FREAKING MONDAYS

Freaking Mondays are about to drive me mad.  I wake up and find myself still in Dumb Potter's Hell and that's enough to make any day go sour.  I am more than ready to be gone from here.

I admit that I was in a snit most of the day.  Not a good day to hassle me on any issue.  Worse, I am one of those people who smile no matter how crappy I feel and give no warning that I will not be usual pleasant me. 

I think there is a lot of emotional stuff at work in my head right now.  Trying to detach from my long term job and still be professional is difficult.  When I met with my prior coworker last week, she said it best.  "Aren't you sick of all the politics and personality flaws?"

Why yes... yes indeed I am.

One of the things I do is one on one in special education.  This time of year all the paper work has to be wrapped up and there is a lot of testing going on to measure the growth of the students.  You may think that this makes perfect sense and it does, but the groups that I have make it a real challenge of my patience.  All my groups have to be tested right now.  

My first group of the day were my 1st graders... seven of them.  Out of those 7, two are very obnoxious attention seekers and two others are constant chatters and arguers... otherwise known as "best friends forever".

So as I am trying to test them one at a time, I am supposed to have the others read out loud and keep track of their mistakes.  It is an exercise in frustration.  What a way to begin a day at 8:00 A.M.  Top that with an absurd lack of coffee because the pot was already drained...

Shudder!

One group after another.

That was what the first half of my day was like.  The rest was worse.  At the start of every year, I let the teachers pick their story times.  They pick them.  Suddenly, today everyone is unhappy with their story times and want to switch around.

Naturally, they choose times that I am committed or my lunch.  So I give up my lunch for the sake of getting it done and eat when I can manage to slip in a few moments to eat soup.  Then the middle school classes show up unannounced and of course need help finding things because despite years of careful training how to use the computerized library catalog, they cannot type in keywords that get them where they want to go.

Example: "armageddon" was entered as "the end of the world" and panic ensued in the heart of that young man.

My soup got cold.  I ate it anyway... eventually.

Then the classes that invaded my lunch arrived late.  One was still finishing when the next arrived... and teachers are really weird about "This is our time!"  It also left the students in the stacks unattended... so the shelves were trashed. The time issues snow-balled and made me late for my last group... which made that group's teacher mad.  I got the lecture about how special education time is guaranteed and my responsibility as a professional... blah, blah blah.

I truly wanted to say "Bite me!" but said 

"Sorry... unavoidable today but you can complain to D if you want".

D is the principal.  What are they going to do... fire me in the 11th hour?

I think not.  No one else has bothered to learn the library computer program.  Inventory is not yet completed.

Enter the next problem... inventory begins with a list of ALL books out.  The list was given to the secretary, as usual.  She's new and took one look at it... it lists all the books, their cost, etc.  She panicked and showed the boss how many dollars worth of books were "over-due."

She was wrong.  Only about a 5th of the books on the list are actually over-due by a few weeks.  A few over-dues are long term and in multiples... because of a split between family where one is afraid to get the books from the other.  These we will have to eat.  That is all part of the usual deal.  

In comes the boss with the list and wants to know why I have let so many books become "over due".  Fortunately, he is a calm and sane man.  He listened and understood that it is not an over due list, but a list of books that we need to get back.  I still have kids checking out books until this coming Friday.  The list will grow and shrink as books come back,go and come back again... and super shrink as parents freak out over the cost of replacing books that are out.  A miracle happens and books are found under beds, in toy boxes, etc.  They will even filter in on the very last day that I work... two days after we start holding report cards for ransom.  All normal.  All expected without panic, thank you very much!

I know that it will get better soon.  Tomorrow is another day.  I've got my eye on Friday and getting the heck out of here.  Nothing new there either.

Well the man is online and my blood pressure is finally dropping.  I think I will go and have a happy evening now.

I hope you all do the same.

But you know, it's a good thing they pay me.


By the way... Ronnie James Dio passed away yesterday.  He had stomach cancer.  Hard to believe he was 67.