Hot days can suck it!!

Day Five: 8/29/2022

There was a refreshing surprise today. Somehow they managed to fix the air conditioning. Well, to be specific they fixed the cooling mechanism of the air conditioning system. For such a large school the facility is hardly bearable when the temperatures are above seventy degrees. Since this week is going to be in the nineties, I assumed I was going to sweat my teal ass off throughout the evening. There was even talk that we wouldn’t have a cool building until November at the earliest.

I’d managed to lower my expectations exponentially. I’ve already been working extensively in the scorching building since June. Like I said, I was extremely surprised to find the school chilling. I was so happy it wasn’t a humid heat box brought up from the bowels of hell. It made the day’s duties somewhat tolerable.

I had only one, okay two major annoyances. I get very frustrated when things in my janitorial closet is modified, moved, or missing. It’s such a minor infraction, but I find myself feeling so irate when I have to track down my mop, my vacuum, or like today it was my dustpan. The conflict was resolved. The other annoyance, which I believe I’ll be experiencing all year long is always the irationale mess. I don’t understand why these seventh and eighth graders need to leave such a mess. Tiny bits of paper and broken pens were scattered around the desks. It only increases the amount of time I have to spend clearing the useless mess off the carpet. Each and every day I’ll be doing this. I don’t mind it necessarily, but I’m annoyed that these deviants are creating a mess for no reason. No reason to leave such a mess when there are trash bins in EVERY SINGLE CLASS. Oh well, it’s part of the job.

Day Six: 8/30/2022

Okay, still the same predicament. I’m just not understanding why some classrooms are just trashed. School has just begun. Are you so frustrated that all you can do it rip up paper? Maybe it’s their hormones. Their inability to channel their frustration through other activities.

Today was so much easier though. Still slightly warm. Curious how it will feel in the winter.

The day itself was quite uneventful. Nothing to trigger feelings of mania or depression. Totally fine with me. I do find boring days to be the most enjoyable. So I took this day to be a win!

Day Seven: 8/31/2022

How could I be so naive?! How could I assume that the desperate public school system would have the air conditioning system fixed so quickly? I know better, I’ve lowered my expectations that we don’t have the staffing, tools, and resources to correct such matters. Well, at least we still had the rented swamp fans and all of the individual air conditioners in each classroom. Because we didn’t have the very useful, but obnoxious large black fans my usual workday was not too impacted. It was still warm, uncomfortable as always.

Now, I don’t know if I would be so disturbed by the situation. Except, I was rejected by two literary contests in a matter of days. I know its part of the process. I know it is inevitable. I have to go through this. Only, when one is going through the process, one might feel absolutely trapped by their circumstances. While I pickup trash. Clean dirty toilets. Vacuum messy rooms, and my absolute dread is scraping chewed gum from the floors. While doing these tasks, I’m immersed in my own fantasies. My dreams. I dissociate to deal with the job, so that I can continue to pay my inflated rent. All I can do is keep powering through. Continue to explore my craft.

My added enjoyment is that I’m documenting everything. I’m going to extremes to make the daily tasks feel like a fond memory for the future. Like my hair and my clothes. It’s too hot to wear items of clothing that I’d prefer, but it’s not too hot to manipulate my tresses. The theme for the day was eighteen hundred and nine. I really do hope that the children enjoy my antics. I don’t really know how to respond to their verbal compliments, but I do appreciate it when they make notice of my skills.