[Magdalen] A very emotional week. (Long; many should, possibly, delete.)

[M J [Mike] Logsdon]

The week began with Ev's torrid show of self-centeredness on Monday, which resolved itself of Tuesday, including an apology to the teacher whose "Hey, thanks, but not even necessary" blew Ev away.

And going into this past week I knew that on Thursday there'd be an All-hands Meeting at work in which the years-long-promised "great shaken-up organisation chart" would be presented, and it was only minimally upsetting, and not at all to me and my co-worker, minus our issue of uncompensated out-of-class work which will be taken-up separately.

As a sidebar, during that meeting our GM was not at all well.  Seems on Monday in San Antonio, TX, he'd received a flu shot.  On the plane here he felt like crap, came to work Tuesday like crap, was equally or more crappy Wednesday, and on Thursday for the meeting he was clearly trying hard to stand.  Later in the day he had his exec mngt call an ambulance, and today hopefully he was released from the hospital with antibiotics appropriate to whatever virus he'd contracted via the flu shot.  (Ebola was ruled out very early.)  He's not our favorite person, but he has kept his promise of not firing any of us, so we don't exactly want to see him taken away with little bugs in his bloodstream.

Yesterday, our division had a meeting in which many things were expressed about the changes, including ours about adequate compensation.  Some people spoke with tears choked back.  It ended well, but there's clearly work to be done, or forced to be done.

I came back to my desk and listened to my voicemail.  One was from (after I'd figured it out) the old high school friend who'd broke my heart a couple years ago.  That was, to put it mildly, another shock to the system.  (More info later.)

And for a couple days this week, Ev's ability to adequately catch up and maintain normal momentum in French was in question by us (him and me, because of his week's absence), causing not a little bit of stress, and then yesterday, two good things happened all at once.  I told Ev to talk with his teacher after class about needing help and guidance as to how to manage the current problem, and I that morning called his teacher about it, and he said "It'll get fixed today."  Right when Ev was asking his French teacher for some talk time after class (he has her 5th period, and she has a 6th, so it was going to be a gamble time-wise), his regular special ed teacher appears, and a three-way talk occured, which I can only describe as blessed.  Besides the instruction to take his work both missed and current in order (you don't want to do current assignments before previous ones, obviously), she said she will take all this into consideration of the quarter ending this coming Friday, and his regular teacher will allow some leeway with his regular work for Ev to do said catch-up.  All parties agreed he'd be done rather quickly considering such an arrangement, and back up to speed accordingly.

What Ev learned more than anything from that talk was that of all her classes, the French teacher considers him her "best student" in terms of really connecting with the material.  She looks forward, of all her classes, to 5th period, because Ev's in it.  And in terms of that period's student makeup, all like that he's there, he was missed when he was gone for a week, and he's considered (and I'm told this is a Good Thing) by all as "the classroom geek".  I told his regular teacher, who witnessed me learning this, that I take at least some credit for that.  The end result is that Ev and I feel pretty good about his midterm report card coming soon, and his regular teacher knows I feel better about things overall.

Last night, we had hot dogs, and an early bedtime.  I'm still tired.
_________________________________________
"O perplexed discomposition, O riddling
distemper, O miserable condition of man!"
- The Rev Mr John Donne
(in a not-so-chipper moment)