Stop, children, what's that sound?

At my parents' house. Can't sleep. Long day today. I subbed for the first grade at work from 9:30-2:30. It went well overall. It's a very precocious class, which I like a lot, but it does tend to make things a bit more difficult. Every project, direction, and request is met with at least one argument, five declarations of how it could be done "better," and two requests for what we should do instead. I've seen their regular teacher in action, and neither she nor I accept anything besides polite suggestions (preceded by raised hands, of course), but they try nonetheless. It's like 9 versions of me at that age, so I suppose the cosmos is just sitting behind the curtain giggling at me. Still, I had fun, so Cosmos, the joke's on you.

After school#1, I went immediately to school #2 to help out with their Kids Klub. Things seem to be going much better than they were a few weeks ago. Today was "Spongebob Day," and Jessica had them making Spongebob faces out of sponges and pre-cut construction paper pieces. She puts hours into prepping. Makes me feel a bit like I have a small teaching penis, but then again we have a smaller group and therefore barely any paid prep-time, and there's only so much I really want to do out of the kindness of my heart. At least not for this.

By the time I left school #2, my throat hurt from yelling; not angry yelling, just teacher-voiced child-wrangling yelling.

My brother got his driver's license today and got to drive into the city for a date by himself tonight. My mom spent most of the time he was gone freaking out about his wellbeing, but considering what she was like just seven years ago when I was in his position, she's come a long way, baby.

Freud tried to climb into bed with my parents. My mom is convinced she's vaguely allergic to him, and she's doesn't like animals to begin with, so she threw him out. I'm just impressed Freud feels comfortable enough to snuggle in with them. It's a good sign, especially considering my mom had done very little to encourage him, though he's enough like a cat he may like her because she mainly ignores him. She does like that he likes her. And then there's my dad who, had he been conscious at the time of Freud's intrusion, would have loved it. I could never marry a person who didn't like animals.

I managed not to mail my rent check this month because it got lost on the floor of my car. I need a better system, not to be such a fucking idiot, or to find myself a secretary/partner/spouse who is better at the whole bill paying/financial organization thing than I am. Because I suck at it. Even though I have a big accordion folder with all kinds of categories and sub-categories and I use Microsoft Money to manage my bills and accounts and everything, I still screw up too often. But it's hard. You figure, every month I have rent, cell phone, credit card, health insurance, electric, plus auto and renter's insurance a few times a year, plus whatever other random bills show up now and again, it's easy to either misplace or mispay one. They all are due at different times, too, and some can be done online while others require mailed checks, which just complicates things further. To fuck one up every few months is easy to do (like not realizing I haven't mailed the rent until they call and I look and see that I've written the check and I'm pretty sure I had it in the car and oh look at that it's all squished on the floor of the car) and really, really, really bad. I've heard the lecture and I even understand it and know it's true--bad credit is a nasty nasty thing to have. It can fuck lots of things up both short and long term. I'm young. Maybe this is something I'll learn to improve to perfection. I hope so.

It's 4 AM. Is my brain empty yet? This is not a good way to get over a migraine.