there's the growing feeling

of desperation, like i can't do enough in one given day; where did my hours go; why am i sitting at this desk writing in this little, white box when it's 6:30 in the morning and i went to sleep without writing lesson plans, why? why?
that was a rhetorical question, by the way. but, nonetheless...i think, i suspect, it has something to do with this growing feeling of desperation...not desperation, but fatigue. as in, it is not stress, really. it's more of a suffocating, slowly. it's almost nice, like falling asleep in cotton. as if you know you're going to die, but it seems so pleasant...it's hard to explain. unless you're a teacher? unless you're one of those young, tightly-wound, high-strung teacher-types in a school full of students who can't speak English and don't even know they can't speak English because they only speak with each other, and then there are the Hurricane Katrina evacuees. yes, i have evacuees, no surprise. i live in Houston. it was only a matter of time. they came last week.
but when they walked into my 4th period class...
it's the time, and the timing, and that class. they walked in and i couldn't stop. i was like, "sit anywhere." and they did, and we moved on, the whole class, and they just sort of rolled themselves in.
and how do i stop? when do i stop? to ask the questions? to address their prescence in my classroom, but that's not even the point. the point is that there are 31 students registered for 4th period, 22 desks, and about 6 absences per day and more absent students being added to that class nearly every day. the point is that i cannot believe that this is MY point, seeing as my alarm is still set to/so i wake up to NPR and NPR, at this point, may as well be known as "Konnecting Katrina" (or whatever cheesy name), because nothing else exists right now, except for Katrina and her babies, my babies, the children who walked into my room the other day. and there they sit, sometimes in a desk, while I feverishly teach off of post-it notes, because i sat for 3 hours at my desk the night before, staring so blankly at my other notes. is it because i'm too tired? or is it because i'm drowning, suffocating actually, slowly. and it's so nice, like falling asleep in cotton, but...i don't know.
i want to know something.
let me get back to you on the question.