ME.

I think I suffer from mild to severe Christmas light decoration jealousy.
And this is only the beginning of the list of things that just aren't right about this week.

A co-worker handed me a piece of paper and told me to do with it "what the spirit guided me to".
It was a piece of paper. A simple newsletter.
What the spirit guided me to?
I can't get it out of my mind.
The spirit?
Of course, yes, I know what she means.
And of course, yes, I do believe in her message.
But I get so caught up. In life. Stinking, sometimes. Especially the week after a vacation in a room of 24 six year olds who seem to be on some personal quest to say my name as many times as they can without going hoarse. They never do seem to go hoarse. But it's a mystery to me how that is.
Oh anyway, I just take it all so personally. Where have a failed the child who opened up the bottle of glue and poured it all over the desk on Wednesday morning? How have I misled him? No worry that his father is in jail. It is my shortcoming that has gotten him to this point.
At would point should I have explicitly told those boys that they shouldn't punch a classmate in the stomach at recess? And the boy that got punched? When did I show him what putting up your middle finger means?

I get so self-centered. So wrapped up in me-ness. I assume I am the epicenter of all these actions and the roots behind them. But it is hard to separate the time, effort and money I put into making my room happen at all from the actions they choose while they are with me. They are with me for more waking hours a week than they are with their own families. Of course I take it personally.
But like I've said so many times before, and then forget once the words slip off the keyboard, I cannot think I am in this alone.
I am not in this alone.
Something is guiding me through it. 

And it's not all bad. There are silver linings, I just have to look harder for them.

Like... "Ms. H" (ugh) "here's you in your wedding dress"...

And, well, I still got my looks.