Weekend Army Drill
Right now it’s Friday and I’m in the classroom with the autistic students I work with for my day job. It’s been going pretty well except for the times when a certain student has a breakdown and we have to spend hours calming him down/getting kicked and hit by him/holding him down in an empty classroom. I’m learning more and more to become numb to his curses, taunts and blows, because it really isn’t his fault and it happens so much that if I let it really get to me each time I could not function in this job.
Tonight I’m off to my evening job at the restaurant. I have notified my manager at the restaurant that I will be resigning in two weeks. It’s not a bad job, but my wife and I hate the irregular scheduling and late hours. I really hate leaving my pregnant wife alone at night until 10 or 11 pm, and there are plenty of other annoyances with that job. Hopefully I can find another part time job with a more regular schedule, better pay, and something that’s a little closer. I have discovered a pretty remarkable beverage while playing around with combinations at the restaurant. It could be called a “Vanilla Cream Italian Soda” or possibly a “Smooth Vanilla Float”. It is comprised of:
- 10 oz. sprite
- 0.5 oz. vanilla flavor syrup
- 3-4 oz. half-n-half creamer
- shaken, with lots of cubed ice
I had been making “cream sodas” using sprite and vanilla syrup for quite some time when the creamer was brought to my attention. It really adds a smooth, creamy taste–much like the last few gulps of a vanilla float where most of the ice cream has melted, only I think this drink tastes better and more even.
Tomorrow morning I get up early (with some trepidation) to head to Sanford for my monthly drill with the US Army National Guard. In ways, I do not look forward to this, because it is very tiresome and I have not lived up to my plans for exercising this month. I had planned to do a lot more running and training, but other stuff got in the way and now I feel unprepared–like the same feeling I used to get right before a weekly piano lesson when I hadn’t really practiced at all in the past week. However, in several ways I am looking forward to the drill–to see what new, exciting thing I can learn and deepen my understanding of the military. Will we take apart and assemble M-16s? Learn to throw grenades? Jump out of helicopters? Or just sit in a classroom and learn the latest military policies on this or that?
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One of my students here at the middle school is a mummurer. He is constantly saying nonsense things, sometimes under his breath, sometimes out loud. A couple times, he just says something so funny I can barely keep from laughing. About 20 minutes ago, I told him to put away the blocks he was playing with and get to his desk. He had been building a thing with the blocks that looked a lot like the empire state building. As he toppled it over, he said “Was it really beauty that killed the beast?”
