It was payday yesterday.

And I do mean PAY DAY.

Not the candy bar.

Not the movie.

What I am referring to is that for the first time in my five years of tireless, 10-to-12-hour-a-day, going-in-on-Saturdays, love-those-disfunctional-ADD-preteens, bending-over-backwards, biweekly-tutoring-and-Park-Project-muraling, learning-to-speak-other-languages-and-dialects phone calls home to parents whose numbers may or may not have been disconnected, I have been rewarded.

With not one, but two raises. One that I had coming to me as a yearly salary increase. (Or it may just be bribery to keep teachers in the classroom so they don't have to be replaced by starry-eyed, post-college meat who won't last until November.)

The second raise came as a city-wide pay increase for teachers in AISD.

Both of them feel so, SO good. Like a validation. Like something I should be proud of. Like maybe I wouldn't be embarrassed for people to know how much I make, and that I might be able to pick up a nice little something for myself not related to school.