short break from the MA list reading and figured I should update. Eight days and counting (incluso hoy). I'm just numb right now, and feeling a bit detached from reality. My husband has already gone to Mexico and started his new job, I've moved back into my old bedroom at my parents' house during the (procrastinated) prepping of our place for the renters, and in one week I take the most significant exams of my life to date, and here I sit watching my words pop up on a screen and being annoyed that my fingers are cold, again. Why am I not thinking about sociolinguistic theory, like I ought to be?

Because my head needs a #@&*ing break from Dr.s Bybee and Labov and Lapesa, that's why. Feel free to remind me of this when I start babbling about PhD programs.

I haven't cried in over a week. I'd like to call that maturity, but I know myself too well. Numb, indeed.

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I had a good teaching idea today and managed to impress myself, because that hasn't happened for a while. I'm been operating on auto-pilot in the enseñanza department, but my kids don't seem too much the worse for wear. I've told them at least three times that class will be better after October 22nd. I'd better live up to that. Anyway, here's my nifty idea: We're going to watch part of an episode of Los Simpson in class tomorrow. The culture section for this chapter is on Puerto Rico and the stuff in the book is painfully uninteresting, so their homework for tonight is to look up some info on Tito Puente online and write a short paragraph about him. Tomorrow, we're going to watch a few minutes of the "Who Shot Mr. Burns?: part II" episode, specifically the part where Tito Puente argues that it's better to slander Mr. Burns with a scathing mambo than to shoot him.

"Señor Burns, ¡con el corazón de perro! Señor Burns, ¡el diablo con dinero!"

You remember.

Then, because I am an educator an it is my mission to foul up entertaining things by converting them to learning activities, I'm going to make them get into groups to write a short narration of what happened in those ten minutes, because some of them are still struggling with conjugating the past tenses. It's better than verb drills, though, yes?

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Back to the grind for me and my bloodshot eyes. I'll let you all know how things go with the late great Sr. Puente tomorrow.

Lola is still counting down.