valentine's day is a sucky day to sub.

of course, it had to be worse for the teacher i was subbing for: she was home with bronchitis on top of pneumonia! poor woman had apparently gone to the doctor, gotten a shot, and got worse for her trouble. and she apparently had to be convinced to stay home today! all i can say is, ohhh my! i wasn't surprised when they tried to call me back in for tomorrow. unfortunately, it was only for a half day and i can't do half days because of transportation issues.

heck, the school itself was in trouble today. when i walked in they had 25 teachers out and didn't have subs for them all yet. by the time i left the office to go to the classroom, 2 more teachers had called in. conferences and other teacher related meetings combined with winter yuck is wrecking havoc on the schools out here.

anyway, it was bad enough to be taken back to my high school years as students sauntered past with balloons and gift bags and teddy bears. i never was so fortunate to get such things in high school. most of the time, i was lucky to even have a boyfriend. but then to take things on behalf of the teacher i was subbing for and tucking them away for safe keeping for her return - that was just too depressing. no one thinks of subs on holidays, which makes sense. no one knows them well or where they'll be on particular days, but still . . . .

well, one day soon, right? maybe?

besides, saxy picked up the godiva 2005 valentine bear for me, so i got covered even if we couldn't really afford it. he used a gift card i had for some of it.

today's classes were pretty cool for the most part - high school art classes. some of these kids are astonishingly talented. and most of the classes gave me very few problems - nothing major. of course, there's always that one class you just want to strangle, but most just pulled out their projects and got to work. i would wander around and comment on this and that, telling them what i liked, asking how they were going to achieve a certain affect, and remembering when i wanted to be an artist - like my mother had been. in some ways art seems so much easier than writing - at least you don't have to revise the same piece 15 million times! but art as its own attention to craft and detail that makes it as hard as/harder than writing.

in other news . . . .

i reconsidered the "whole tax return on rent" idea. yea, we're still going to pay the 2 months to get us on track with a payment schedule that will work for us, but the rest really needs to go elsewhere. our auto insurance needs to be paid up, and i need to update my license. then there's the last catch-up on the utilities. if i can get all that taken care of between the tax return, my check, and my son's ssi (assuming they fix the problem with my son's ssi), we'll finally be in a good spot for a bit. i can pay next month's rent and a portion of the late fees plus a part of the utilities at the end of each month. then i can use taz's ssi check to cover more of the utilities at the beginning of the month, and saxy's checks can cover any leftover on the utilities and food and car needs like gas . . . and maybe a few other bills, but that would be sketchy at best.

but we'd finally be on the necessary payment schedule for living expenses. really, i hate not plunking the whole return down on one big bill, but getting ourselves on target is more important than a lump sum that won't even cover everything anyway.

so this month should see us staggering to our feet, even if we can't make much of a partial payment on the past dues.

and, god, will that be nice!