How to ruin Lint Monkey's day

Okay okay, more details about why yesterday sucked. I intend to whine for a few paragraphs, rant for a few more, and then start saying, "Well at least such and such is going right." So if you don't want to hear it, then pretend I'm writing about the dangers of electric nose-pickers. Laugh a few times, for good measure. There you go.

I have to admit, work yesterday was pretty good. No one got mad about anything, nothing was trashed, and generally, a good time was had by all two of us that worked. Then I went home.

I'd been trying to register for classes for the last several days. BYU redid their website... again... so it's hard to navigate and doesn't tell me when I'm allowed to register for fall classes. But I thought it was weird that when I tried to register, instead of popping up a message that said "You're not yet allowed to register for classes," it said, "You're not eligible for that class," no matter what class I tried to add.

So after work yesterday, I called up the registration office and asked about it. At first, the guy couldn't find my name in the computer. Then he said, "Oh, I know what happened. When did you last attend this school?"

"Winter 2007."

"That's it. You've been gone for more than one semester, so you've been removed from the school. You'll have to reapply as a former student. I think the registration deadline is close--you may want to check that."

So I started to apply as a former student. Apparently, now I have to go back and get another ecclesiastical endorsement because they threw away the one I got a month or two ago because I "wasn't a student." Furthermore... it's too late to apply for fall semester. The registration deadline was March 1st.

Crap. Crap crap crappity crappity crap crappit. Crap.

Crap.

So I don't know if I can go to school this fall after all. I guess I'll try to apply anyway. It will take like a month to get the stupid paperwork and wait for it to get there and wait for the school to send me a letter saying, "Congratulations! You have been put on the wait list for this fall semester!" and I won't even know if I can go to school at all until freaking August or September.

So that kind of put me in a glum mood. Then I had to give Kamryn a piano lesson. We didn't touch the piano at all. I drew up some quarter notes and half notes up on the board and asked her to write out the rhythm. She wrote it perfectly and clapped it perfectly. I praised her and then wrote out one more rhythm and asked her to do the same thing.

She couldn't do it. She could clap it once it was written right, but she couldn't write it out right and she couldn't clap it without writing it out. No matter how I explained it, I couldn't get her to understand it. I had her write it out, helping her through each step, then erased it, asked her to do it again, and had to help her through each step again. The fourth time, I let her do it wrong, then corrected her, explained why it was wrong, then tried it again. She couldn't do it.

She also couldn't pay attention. She kept wanting to draw pictures and tell me how fast she could run and make tapping noises with the pen. When I asked her to clap the rhythm, she started stomping or slapping the board instead of clapping. When it got to the point that she refused to do anything I asked her to, I decided the lesson was as good as over. Which was fine, it had been over half an hour anyway, even though we had made exactly no progress.

When her mom came back and asked how Kamryn's lesson had gone, I explained that Kamryn was still struggling with counting out rhythm. "That doesn't make sense," frowned Cindy. "We worked on that this week. She knows it! Hey Kamryn, how many beats does a half note get?"

"Two."

"How many beats does a quarter note get?"

"One."

"Yeah, she knows that," I agreed. "But watch this." I drew the rhythm on the board again. "Kamryn, can you write out the rhythm here?" I asked her.

Kamryn went up to the board and wrote out the rhythm. Perfectly.

".....How about this one?" I wrote up a different rhythm. Again, she took the pen and wrote the rhythm. Perfectly.

I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and yell, "WHY THE HECK COULDN'T YOU DO THAT TWENTY MINUTES AGO???" Instead, I took a few deep breaths and then asked her the question... calmly.

"I didn't think of it," she said, and went back to drawing her picture of a bunny.

So I feel like a real failure as a piano teacher. Yeah, I know, sure, you're all going to start telling me what I was doing wrong. I wasn't making the lesson exciting enough. I wasn't dumbing it down enough. I spent too much time trying to work on one thing instead of keeping it interesting. You know what? I just suck at teaching small kids.

Then Cassidy showed up for her lesson. In fact, she was 45 minutes late. Again. Apparently, her mom thought the lesson was at 7:00, not 6:30, so she thought she was only 15 minutes late. Still, 15 minutes late for a half hour piano lesson is quite a bit. It's like showing up to work halfway through lunch and saying "Oops, sorry, I thought work started at ten." But fine, whatever, I didn't really have anything pressing to do anyway. I wanted to go home because I felt like a loser, first for not realizing I'd have to reapply for school, and second for wasting Kamryn's piano lesson. But I decided to do the responsible thing and stick around.

"So Cassidy, remember what we learned last week?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good! What did we learn?"

"Um... um... um..."

"How many beats does a quarter note have?"

"Four?"

I shook my head.

"Two?"

No.

"One?"

Sigh. "Very good...."

So we spent a little over half of Cassidy's lesson re-learning everything I taught her last week. She doesn't have a book, so I'm kind of writing music for her and teaching her my own way. Apparently, I'm doing a bad job of it. I had her look at one measure of music. Four quarter notes, E, D, C, E. "Can you play just this measure?"

"Yes."

"Okay, go ahead. Don't worry if you're slow or make mistakes at first."

"Okay. Um... that one's a... an F? No... D?"

"Is that a line or a space?"

"Oh, it's on a line. Um... um... oh, E!"

"Good!"

She plunked the E. "Okay... that one... um... it's... an F? No... um... um... E?"

You get the idea. She did that for every note. When she finished the four notes, I said, "Good job! Very good. Okay, think you can do it again? Same four notes."

"Okay! Let's see... um... that's... um... that's an F? No wait, a D!"

She couldn't remember four notes. We went over it half a dozen times, and every time, she struggled to find each note individually. Finally, I dragged her back over to the board and drew a staff, had her name the lines and spaces, and practiced drawing notes (C-G) and having her name them. I don't feel like we got a lot done.

Her parents didn't come to pick her up until 8:00. I tried really really really hard not to let my frustration show. Especially since most of my frustration was just left over from school and Kamryn's lesson.

When I finally got home from the piano lessons, I noticed I had a message on my phone. It was a message from Mom, telling me a friend of the family had died.

That about did it. That's where I decided, "That's it. Screw everything. I quit. I'm dropping out of school, moving to the far north where nobody ever goes, locking myself up in a hole in the ground, and never coming back. ...Until then, I need to slaughter massive amounts of low-level monsters. I'm reactivating my WoW account!" Some people have comfort foods. Some people cry on other people's shoulders. I play video games and kill things. Only not anymore because I wanted to be a good girl and quit so I could teach children how to not know how many beats a freaking quarter note has and so I could try to get into a school that seems bound and determined to not let me in. (It's obviously a sign that I shouldn't go back to school after all.)

So I started up WoW, but Blizzard released a new patch since I quit, and I couldn't play until I downloaded the patch. "Downloading patch. Estimated download time: 4 hours."

Four hours.

....I quit. And no, I didn't end up reactivating my account after all. By the time the stupid patch finished downloading, it was late, and my frustration had started to die down a little. Then I read the patch notes and the frustration sprang back to life but was directed at WoW instead. "Removed these elites. Made this easier. These monsters have had their hit points massively reduced. These bosses drop even more gold. These bosses drop more loot. The drop rate on these items is significantly higher. You can now make 600 gold a day off of daily quests instead of 200. This is easier, that is easier." Screw that. I don't play games so they can get easier as I go--they're supposed to get harder and more challenging as you get better at it. Next time I go into a fit of rage, I'm driving to Anchorage and buying a new MMO. Maybe Lord of the Rings Online. Or Aion, if it's out. I would consider getting Warhammer Online except it has too much PvP for me.

Better yet, I'll just play Fable so I can kick chickens and beat my wife. Ha. That was a funny game. Yeah, I know. That's horrible. A game where you beat your wife. Well, you're not generally supposed to. You just kind of can if you want. I only did because I wanted to see if you could do it. And then I felt bad and gave her diamonds and flowers until she forgave me.

...So anyway... That's why I was bummed yesterday. The end.