But it'll still be two days

After work last Saturday I went to the bookstore (I just meant to show one of the new teachers where it was! Honest!) and walked out with a bunch of short story collections because I have too much work to be able to commit to a novel right now. I also have no self-control.

Last week I learned that I can barely commit to a short story. As in, I started a 19-page story on the bus to work on Monday and finished it on the bus to work on Friday. That was kind of depressing. What was even more depressing was that the story starts and ends with the same line, which, even more depressingly, is: "When the door against which Lyubochka was pressed by the invisible force finally opened, it turned out that the trolleybus was already moving and now she had to jump straight into a puddle." That actually happens.

This week started out promising, as I finished a whole story on Monday, but I haven't picked up a non-textbook book since.

So October is an insanely busy month. November should certainly be better, and not just because there's a three-day weekend. I don't have to do the company newsletter in November. Also, there would almost have to be fewer observations. Not that I've actually completed all of them for this month, but having them hang over my head until I can is also stressful.

To make matters worse, I had an argument with my boyfriend on Monday, my new haircut is not flattering, the copier at work is broken, and I also had two really bad, unproductive lessons yesterday (and in two of my favorite groups, which is awful), though one of them included the following exchange:
"...so don't anthropomorphize."
"Why?"
"The animals don't like it."


It seems like I've been inadverdently offending a lot of people lately (great idea in the weeks leading up to your birthday, btw), but I couldn't always figure out why. Today I realized that, when I'm under a lot of stress, I have a serious intonation problem. Or, rather, I lose control over my probably-already-existing intonation problem. In fact, intonation is one of the reasons I don't like teaching conversational English and, the more I think about it, probably the reason I hate talking on the phone.

I'm not sure that my intonation is all that bad under normal circumstances, but it's one of those things, like looking at people when I talk to them, that I often have to remind myself about, either to use it at all, or not to use inappropriate intonation (this is much, much worse than not using it). But if I'm under too much stress, I don't bother, with horrible consequences (see: Monday's argument), and occasionally kind of amusing ones.

For example, yesterday, I found out that one of my students is pregnant. I produced the requisite happy-congratulatory reaction when she told me because I am happy for her and also because I'm polite. But it seems something went wrong when I repeated this news to my coworkers:
"I just found out that one of my students is pregnant!"
"Adult or teenager?"
"Adult, thank goodness."
"Is she married?"

And:
"I just found out that my student at the company is pregnant!"
"Oh. Is that good or bad?"

So those exclamation points are probably incorrect, but I totally meant to say them. I stopped telling people after those two exchanges because I got distracted by something shiny and also because it was depressing. It wasn't until today, in fact, that I put everything together and realized that, in addition to my eye contact (which I was at least aware of), my intonation has probably been way off lately.


It is also worth noting that my birthday is on Friday. I'm going to be a square! Which would have been a good Halloween costume (I hijacked someone's Halloween party and combined it with my birthday party, but I didn't think about costumes) if not for the facts that I try to keep my real age shrouded in mystery and I am already kind of a square.