Nightmares

It's that time of year.

I've got a bad case of the "back to school nightmares."

It's been an every night occurrence for the past month.

This morning, I woke up to a small anxiety attack due to yet another nightmare.

(by the way, thanks for those anxiety genes, mom. sureee love ya.)

I was sick to my stomach and literally sweating bullets.

There are one of five nightmares I can pretty much expect every night now:

1. the "I'm not prepared" nightmare: this one is probably the most frequent.  I'm working alone in my classroom when I hear the school bell ring.  Students start filing in and I suddenly realize that today is the first day of school. I look around my empty classroom and realize I am not prepared in the slightest. I start making things up on the fly and it's an absolute disaster. I absolutely HATE waking up to this nightmare.

2. the "I can't manage my classroom" nightmare: When I first started teaching, I was a little nervous about classroom management. I mean, c'mon--I'm 5'1", 100 pounds, and less than 5 years older than some of my students.  Not exactly the "authority figure" type.  I'm happy to report that I didn't have any major management issues on my first year.  I stuck with what my professors taught me in regards to classroom management, and I like to think that my students respected me. But in this nightmare--it's bad. Real bad.  A student is yelling at me, a student hits me, a student picks me up and spins me around the classroom (last night's nightmare!), a student gropes me, none of the students are listening to me...oh, it's horrible! And in each scenario, I stand there dumbfounded, not knowing what to do. Wake me up, wake me up!

3. the "I can't find my classroom" nightmare: a pretty self-explanatory nightmare, except there's a new plot twist each time. I'm guessing this nightmare is probably due to me being at a new school this next year.  I've had the typical "I can't find my classroom" nightmare where I walk from room to room ALL day not able to find my classroom.  But other times, it's been weirder than that.  The other night, my classroom was (apparently) in the parking lot of the school and I was looking everywhere for the whiteboard.  Students were jumping on picnic benches and other students were starting to drive away. I woke up to this particular dream being so upset that I got the "parking lot" classroom.  Until I realized--duh, kell, it was just a dream--you've got a normal classroom.

4. the "I didn't know summer ended" nightmare: ugh, when I wake up from this dream, I am forced to check the calendar on my phone to MAKE SURE it's still summer.

and finally:

5. the "I'm naked" nightmare: yep, it's happened.  More than once.  I've only been completely naked once.  Another time, I was only in underwear.  And yet another time, I was writing on the white board when I felt a slight breeze in the back.  My skirt had ripped and I wasn't wearing any underwear (good job, dream kelli!). That's a sure way to get my students coming back to class, right? ha.

I'm seriously getting tired of these nightmares (no pun intended). 

I'm ready for school to just START so that I don't have to wake up sweating any more.  

And I'm sure Tay is tired of hearing me explain the new nightmare each morning. 

Let's cross our fingers and toes and lungs and veins that tonight I will be nightmare free.

Deal? Deal.