Last night I couldn’t fall asleep even though it was after 23:00. I wondered if it was because I’d been drinking black tea throughout the day? Whatever it was, I took a really long time to fall asleep. I woke up and check the time on the clock. It was after 5:00 in the morning. With all the drinking I did until after 22:00 p.m., it was no wonder I needed to use the bathroom so desperately. I took a quick peek outside at the plants which I haven’t given much attention to in my blog recently. I went back to bed until after 6:00, but slept ever so lightly. This is why I need to go to bed at a reasonable time, because I get up early all the time. I started my devotions and really tuned in to God’s promise for His people. “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth.” Isaiah 62:1 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/isa.62.1.KJV. If God is for us, nothing can be against us. What an assurance for followers of Jesus Christ.
It was Thursday and so this meant I had little to no time to prepare to head out for work at the high school. I tuned in to Beyond the Headlines while I did some impromptu stretches to target my areas of concern. These areas included my usual back and legs, especially my calves. They must be growing! LOL. I’ve also been paying special attention to my right forearm which had been quite painful when I massage into it. I told myself that I wanted to leave out by at least 7:45 this morning but by the time I had finished exercising, it was a little after 7:30 and I had not showered yet, nor made my smoothie. I had a quick shower then made my smoothie, which took the most time. I already knew what I’d be wearing to work and so once I finished making the smoothie, I tossed it in my bag with the personalized cap and left my house at 8:00. This was a great improvement compared to the last two times. I just wanted the extra time to figure out where each class was. Last Thursday had been a holiday and the previous Thursday I had only had one class via Zoom. It was no wonder students were leaving their worksheets. This was no excuse however, as it is quite the annoyance. When I got to work, I didn’t take off my backpack. I gathered all the things from my desk that I needed and made my way to the classroom. There I had my smoothie partially after opening the windows and drawing the curtains over the sunny areas.
I was in a no nonsense, but very diplomatic mood today. I hastily got on to the matter of the day which was writing the presentations. I gave the instructions at the beginning of the class and then silence fell upon the room. I visit myself with trying to mark or rather, learn how to mark the presentations that were uploaded by the Tuesday classes. Between my finger and the iPad stylus pen, I wasn’t sure which one was more efficient. But since I don’t have a personal iPad, I don’t plan on getting a stylus pen. It was certainly quite interesting to learn the functions and features of this technology, but I could see it fast creeping into my life and taking more time than I was willing. However, given the unprecedented instances over the past two weeks, I knew I would have to sacrifice some of my time for the benefit of the students. I needed them to get this feedback before their presentations do October 5th and 14th respectively. Especially the Tuesday class on October 5th, though they had actually had more in class writing time. For the next assignment, I plan to start deducting points for students who repeatedly leave their worksheets. It cannot be business as usual for me to have to keep providing extra worksheets. On the flip side of that however, is the fact that I can go completely paperless as a lot of the students enjoyed typing on the blank worksheet that I uploaded instead of writing on the paper copies that they had. I can contribute to saving some trees, even though a lot of recycled papers used. I’ll save on ink too. It was a lot of corroborating I admit, between the hard copies, the iPad and the different notes that students should pay keen attention to when it was time to upload their presentations. Today felt so much longer, but I had learnt so much more about how to use the iPad.
I surprised myself today when I went down to the staff room after my last class and realized, I had nothing to keep me there. This was so, because I was taking the iPad home to continue editing the student’s papers on it. I must admit, it is not the most efficient way as I have to move between eight different classes to see who has uploaded their presentations. I don’t want to wait until the deadline to check them as this would be two burdensome for me. The cool thing about this, is that students, once they are online, can see the notes I’ve made right away. I told the teachers I was leaving and got home in no time. It was a record for me, I’m sure. I got home a few minutes after 13:00. I added some ice cubes to the last bit of green smoothie in my bag with a tups of honey. I took off my clothes and hung them to air out from all the sweating I’d done. I had the cool and delicious smoothie, then set about preparing something bigger for lunch.
The length of time it took me to prepare the konyaku or potato starch noodle recipe was reflected in the amount of things I had cut up. Clearly my mind wasn’t fully here as I didn’t even take one picture, before, during nor after cooking. Lunch was delicious and I had it in two servings. I hadn’t taken any supplements in the morning and so I took seven tablets in total. I feel like I have become a real supplements junkie. It’s definitely not the direction I want to go in, but it will only be temporarily until I return to Jamaica, which I am planning for 2023. I took some time to examine the plants outside, which haven’t really gotten much of my attention in recent times. The basil of plants was looking so nice and fluffy. I am waiting on it to develop some more so I can make pesto. I was also quite proud of the kale plant, which is almost 1 year old. It is the last of three plans that I had received from my friend last year during the autumn season. The other two plants had suffered root rot because of the excess rains that had plagued the plant box during the summer. After 30 minutes of editing students’ work on the iPad, I decided to take a break at around 16:30. I was actually starting to feel hungry again and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I was trying to do so much at once. But juggling a million and one things is never the way to get anything done. In fact, I had become quite irritated by things not going smoothly. I suppose I knew the situation would get worse and so I wanted to do as much as I could. But I simply couldn’t keep up. I was still catching up on sleep from last weekends camping trip and the week so far had been an in tense one. Coupled with those things, I’d had two late online classes back to back and my period was about to start.
Talking about online classes, I had another session online starting at 17:40 until 20:00. This however was a total of 3 lessons with two 10 minute breaks in between. The first lesson had no students registered for it, but I was logged in for the entire time on Zoom until Zoom kicked me off for lack of activity. For the second session, there was one student registered, but after 5 minutes of waiting, I called the staff member in charge of this company. As soon as I got off the phone with the staff member, the students joined the zoom lesson 5 minutes later. I could tell the student had been rushing and so I tried to allow the class to go at a slower pace to allow the student to catch their breath. I had one last class with one other student. These classes can have up to six students once they register 5 minutes before the start time of the class. But fortunately for me, I had two classes of private students. Just a few minutes after starting the last class, I could feel a tickling sensation in my throat. At first I tried to ignore it, but then it intensified and so I tried to indicate to the student that I needed to be excused. Before I knew it, I was coughing hysterically and it became really painful. I couldn’t say what had triggered the coughing. It might have been something that I had eaten and not properly chewed as I was feeling so off that I was kind of gobbling things down. That coughing spell really wearied me, on top of my racing mind in the middle of my last class. Thankfully, the student was quite understanding. The student really seem to enjoy the class in spite of all of that. I found them and told them good night at just around 20:00.
My throat hurt and I felt really tired physically and mentally. I was seeking relief and so ended up eating too much chocolate. I also ate a rice cracker as a way to help remove any small particles that might have remained stuck in my throat. I allowed the cracker to soften first in my mouth before swallowing it. I spent about half an hour or more working out an order on one of the delivery websites for my friend so she could capitalize on the discount campaign. She had been unsuccessful doing it herself so I was able to navigate the site and figure out why. I was really tired and so went to bed after all of that. I actually had to tell myself it was okay not to finish the backgammon game and go to sleep. What a long day.
Thank you for journeying with me on today’s entry. Please support by leaving a comment below or sharing this with someone who might enjoy the journey. Follow my blog at stacypersonallyapeaking.wordpress.com to get posts directly in your inbox. You can also watch me on my YouTube channel Stacy Personally Speaking to see me in person. 21:46