OFF-THE-CHARTS LUNCH FOR A LONG DAY AT WORK

One more quick post connected to my intense dislike of shopping:

Work sucks. Not even joking, as the MCAS state testing gets closer, my life feels like more of a pressure cooker. For anyone who doesn't understand state testing, for my particular subject matter, the year-end cumulative test for 100% of the state standards takes place in two weeks. This is prior to the end of third term. This means that before my students have completed 75% of their academic year, they are being tested on 100% of the curriculum. 

The best part is that over two days, these twelve and thirteen year olds will be writing four to six entire 10,000 character essays. For those unfamiliar with what a 10,000 character (including spaces) essay looks like, it's five to eight complete and expansive paragraphs; four or five of these essays, and, for some students who are lucky enough to get the "practice" question, six full-length essays.

In. Two. Days. I know English graduate students who cannot pull that shit off. But, I digress.

While this is hanging over everyone's heads, I also have an entire day of professional development, which means that I have zero time in my classroom to do important things like planning and preparing for the upcoming lessons. This is in addition to those regular days of going to multiple meetings, helping to substitute in other classrooms, and doing the important bathroom patrol (Doodie Duty) since we cannot trust the middle schoolers not to smear feces all over the walls nor to pee in the sinks nor to cram the toilets so full of paper towels (or shoes or clothing or schoolwork) that the entire septic system backs up.

So, yeah, I'm really too exhausted at the end of the extended day to fight irate shoppers, long lines at the cashiers, or malfunctioning self-checkouts. (Let's not even throw in the insult of paying for bags that break faster than tissues.) I need lunch for Friday's PD (Professional Development -- a time to sit in bored silence while people treat us like morons) day, so I should get some food and snacks. My mind tells me that I have bread in the freezer and probably have enough peanut butter and jelly on hand. I might even have a yogurt of questionable date in my fridge. Yup, I should be okay. I convince myself that I probably have enough food, and, hopefully, enough toilet paper to survive the next twenty-four hours.

This is when I remember that I have rapid-rise yeast. I have bread flour. I have shredded mozzarella cheese. I have sliced pepperoni. I even have a jar of pizza sauce. All of these items I have at home. I also have a damn good, incredibly easy pizza dough recipe that only takes thirty minutes to rise (though I always give it an hour, just because).

Take THAT, you stupid grocery store! Suck on it, you crazy-ass shoppers! Bite my arse, you malfunctioning self-service machines!

Yes, I would quite literally rather make a homemade pizza than stop for fifteen minutes at the store. I don't know if that makes me an idiot or a hero, but the results are amazing and my PD lunch is off the charts.