Author Archives: Miss Kitten

Survival of the Fluffiest

I wonder sometimes
Whether cats in warm climes
Put on heavy fur coats when it’s winter.
Though not necessary
Evolutionary biology
Says it’s needed at that time of year.
My cat puts on her
Heavy layer of fur
When the weather begins to get colder.
Fluffs up in the fall
And in spring sheds it all
Never once going out in the weather.
Is it also true that
The Equatorial cat
Has fur coats for both winter and summer?

Not to belabor the point but…

I wrote this as a response all the unenlightened comments on this photograph posted on the Occupy New Brunswick page on Facebook.

I’m sure he saved as much as he could (as he mentioned) but, being a teacher making crap wages, it wasn’t nearly enough. Don’t worry, though. Teachers are used to taking abuse from everyone. We’re used to being held accountable for bad grades and never thanked or appreciated for good ones. We’re used to hearing about how our jobs are “easy” and how overpaid we are because we get summer and Christmas vacations off. We’re used to being hated by students, criticized by their parents and undervalued by everyone.

We’re used to it but we do our jobs anyway.

We stand up in front of a room full of distracted kids and somehow manage to engage their increasingly elusive interest for a few minutes. We ignore the eye rolling and the clock watching and get on with our jobs.

I work as a high school English teacher in Sweden. Maybe conditions are different here but I normally start work before eight in the morning and finish after five. Working ten or twelve hour days is a frequent occurance. A minor percentage of our working day is spent actually teaching. The rest of the time we spend in meetings, marking essays and making lesson plans. The students get week-long breaks in fall, winter and spring, but I (and the rest of my colleagues) work during all of those. I get a few days off around Christmas, and I get the standard amount of time off during the summer to which all Swedish workers are entitled by the government.

Yeah, I’m stressed out and tired. I’m exhaused. But I cannot let my students down. They are the reasons I get up in the morning and go to work everyday. I do my job for them.

I’m a teacher. That’s what I do and I’ve never wanted to do anything else.

One Evil Tortilla Chip: a dental adventure

(Warning: this may gross out some of you)

The Most Evil Chips Ever

It all started on Monday when I was eating these new Santa Maria “American Barbecue” tortilla strips. Unlike the traditional triangle-shaped variety, these are shaped like long rectangles with surprisingly sharp edges. One of them became lodged quite painfully into the lower right corner of my jaw. I tried to maneuver it out with my tongue, but it was really stuck in there and seemed be digging deeper into my cheek. After a few seconds I managed to remove it but the area felt weird, almost like I could still feel the offending object there. Oh well, I thought, mouth injuries usually heal pretty quickly. It should be okay in day or two.

However, in a day or two I had developed a rather painful hard lump on my lower right jaw, which kept increasing in painfulness and size and I was starting to resemble a large chipmunk storing up food for the winter. There was definitely some kind of infection in there or something that wasn’t going to heal on its own, so I left work early and went to my local medical center. Because the injury had nothing to do with my teeth, I thought they might be able to help me. Instead, they told me I needed to see a dentist and sent me on my way without looking at it. As it happens I have a dentist appointment next week for a checkup, but this needed immediate attention. I went home and called the emergency dentist, kicking myself (at least metaphorically) for getting myself into this situation. Unlike regular health care, dental care in Sweden is not covered under the national health plan, and this had the potential to cost me a fortune. I was told that I could come in that evening but that appointments after normal working hours cost twice as much. Since I wasn’t in excrutiating pain I decided I could wait and got an appointment first thing in the morning.

By morning the lump had doubled in size. When I got to the dentist’s office, I filled in the requisite health declaration form and was taken in within minutes. So far so good. The hygienist looked at the affected area and tapped my teeth firmly with a dental instrument just to make sure there was nothing wrong with them, and indeed, there was not. She then took an x-ray just to be sure. Then the dentist came in and my condition presented him with a bit of a challenge. I told him that this had never happened to me before and he told me that he had never seen this before in a patient. He even brought in a colleague to take a look. They both kept remarking at how nice my teeth looked and I said that yes, I have very good teeth and hardly ever need to see a dentist.

What neither of them had ever seen before was this, a gingival abscess, an infected area in the gums which apparently can be caused by aggressive tooth brushing, toothpicks, or in my case, food that is forced into the gumline. I am very lucky in that the infection never got into my teeth since that’s a much more complex problem to fix. He lanced and drained the infection, which involved a lot of squeezing of the very sore infected area. (I think that many dentists are secret sadists.) However, it needed to be done. He then prescribed me some penicillin and an anti-inflammatory painkiller.

Then came the most painful part of all (or so I thought): the bill. I was fully expecting it to cost a fortune but, surprisingly, the entire visit and treatment came to only 475 Swedish kronor (about $70 US). The antibiotics and pain medicine came to a further 175 (about $25). For someone used to the exorbitant costs of American health care, just under one hundred dollars for an emergency visit to the dentist including the medications is really not that bad at all.

Still, it’s lot to have to pay because of one evil tortilla chip. I’ll certainly be avoiding those in the future, and I recommend that everyone else do the same.

Six Years So Far in Sweden

Six years so far in Sweden,
For the most part have been good.
I’ve tried hard to be lagom and,
Do what a good Swede would.
I learned the Swedish language
And I did the best I could.
But I still don’t hurdy gurdy,
As well as I think I should.

Six years so far in Sweden,
Have not been all that bad.
And yet there are still certain things,
That make me kind of sad.
I feel out of place on holidays,
And I miss my mom and dad.
Though my Swedish family loves me,
And to see them makes me glad.

Six years so far in Sweden,
All the laughter and the tears.
Six years of glorious vinglögg,
And watery Swedish beers.
Six years of not quite fitting in,
Of culture shock and fears.
Six years so far in Sweden,
Have been strange and wonderful years.

Green Laser Assault

I was assaulted at work today by a student with a green laser pointer. Here in Sweden, these green lasers are considered dangerous and are therefore illegal to bring into, well, almost anywhere: schools, airports, any public building really. This student was apparently unaware that it’s illegal to bring a green laser into a school and that shining it into someone’s face is considered assault. Yep, he shined it right into my face, as well as one other teacher’s face and the faces of several students. He was just trying to be an annoying asshole, not knowing that the way he was doing it was a criminal act. Not that this matters. Ignorance of the law does not excuse one from breaking it.

It’s just a damn good thing that he didn’t shine the laser directly into my eyes, since I have epilepsy. He didn’t know that either, he said, otherwise he never would have done it. Cute. I got it on the side of my face, though. I was standing next to the front door talking to a couple of students when I saw this green glow in the corner of my eye. When I looked up I saw the student hide something in his hand. I then went back to talking to the students and it happened again. The little bastard did it twice. I guess he thought it was only some harmless fun, but it really did scare me. You don’t screw around with that kind of thing when you have this condition. I walked over to him, almost shaking at this point, and told him to never, ever, EVER, shine that laser in my or anyone else’s face ever again. He mumbled an apology and I went back to work. A few minutes later, though, I saw one of my colleagues talking to the student and he was not happy. Not happy at all, for he had gotten the green laser right in his eyes. As he was talking/yelling to the student, he (the student) kept getting more and more belligerent. At one point I thought he was going to hit my colleague.

At this point neither of us knew that green lasers are illegal in schools and shining them in people’s eyes is an assault, but we learned this shortly afterward. My colleague attempted to confiscate the laser but the student was adamant that he didn’t have it anymore. He had apparently given it to a friend. We tracked down this friend and, naturally, he didn’t have it either. The laser-wielding student was then suspended from school and asked to leave. Unfortunately we weren’t yet aware that this was a matter for the police. We found out after he left. We were get in touch with the police tomorrow, though.

The student will be removed from the school. If he doesn’t leave voluntarily, then we’ll make it a police matter and he’ll be forced to change schools. The owner of the school won’t want to do this though, since he’s afraid this will tarnish the image of the school. Bullshit to that, I say. A student did something wrong and we did something about it. How will that make the school look bad? If we did nothing, it would make the school look worse. Anyway, this is all moot. The student broke the law and the police have to be contacted about it. If the school won’t then I will, goddammit. Even though I was told that I would probably lose my job if I did.

I just want to make the student into an example and show the other students that there are consequences to their actions. They kept saying that they thought we were making such a big deal over nothing and it really wasn’t that important. If that’s how they feel about it then I guess they wouldn’t mind if they had a green laser shined into their eyes for five seconds and suffer searing pain and permanent retinal damage. Then, we’ll see if they still think it’s not that important.

For anyone thinking of becoming a high school teacher…

Remember that to be a teacher is to be despised,
You’ll be hated by your students
And by parents, criticized.

You are never thanked when grades high, though,
You are always blamed
When grades are low.

You’ll learn to face a room full of indifferent teens,
Trying to engage them
By almost any means.

Ignore their rolling eyes that look at you and mock.
And pay no attention when
They keep watching the clock.

Just remember that your job is for the greater.
They may hate you now
But they’ll appreciate you later.

WOTD: interesting and/or funny words beginning with the letter C.

One must tread very carefully with this one. There are certain words that start with the letter C that…well, perhaps it’s best to not go there..

Personally, I’m fond of the word cocophany. It’s defined as a harsh discordance or dissonance of sound. Airports are usually cocophanous places. I also like how the word has the word “cough” in it, sort of. The phrase “cocophany of coughs” occured to me during an exam in one of my English lessons the other day. There’s a cold bug going around the school and several students and teachers have been out sick. At the time, the  otherwise quiet classroom sounded like a tuberculosis isolation ward.