Lack of focus

I really would like to give you something to read here. Honestly. I just can't pull it together enough to be coherent for very long.

I remain sick. Today was actually worse than yesterday which I believe to be vastly unfair. I made it through some reading at home, drove to the store to buy Jello (what might be the most delicious food ever after 3 days of crackers), and tutored my 5th graders. I considered canceling, but I blew them off when I was working on the grant. It didn't seem appropriate to skip it twice, especially as we're reaching the end of the year. We're really struggling with fractions, folks. Can't add the suckers to save our lives. I don't understand how people do this every day.

I think it was a couple of weeks ago and I was heading home from working with them. One of the street lights was broken and there was a very cute policeman standing in the middle of the 2 lane road, trying to motion people through. They wouldn't obey the poor guy though. I pitied him, waving his arm wildly at the line of cars that insisted upon waiting at the light flashing red. He was trying so hard to help - to get people where they needed to go as safely as possible. But it wasn't going well.

Perhaps it's me, I thought sadly. Teaching shouldn't be this hard - someone must be able to get these kids to buckle down and work. Force their little minds to remember common denominators and turn Math into this magical subject for them. I couldn't do that either, I decided, watching poor policeman direct traffic. I'd get frustrated, annoyed - eventually just throw up my hands and say, "If you idiots aren't going to do what I tell you, why don't I just go home?!"

Then I drove by and said, "move along, little green car" to the person in front of me, forgetting my window was down. Policeman heard me and smiled, then gestured to the cars around us and rolled his eyes. I laughed and nodded in understanding. Then realized that some jobs are just hard - profound, perhaps, but really difficult.

Especially when you find yourself too sick to focus for very long. Either that or I'm just not so good at the tutoring. I am, however, getting really good at adding fractions.