The headache sits on the top of my head like a helmet.

This morning was the first frost of the season--lines of crystal were parallel in the fields, along the rows where there was corn a week ago. My pink begonias were topped with a layer of silver dust, presenting the illusion that I could've blown the frost away. The brown leaves were stuck together. They are dying slowly. I scraped off the windows of the Intrepid, only of course, after finding the car scraper I haven't used in months. I wished that my coffee thermos, just for the morning, would let the heat escape into the palms of my hands and my fingers.

This morning I taught freshman the five paragraph essay, and for my school program I had to videotape myself teaching the lesson. There are serious problems with this. First of all, I had to watch the video and write a reflection about watching myself teach. This is torture. This was torture. I wasn't feeling good about myself today. I looked fat, I didn't look awkward but remembered I'd felt that way, and I'm not as funny, clever, or quick as I want to be.

I ate school lunch today, found myself in the lunch line. Nothing good can come of this, I thought, and nothing did.

I worked one on two with a couple of ELL girls today, one who speaks Spanish and the other who speaks Arabic. They're darling. I have no idea if I'm helping them; this scares me.

Our seniors gave a disappointing presentation today, our juniors are preparing for a Chinese poetry project. Tomorrow our freshman have a test on A Separate Peace and I intend to give them a hearty pep talk beforehand. Really, I may even ask them to "take a knee" before the test. I'll call it efficacy.

The day was exhausting because I am too often tired. But as I was walking to my office, defeated, Ms. M. approached me, waved. I love Ms. M. She's brilliant, ridiculously hard-working. She doesn't sleep. She's absolutely the funniest teacher I've seen in action. She has grandchildren, she's scared of retiring. She said to me in the hall, she said to defeated me, Jean, we've been talking about you. I've heard such good things. You can't tell Mr. O I said this, but I have to tell you that he speaks so highly of you.

Stop it, I said. Thank you.

Really. Ms. M. said. I...we know that he's not the easiest guy to please and we said before he'd have a hard time letting go of his classes. But he thinks you're really smart and he can't believe how prepared you came into this.

You make me feel so special, I said. She said, See, and that sense of humor helps.

!!!!

Sometimes it's physically painful to get such kind compliments. But I'm so happy this pain came today. I'm so glad Ms. M. found me in the hall today after a long day, after I was questioning my work and my goals and my everything. I don't even care if it's not true. I don't care if Mr. O. was just trying to be nice and none of what he or she said is true. I'm going to walk a little taller tomorrow. And when the headache comes back, when the teacher nightmares start again, I'll feel a little less consumed. I'll learn to treat them as more of a side effect and less of a disease.

I came home and slept. I could feel the chill trying to settle in my bones, just like it did all of last winter. I have to rub my feet together to generate heat. This makes me warm, and sometimes tired enough to sleep.

And now it's time to run down the dirt road in the cold. Evening comes so early now. I can't believe it'll be an hour earlier in a couple of weeks.