September 14th - Back to school for teachers

So far, so good.

Seriously, not feeling too bad at all. Little stiff, right knee hurts sometimes...weird things happen to your joints...and of course if guilt and spending time with Bobby & Max weren't factors, I'd have been in bed at 8:00. But 2 days down and still feeling human.
And I think at LEAST yesterday was way harder than an average school day.

Got in at 8 both days. Yesterday I went to the office and had the secretary ask a custodian to help me carry stuff out of my car...heavy stuff. I went down to my room and found it QUITE a mess. I'd never say anything, and I even hate to think it, because I know how crazy busy all the custodial staff have been this summer, trying to get the school through the construction and ready for kids on Monday. But there's been a lot of 'things' these past 2 days that make you want to smack your head on the wall and ask "WWWWHHHHHHHHYYYYY?"
Like, if I was going to come back in the fall to find my room a wasteland of randomly stacked chairs, desks, crap, and more crap, why was I instructed several times to leave a detailed room map with every single piece of furniture illustrated and accounted for? (And in neat little rows, on the damn map. In reality, it looks like someone decided to make a fort and quit halfway through.)
When we had the water damage, I said "PLEASE let me come in and go through the stuff. You can't just throw it all out. I don't even know what's IN that closet that got wet. PLEASE call me and let me come in." Do they call me? No. Do I bug my principal about it several times? Of course. I come in, and all the stuff that was in those wet cabinets is gone. Later in the day, I find out that it's boxed up in the greenhouse out back. Greaaaat. Yeah, some custodian threw the WET stuff in boxes with the dry stuff (and the stuff that had never been wet to begin with, with was 90% of it) and of course that means a big box of ICK. So half the stuff that I had to throw away today wouldn't have need to be thrown away, but for some idiot's throwing it - crunching it - into a wet box full of wet stuff.

So I spent two days putting away the boxes that I'd packed up in June. I didn't have a teacher desk in my room until later yesterday - don't know why - and when I finally got one (through the magic of asking every other person I saw if they'd seen it), the one they delivered to me wasn't mine. It was full of one of the middle school art teacher's stuff. And he's a messy guy, apparently. But he's not even at my school till next semester. So I cleaned out a desk full of pencil shavings, ink, and exacto knife heads. Boxes up his stuff, and away I went.

Everything's mostly set up. Mostly. I don't have any decorations up. BUT they're sorted out.
I rescued them from a trash cart that a custodian was pushing down the hall. He decided that since somebody had shoved them all in a large black trash bag after the flood, they were trash. Along with 4 of my (not damaged) xylophones. Trash. Yeah, I freaked. Throwing away my non-damaged, very expensive instruments??? It wasn't HIS fault, somebody put the stuff in trash bags and hid it in the greenhouse. But the important thing is that I didn't have to kill any custodians. I mean, that I got the stuff back.

The teacher in the next room had a lot of stuff in one of the closets that got flooded. I had a little bit of my stuff in that closet, mostly xylos and paper decorations, and then my entire ROOM had a large puddle in it, the soffit had to be replaced, and my cabinets got flooded. (Hence the bagging and almost trashing of my stuff.) So of course SHE'S the one bitching and moaning and being the squeaky wheel that gets the dozens of people helping her do her job...seriously, I'm the pregnant one, and I'm in there working my ass off on my own, and she's got half a dozen people scrubbing down cabinets and sorting through stuff. Me, I gotta do that myself. We all do. Except whiney-woman. Oh, and she was demanding mold and air-quality tests and repainting in our storage room. She's coming over every hour telling me that I have to throw away everything that was anywhere near anything, since there's a possibility that it could have gotten damp and therefore, moldy. Um, mold can be killed. Paper dries out and then you spray Lysol. My fingers still smell like Lysol. Get a grip. At one point the head custodian wanted to lock storage room between her room and my room up, so they could work, paint, vacuum, without worrying about dust getting into our rooms or people coming through, since our rooms were hoppin', it seemed. So of course the other teacher accuses him of trying to lock her out so she can't see what he's doing, trying to conceal a major deadly mold problem, etc.

And I'm like, "Dude, D, if you so desperately need something to occupy your mind and time, I can GIVE YOU something to do. I got hours of work ahead of me, and none of them involve harassing guys who have carpet to lay somewhere else in the building."

Eventually all the examining construction company people, custodians, and administrators that this woman stirred up started walking through MY room to get into the "invested" storage room, to avoid this teacher's rants. I found it quite amusing. I got a lot of help from big guys offering to carry boxes around for me, always a plus when you're a wussy preggy chick.

So I've got a whole day free to work tomorrow - joy - and Bob's coming in on Saturday to help me hang the high stuff. Yeah, I have these 3 gigantic above-head-level bulletin boards that are naked and screaming for paper and cute musicy stuff, and I don't even think I could reach them on a ladder if I WAS allowed up on one.

If I keep working and don't get wrapped up in the computer teacher and gym teacher's run to the dollar store to get "school supplies" which will inevitably involve lunch, Wawa, a pizza place, and somewhere else distracting, I should be able to get everything done on time for the kiddies on Monday. Hopefully. We'll see. They've already tagged me. Their rooms weren't torn apart and flooded, they've got the time.

Bed time. Need sleep. After all, I have to go in tomorrow and fight the evil deadly mold that's infested my xylophones. Since we're all going to get sick and die, and it's a huge conspiracy. Dumbass...