I usually refrain from posting about my job, but...

Fear for our children, I tell you. Because I am looking at hundreds of teacher comments today and yesterday, and many of these teachers cannot spell or use basic English grammar. It is fucking terrifying, I tell you, how bad some of these comments are.

I love teachers, as a whole - they do a hard job and get little thanks for it. They're braver than I am, for sure. But stuff like this just creeps. me. out.

Things fall apart.

I went out to my car this morning to go vote, only to discover that someone had been through it and stolen my iPod, my charger cord, my stereo connection gear, and my cellphone charger. This is the second time in two months, though they didn't get the iPod last time; just replacing the cords cost me $50, though, and I had vowed to be better. Vowed. And I was being (or so I thought) so careful to lock my car, and take my valuables out - but I don't know if the door didn't shut right last night, or if I just forgot. I had just returned from my third? fourth? trip out of town in as many weeks and I was just knackered and glad to be home. I suppose it could have been worse - they didn't take my new sweater, or my change from the ashtray, or the scarf I just finished knitting, or the framed print I had in the trunk. Fairly courteous, I guess, for thieves.

But I cried. And left them a nasty note. I'm riding a thin veneer of normal these days, over what is looking more and more like a low-grade depression. I fell apart over a thing (though, yeah, gift from my husband, violation of my space, alla that) and went to the polls still sniffling. Fucked up my ballot and had to request another. Felt ill-informed. Was so shaken that I hope to god I marked for Kerry. If he doesn't win I am so going to lose it.

Got to the office, and set up a few more things - phone, finally! And workspace! But someone has taken the small page-holder thingummy I left here last week. Which sucks, as they are nice, and a bit pricey, and it was a treat for me from myself. Now I know, though; don't leave any of my equipment here. Which means toting it back and forth. Pain. In. My. Ass.

Last in the missing items roundup is my knitting books. I went to go get a sock pattern and they were just ... not there. I remember a full bookshelf, a few weeks back, and now it is only half-full. Did I lend them to someone? I certainly don't remember. I toyed briefly with the idea of thieves, again, but there are many nice things in my house, and surely no-one would have walked off with just the knitting books. Did I take them out for a reason and put them elsewhere? Again, I have no recollection of doing so. ETA: This mystery, at least, is solved; I did lend them to someone, and can get them back tonight.

Being a scatterbrain has cost me thousands of dollars in counseling fees, an iPod, several sets of cords, various other small expenses, and now my knitting books, just in the past month or so. It doesn't seem fair, somehow, even if it was all probably my own fault in the end. Why do I have to be like this? I try so hard, but for every two things I hold together, it feels like three fall apart.

Some timeless election day thoughts, culled from other blogs.

"But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make; when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all, ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it, whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection."

-- Shakespeare's Henry V Act IV, Scene 1, the soldier Michael Williams to the disguised King Henry on the eve of battle

"What the age calls for is not, (as we are so often told) more faith, or stronger leadership, or more scientific organization. Rather is it the opposite -- less Messianic ardour, more enlightened skepticism, more toleration of idiosyncrasies, more frequent ad hoc measures to achieve aims in a foreseeable future, more room for the attainment of their personal ends by individuals and by minorities whose tastes and beliefs find (whether rightly or wrongly must not matter) little response among the majority. What is required is a less mechanical, less fanatical application of general principles, however rational or righteous, a more cautious and less arrogantly self-confident application of accepted, scientifically tested, general solutions to unexamined individual cases."

-- Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty