one of those days.

Sometimes, it's just one of those days. And those days usually start the moment you wake up and somehow manage to stay with you until the moment you drift off-- assuming, of course, that you're able to drift off. Sometimes after a day like today, sleep doesn't come easy.

I-- at a towering 5'3-- managed to pull the sheets off not one but two corners of my bed before I woke up this morning. Wrapped in a cocoon of warm sheets, I woke up 27 minutes after my alarm woke up to a February day right smack in the middle of September.

I managed to make it to work almost on time, though I was unfed and quite rained on. First thing, I dove straight into a character lesson with a group of 6th graders who just stared me like I was reading the proctoring instructions of an SAT test.

(I can say, at least, that the lessons got progressively better as the day went by... so there's that, I guess).

Aside from a 30-minute lesson each period, I started meeting individually with students at the end of each period. Now, for obvious reasons, I can't divulge any information that was given to me, but I can say at least that I have heard stories in just one day that will haunt me and puzzle me for a lifetime. Some doubtful, some exaggerated, and others just absolutely horrific... If anyone truly believes that man is born innocent and corrupted by the world, I'm here to tell you that it's not so. The depravity of humanity is so much more than I can take on a grey day like today, and I feel I must apologize as I think I must have projected my mood onto the sky.

After school, I headed to extended day where we began a new program under the direction of yours truly. Never-have-I-ever directed such a program, so it's safe to assume that it was mass chaos. 50-some-odd elementary school students flooded into my classroom at 3:00 and the shrill of their high-pitched little voices drowned me and my authority out completely. The moral of this story is that we'll be trying something different come Thursday... a little something called 'organization.'

At home, I had agreed to do some special music with my dad and a friend from church on Sunday, so we had scheduled a little practice session tonight. It's moments like this when my hopeless lack of talent is glaring, and the realization that I'm mediocre at best hits me straight in the face. Sure, I can carry a tune, and perhaps even a pleasant one at that. But when the music starts and I'm on my own, it's a whole 'nother world. My timing is off, or my pitch is flat... and I can't harmonize to save my life, which is quite crippling in the music world. It's like choreographing a dance around a kid in a wheelchair.

So there's that. It's been one of those days. I can't decide if I want to cry or run or sleep or steam in a bubble bath. It's looking like I might do all of the above, if I can crawl out of my little crab cave first.