Scratchy

It's a scratchy throat I'm feeling. It started with a very strange night's sleep. All night long I had to clear my throat of excess fluids. Then on the way to work, it felt a bit off. Just that little tickle in the back of my throat.
I didn't think much of it during the day until we had an assembly in the outdoor stadium nearby. One of my co-workers mentioned the foolishness of standing out in the drizzle/drips since he had had a head cold for a couple days.
Now I wasn't about to discuss the issue of being outside in the fresh air as being worse for him than being cooped up in a 20x20 room with 15 teens as he has smaller classes being a special ed. teacher and therefore a smaller room. Still, why do people still insist that you get a cold from being out in it?
What's more, it was a humid 68 degrees out this afternoon. That's not what I'd call frigid. That weather, though, is hitting Montana's eastern plains, so I'm told by a friend of a friend's posting on one of the few social sites I frequent infrequently.
Those folks who avoid outside when they have a cold are the same ones who have bottles of hand sanitizer in their environment and sneeze into their shirt arms because they don't want to spread germs. And any teacher who has seen students run around at recess during 5 degrees in January knows that they are constantly MAKING those little knuckleheads put on their coats. It's like they have ice running through their veins. By all indications - running, tackling, blocking, sliding - the cold isn't making them sick because they're the same ones you've told to put on their jackets all week and they still aren't absent. Come to think of it, you were telling them all last week, too.
So we need to think of a better name than a cold. Cold doesn't enter into it. Unless the pencil I sneezed on and let you borrow got more germy when I put it into my refrigerator. Or maybe the railings at the mall that you used were filled with liquid nitrogen to keep the bacteria activated. I think that's where water monkeys come from - the mall. Not inside railings.
So what are we going to call the scratchy throat, itchy tongue, runny mucus holes, and background headache that occur mostly during the winter when everyone is inside sharing airborne orgnisms and avoiding the low temperatures for fear of catching their death?
Should we call it non-observation disease or n.o.d? That seems to be what you feel like doing when you're in a meeting, doesn't it? Maybe pony disease would explain why you are a little hoarse.
The world is filled with new names from drug companies: Cymbalta for that pesky fear of silver on drum sets; Celebrex cures those sudden urges to rejoice spontaneously; Flonase helps something out of your nasal capacity. If they can come up with 24,000 names for the rearrangement of 20 amino acids, they certainly can come up with a new name that sounds as miserable as the uncommon viruses that we call a cold that makes us wish we could scratch that itch and itch that scratch just above our esophagus.
With all that scratching going on, you'd think it was baseball season. But that's not played in winter either, (unless you count winter ball in Puerto Rico).
"CHEW!"

What's with the penguins?

I have received two gifts already this school year.
A former student, who is quite the artist made three pictures for me to hang up in my classroom: one of a penguin with her face on it, a penguin with the face of her friend and my student for the third semester in a row, and one of yours truly's face on a penguin body. They are hanging up behind my desk. Why penguins? Because a long time ago I started collecting penguin pictures from old calendars and have many hanging in my classroom. No big deal about the penguins, but they sure are photogenic.

A gift from a student's family
5 years ago.

This morning I got a little penguin in plastic from another student who requested me for this year again. If you stick it in water, it'll grow up to 600% of it's 3" x 1.5" size. These presents come on the heels of some frustration with the admin who are putting pressure on the staff to reflect about their thoughts, find new methods to share, collect more data, and prove improvement. It's frustrating because what we really need, having adopted new textbooks, two of which represent new classes, is encouragement and appreciation for the extra hours we are putting in for the kids. We in the math dept. are working our tails off more since we lost one FTE (one teacher position), cut by the district so that we can better serve the students who have gone from a minimum of two credits in math to graduate to three.
There are no such things as budget cuts, the same work must simply be done by less people. Oh wait, the government has decreed that the teachers are at fault for students who are taking drugs, not lessons. The government has decreed that if the students who sit in class stoned don't pass the national or state exams we can get rid of the teachers and therefore the problem will go away because the government has solved it. It's beat up a teacher week in your state capital and your nation's capital so that the foolish decisions that they have made can be hidden.
In the mean time, the students still love their teachers, the actual students, that is. And they are willing to present these little gifts in appreciation.
Nope, they aren't little gifts. They're huge.