Habit-Formation 101: Day 1

They say it takes 28 days to form a habit. Well, I just need to get past the first 2 with this blog....

Student teaching started up this week and while I would love to splatter that chaos all over the web, I don't know that I can without sacrificing my grade. I am aware that it would be difficult to pin my exact identity to this particular blog, but God has a weird sense of humor. Don't despair - I'm chronically the teaching events to be posted as soon as my final grade clears.

In other news, my parents pulled a wonderful little trick on me Monday night. A member of our extended family has been ill with lung cancer for several months and passed away Saturday. I received word at about midnight Monday night via voicemail after a 12 hour school day and practicing. The key points were "So&so passed away Sat." and "The funeral is tomorrow morning, but no one expects you to come." There weren't any specifics on the funeral arrangements either.

I spent a while trying to figure out how I could get back in time (assuming I could find out the time) and how I could go about contacting the Internship gods. It finally came down to the facts that I would have had to pull an all-nighter just to get to the funeral. This is with just getting over some post-Christmas crap and still being pretty fatigued, I figured that all-night driving in the dark could be considered dangerous. Add in that I would have had to drive back later on the same day as the funeral..... It was a bad, bad situation.

So, I couldn't go. I called my parents on Tuesday to find out how it went and why the hell they waited so long to inform me. No one answered and no one returned my message. Called Wednesday. Got my Mom who acted as if nothing could possibly be wrong. She had the nerve to tell me that they had waited to call me ON PURPOSE to "make it IMPOSSIBLE for" me "to attend the funeral."

I was speechless. I was speechless.

She went on to explain that they thought it would be best if I didn't miss any more student teaching days than I had to. With my auditions and such, I'm already going to miss about 2.5 days and may have to make them up.....blah, blah, blah........These internship people aren't heartless - anal retentive - but not heartless. And if I had to make up one more day, so be it. I don't care.

Whatever their reasoning - and may I say that the one they gave me is shit - this should have been my decision, not theirs. Apparently, they've known since last Sunday about the funeral. I could have worked something out and left right after school on Monday. But no.

I can't fix this and I certainly can't change my parents. I need to move on, but I think I'm allowed to be furious for at least a few days. Otherwise, life has been ok, but unfortunately focused on this fucking mess. Maybe I'll have a pleasanter post tomorrow.....