What a day!!

This is copied/pasted from an email to Heather. I can't be bothered to type it all again!

Oh my goodness!

I promised more email so here it is. But it has been one of those hectic-as-all-get-out days.

It started off when I could not get stuff to print this morning. I got to school extra early to print out some worksheets for first period. And saved them to disk (I don't have a printer yet) and ran off to the library. Couldn't get on the library computers. The network was having a spasm. So I ran my floppy to Carol's office (head of the office staff). The office staff's computers were fine--but Carol's computer would not read my floppy. Damn! By now it was time for staff briefing, so I went to that. Immediately after, time for registration. All year 12s were in my room this morning, so when Stuart (fellow year 12 mentor) came in I begged him for a huge favor. He had a floppy in his coat pocket (he always has a floppy, a white board marker, his memory stick, a pen, and once even scissors in his jacket pocket. He's such a dork--a nice dork, but a dork). So I save the docs to his disk and he says he'll print them out during first period, as he has a free. Great!

As Registration is going on (it's 20 minutes long), two girls come to the door of my room and ask for Stuart. He goes out in the hall to talk with them. Meanwhile, I get a cover slip. Year 11. Damn! Have to cover a 3rd period English lesson with the worst year group in school.

Stuart comes back in. Louisa and I ask if everything is okay.

"Oh, yeah. My daughter was in an accident on the bus this morning."

(His 18-year-old).

"Oh my God, Stuart!!!"

"She's okay. Apparently she walked to work from there."

He's remarkably cool for someone whose daughter was in a freakin' bus accident!!

I told him not to worry about my documents--I'll get them another time. He has bigger things to worry about. He says, "She's okay, it's fine--I'll get them for you."

But he got cover for 1st period so I had to improvise my way through my first period class. At the beginning of second period I went to his room to get the disk and print the docs out on his computer. He co-teaches a class that period so he ran off to make copies in the staff room while his co-teacher got started and I printed my worksheets out.

I ran into him in the staff room a few minutes later.

"How's your daughter?"

"I don't know. I haven't heard from her. She's okay, though."

He tried to call but couldn't get hold of her.

Then Caroline, our brilliant but harrassed special needs person, dashes through, sees Stuart, grabs his arm and says, "I need a male in there!!" Uh-oh.

Turns out Charlie, a particularly charming year 9, is having a temper tantrum. He slammed one of the TAs with a door.

Lovely child. Yeah. This is the one who a few weeks ago, when Mandy, the aide, said, "Good morning, Charlie!" replied, "F*** off!"

Charming.

Break time came along and I had duty in the canteen, with lovely, funny Trevor and stinky, annoying Liam. I'm standing there drinking my tea when some food comse sailing by. It wasn't aimed at me but I was certainly in the crossfire.

A few minutes later Liam walks over to me and tells me the name of the kid who did it (I had not seen).

Double-damn. He's going to be in that stupid cover lesson I have next.

The cover lesson went without incident, fortunately.

So things started settling down. Then at the beginning of 5th period, I saw Stuart dashing towards the staff room with his coat and briefcase.

"Hey, how come YOU get to go home?"

"I have to go to casualty to get my daughter."

"Oh no! Is she okay?"

"Whip lash. She called in tears, not knowing what to do, where to go."

I told him that even though she's 18, she still needs Dad sometimes. He smiled and rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, great!" I said, "Hey, I was 24 when I had my car accident, and Dad had to drive 25 miles to pick me up at work!" He laughed, and was on his way.

What a day!

All in a day's work. Is it Friday yet?

Cheers,

Meg