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Saturday, May 10, 2008 

Double Yolker

I made brownies for my classes a long time ago, and they've been begging for more brownies ever since. So I decided to make some for the last week of school. Today I thought I should do a practice run. I do have a brownie making reputation to protect, after all, so I can't afford to serve mediocre brownies. Besides, I owe it to the children.

I cracked open the second egg for the mix, and it was a double yolker! We used to find them all the time when all the eggs we ate came from my mom's chickens, but I haven't seen one in years. My sister and I would fight over who would get to eat the double yolker.

doubleyolk

I never buy the "jumbo" eggs at the store, but I did last time because they were out of the ones that are "cage free." I guess all the double yolkers are in the jumbo eggs. The cage free ones are brown, like eggs are supposed to be.

Anyway, that was the big adventure of my morning. Don't you envy my exciting life?

In other news, I'm sick. My allergies have been worse than I can remember them being since I was a little girl and my mother would leave me at grandma's dog-infested house where my face would swell up and I would beg them to take me home. They always said, "Go wash your face and your hands! That'll make it stop!" No, bitch, only Benadryl will make it stop! Wouldn't you know that the one time I really needed Benadryl it wouldn't be available?? And if you still think it's bad that my mother would give me Benadryl for everything-- headache, broken arm, sprained ankle-- you should hear what my grandmother would give me. Hows about a dose of Grandpa's HEART MEDICATION!? Yeah, she did that when I was 3. They say I slept for four days.

Oh, I hated going to Gramma's house. It was torture.

I thought I had somewhat outgrown my horrendous allergies because I haven't had much trouble with them in years. This year they're awful. My skin itches, my throat and the roof of my mouth are itchy, my nose is permanently clogged. My nose being congested makes my ear hurt, and also forces me to breathe out of my mouth, which is probably why I woke up with the worst sore throat I've ever had-- or at least the worst I can remember in recent history. I am hoping that breathing out of my mouth is the cause, and not some infection or virus. It's more sore than you would think it would be just from sleeping with your mouth open, but I don't have a fever.

The big test is this Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so it would not be good for me to get really sick and miss work. Some Assistant Principals would be very, very upset with me. They have already said that if you're going to miss any more days of work, you have to have a doctor's note. I guess they did that because it's so hard to get subs to come in at this point of the year. They don't want to deal with the wild ass children-- not for $40 a day.

I can only imagine what they would say if I called in on the day of the state test. Who would give it? It's kind of a big deal because you have to do all this training before you can give it and they threaten to throw you in prison or fine you if you break any one of the nine thousand piss ass laws regarding what you can say, what you can do, etc. I'm sure they wouldn't actually toss me in the slammer if I broke one tiny rule, but the point is that they come across as being total Nazis about what can be done during the test. I doubt they'd want a sub to do it.

I'm already wondering how my fat pregnant ass is going to manage not sitting down for over 4 hours. I will start having pains in my stomach, which I assume are round ligament pains. The only way to get rid of them is to take a Tylenol and sit with your feet up. They will ease up after only about 10 minutes of sitting down, but the longer you stand, the worse they get. I've had them hit me pretty hard a couple of times at work just from the normal amount of standing I do while teaching, and that doesn't compare to standing without any break for 4-5 hours. I normally sit down at least a little bit at work. Don't these bastards have to accommodate me to some extent? The other pregnant chick said she was going to ask the principal, but I didn't hear anything about it.

I guess I can suck it up. My mom worked in a factory when she was pregnant with me. Something tells me they didn't let her pull up a chair and put her feet up.

My head feels like it could potentially explode. I hope the congestion will not prevent me from being able to taste the brownies. That would be at least as tragic as an exploding head.

Hold on here... subs get $40 a day there? What planet are you FROM? Subs here get $125 a day and complain loudly what a low salary that is. There are districts around here that even pay more... up to $150 a day. No wonder you're having a tough time getting subs.

Ellie, Some nearby districts pay up to $100, but no more than that if you're not certified. If you're certified you can SOMETIMES make more, but why would you be subbing if you had a license to teach full time?

Anyway when you break down what the average salary is for a teacher, it's USUALLY not much more than $200 per day. (Mine works out to about $180 per day, but I only have 2 years' experience and a B.A. degree, so some people make a lot more than I do.) So I guess it would be kind of silly to pay someone my salary (or even 75% of my salary) when they're going to do nothing but let the kids run wild anyway. Still, I do agree that $40 is freaking ridiculous. I think they should get about $80 a day. Maybe $100.

When I've used up my sick days, they dock my pay to pay for the sub.

The worst part is that they use a temp service to hire all their subs, and the temp service takes money off the top of what the district is paying for the subs. So they're actually paying out more than $45 per day per sub. The temp service screws up royally on a regular basis (we request 5 subs and get 1, for example) AND takes money out of the subs' pockets. I think it's time to fire them and hire and train our own subs like most districts do.

Maybe if we gave them a little more money we could attract better people. A really, really good sub is a wonderful thing.

I don't know where you live, but I'd love to know what the teachers make there if the subs are getting $150 per day.

A sub I had early this year actually picked up a stack of sticky notes off my desk and threw them at a child. Knowing the kid, he probably deserved it, but still.

I have a theory...and it may be my paranoia coming out but I believe the flood here in Oklahoma left us special little presents that cause our allergies to be much worse this year. Didn't it flood up your way also?

Is this a cooking blog?

Just for the record, when I was pregnant with The Pony, I had a sinus thingy that I couldn't get rid of, and coughed up a ton of snot every morning, and had a sore throat and hoarseness that made my voice unrecognizable. That lasted through summer, fall, and winter.

Funny how they dock a complete day of your pay, and then pay the sub $40. What happens to the rest? If we accumulate 100 sick days, we start losing them, so the old dogs always use every day when the end grows near. And the school generously pays you $20 a day for those you have left when you retire. But if you go ALL YEAR without missing a day, your reward is a $150 bonus check. It's a racket, I tell you! People wouldn't save the sick days, except that they are afraid of some catastrophic illness where they can't afford the docking.

They only dock $45 per day at first. They take more if you keep missing, but I don't know how many days you have to miss for them to start taking your entire pay. With any luck, I'll never find out.

I don't have the problem of having too many days built up, but hopefully will be able to do that one day. I envy the old ladies who have so many days they can take off whenever they want and make no apology for it.

I have short and long term disability, so if I should come down with some awful sickness I'll get some kind of check anyway. It's supposed to pay during maternity leave, so we're about to find out if it's worth having.

They dock us a full day, 1/180 of our salary. We might be paying subs around $60 a day. I'm not sure of the going rate now.

We get 10 sick days a year. Two of those ten can be used as 'personal days' if you have business to take care of. When I first started here, the first-year teachers only got 8 days, then 9 the next year, then 10. Ain't that discrimination!

DPA- I live a ways out West of you (where the governors are all former actors... and act like they know how to be governors!). Teacher pay is better here. For me it works out to be about $300 a day (I have 16 years' experience and 75 units past my BA, though). Our districts directly employ the subs, so they get what they get. We have the same system of docking pay after you've used up your days. In the last 13 years, since my oldest was born, I've never carried over a sick day, and almost always used more than I got.

Hang in there! You've only got a few more weeks! I have to go all the way to June 13th, and the kids have already checked out. Ugh.

$300 a day? :sigh: Sommmme dayyyyyy. :)

But no way in hell could I work until June 13th. BLAH!

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