go ahead, let your hair down

i've listened to "put your records on" by corinne bailey rae about two hundred times since this morning. it's happy and upbeat and that's exactly how i feel right now. i'm a little fever-y and achy, but i just drank a fat glass of airborne, so my blood vitamin c level is at a contagion-fighting premium.

i left my house today, which is a vast improvement over yesterday. my mom needed me to pick her up from work at the high school, and i got to see the classroom she works in and meet the teacher she works with. she has a little desk in the back of the room where she filed the lesson plan she created for the first-year teacher she'll be assisting this year. i still think that she should go back to school and get her teaching credentials so that she doesn't have to be a lackey anymore. i'm sure she'd only have to take a few more classes considering she's a lawyer already, and i figure that graduating law school and passing the bar should help qualify you to teach government in the public school system. she likes what she does, though, and comes home every week with pictures of students with their signatures scribbled on the back.

no one recognizes me with my glasses on, which is nice. i feel like i'm incognito. at the high school, i saw a few teachers i had for a couple years when i was there, and they had no idea who i was.

clay got his "star" testing scores back today in the mail. he scored 100% on nine of the fourteen areas, above 90% on four others, and got an 83% in "earth science 5". he just about had a panic attack about that 83%. he was also really disappointed that he's only reading at a tenth grade level, according to the standardized test. apparently, last year, he'd registered at the 11.5 grade level. he's in sixth grade. i don't know what we can do for him. he has such incredibly high expectations for himself. i don't think i started really caring about my grades until eighth grade, and even then, it was only with a vague understanding that i'd be applying to college someday. clay treated fifth grade history tests as if they were the mcats. it makes me so frustrated and sad to see him react to his less-than-perfect results the way he does. we got back from picking him up from my grandparents' house almost an hour ago, and he's been holed up in his room since then, no doubt putting the breathing techniques and calming routines his therapist taught him into practice. he hasn't seen this "behavior modifier" since he was in third grade because the kids at school tormented him about his having to leave class to see a psychologist. he's not crazy, he told them, he's just nervous and stressed out. it breaks my heart to think that my little brother would be so panicked about elementary school.

tomorrow, i have to go to the dentist. my grandpa (my dentist) refuses to allow me to slip by without going promptly when i need to. my dad's coming with me because he chipped a tooth the other day at his office. i'm surprised that he's not just going to grin and bear it, because my dad hates doctors, even those he's related to, and only went to get the pre-cancerous moles on his head looked at after my mom nagged him for five years. he let a tooth get so twisted that eventually it impeded his eating, and required a hotel room, a nail file, and a kindly grandfather dentist to shave it down during our summer vacation. that's so hillbilly of us.

i guess it kinda makes sense. my great-great-grandma was from texas.