I wish I could let go of things and not let them bother me, but OCD has made that a difficult hurdle to overcome. I’d like, for once, to be able to believe the praise and sift through the criticism to arrive at the truth. But I tend to believe the criticism and disregard the praise, so I wind up with a clean, pure dislike of myself.

I am worried about not having a job. I have done what I need to do about it — applied to other school systems. But this waiting to see what happens is hard. I prayed about it the other night. God knows I need a job. He knows the needs of my family. He will not let us do without. I simply prayed that his will regarding my career be done. He knows the right place for me to be. He’ll help me find it. Retrospect is something, isn’t it? I know now that the place where I am currently teaching is totally wrong for me and always was. I don’t need to be in middle school. I was a great high school teacher. I don’t have something necessary to be a great middle school teacher. I don’t know what that something is, only that I don’t have it.

In other news, I finally have a home computer again. My computer crashed and wouldn’t load Windows. Dad rescued it. I was going to have to save all my files to floppies in DOS, then reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows. He was able to avoid that. We chatted on the phone today as he helped me get my computer up and running.

So my husband will be gone pretty much all day today. Eugene Onegin is wrapping up today, and he’s performing Mozart’s Requiem at church as well. I need to go fix some dinner for the kids (and myself). It feels so good to have access to a computer at home again.

Tonight I go on a quest in search of Blue’s Clues valentines for Maggie. It is her first class valentine exchange. She goes to a wonderful daycare a few miles from my school. Actually, Dylan goes there, too. But they’re not exchanging valentines in the infant room, at least not to my knowledge.

My daycare has this spiffy feature that allows me to peek in on the kids: Parent Watch. I admit I don’t get the chance to peep at them as much as I’d like, but my grandparents in Colorado look in on them often, as does my mother. I think it is pretty cool that they can do that. If your daycare doesn’t do it, why not suggest it to them?

My students studied editorial cartoons today. I always forget how much they like that. Then, too, I always have one or two real artists in the bunch who throw everything they’ve got into creating cartoons. I bumped into one of those artists from a couple of quarters back this afternoon. My students must have told her I mentioned her in class, because she said she’d like to bring in some of the cartoons she did for me.

Some of their cartoons were very good.

I have some papers to grade, but I’m blogging. I am not a good person.

Jess and Rajni said I should post my fiction here. Maybe I will. I don’t write as much as my husband. I don’t know why. I have a few ideas rattling around in my head. Rajni, I did post a chapter or two of my book on my old diary. I am in the process of compiling the whole thing into an e-book. I wish I had the time to look for an agent.

I am working on a photo album. Okay, I admit I’m having a bout with OCD right now, exacerbated by some recent poo flung by… her. Wish I didn’t have OCD and could figure out how to let it go instead of ruminating on it, picking it apart over and over. I take a drug called Luvox that is effective for OCD. They used to have a website, but it doesn’t appear to exist anymore. The section on their site for kids and teens with OCD was called “Club OCD! for Kids.” I wish that was a joke. Damned compulsions are interfering with my work this week, and it has to stop, or I’ll fall further behind.

Speaking of OCD, I think Michael Jackson has a rather heinous case of it, coupled with a co-morbid of Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Why else would he constantly be tweaking his face like that? He’s getting to be as eccentric as Howard Hughes, who is a poster child for OCD if ever there was one. I wonder if Michael Jackson has ever officially been diagnosed? I think I’ll add him to my list of famous people with OCD anyway, because if he ain’t got it, I don’t know who has.