Saturday, February 12, 2011

Overextended

Well, in case you couldn't tell, it's been quite a week ... the reasons being thus:

1.  We had an educational consultant at our school for the week.  I had the opportunity to work a lot with her, which was incredible and I got a ton out of it, but I lost my planning period in the process.

2.  Which is just as well since there is a study hall in my classroom during my planning period, so it's hard to get anything done then anyway because the kids in the study hall want to talk to me and I feel bad saying, "Leave me alone, this is my planning time".  Here is a picture, in fact, of me in the school bathroom taking pictures during my planning period ... it was an upside down kind of day ;)


3.  I had afternoon duty this week.  That means, "Stand in the lobby and keep the kids from killing each other for fifteen minutes."  It's not very fun.

4.  I had late meetings on Monday and Tuesday.  Monday wasn't too bad (got home around 6:30 p.m.), but Tuesday was pretty rough because I had nobody to watch Belle, so I had to leave work promptly after lunch duty, drive an hour to Belle's school, drive an hour back to my school, hope and pray that Belle behaved during the two hour meeting (she did ... she was wonderful, in fact, because one of my friends got her set up on a computer in the back of the library with headphones, so she played PBS Kids games), drive 45 minutes to pick Addie up, and drive forty minutes home (and yes, in case you needed to ask, it was snowing and the driving was terrible).

5.  The migraine from you-know-where started to settle in on Tuesday, probably a combination of stress and a pretty severe bout with insomnia that kept me from sleeping for three nights straight.  Anyway, I took a sick day on Wednesday and slept all day.  Felt much better after that : )

6. I'm a class advisor, and my students are doing a lot of fundraising.  This week we had a Valentine's Day carnation sale, but it meant that I had to spend my lunch time in the cafeteria with my students while they were selling flowers, so I lost my lunch (as well as my planning time) all week.  On a positive note, the flower sale was AMAZING ... we sold well over a hundred flowers, which was awesome (I work at a very small school).

7.  My group of students are putting on a dance tonight, so trying to get everything organized for that has been stressful.  My co-advisor is out on maternity leave, and I have to be honest, I totally took for granted all the things she usually does.  It is very stressful trying to do all this stuff on your own.

8.  I went out with the gang from work last night.  I am no longer 21, which is a fact I sometimes forget ... days of thoughtlessly downing Scorpion Bowls and shots of McGillicuddy and 151 need to be in the past.  Oh, man ... it was a lot of fun, though :-)

So anyway, I have been neglecting this blog because there just hasn't been enough time this week ... to breathe, never mind write.  I'm working hard on my meme, by the way ... I'm quite excited about it, actually :)

How do you handle those weeks when everything just seems to pile into a perfect storm of stress and commitment that make you feel like you should have gone out of your way, at some point in time, to learn how to juggle?

9 comments:

  1. Wine, my dear....and plenty of it!
    Jane x (typing whilst sipping)

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  2. Confronted by a week like yours what I do is grab my absolute most favorite books, maybe two or three of them. I read the sections that I can recite by heart anyway just to feel more like myself.

    Dunno, just me!

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  3. Stress sucks! With all the medical issues I faced (back-to-back-to-back), blogging was my saving grace.

    I hope the stress eases up for you soon!

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  4. I'm with Jane! Wine! lol! My migraine was food related - chocolate - sorted now.

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  5. 'If it lasts only a week, take the good memories'.

    As for those kind of weeks I do what I have to do and the rest can wait. At the end, I put my feet up, and slob out.

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  6. I'm a teacher, too. I've taught high school and now middle school, so I know what it's like. Good luck.

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  7. I'll reflect on this someday when I don't have one of those weeks :-( 50-50 splits suck big time.

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  8. I HATE afternoon duty. They make us do duty once a month (ours are for 20 minutes before school and 20 minutes after). Combine that with the wind whipping by faster than a speeding bullet, and you have one very disgruntled tutor!

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  9. My god, now you just gave ME a migraine reading all that -- ouch! :)

    How do I deal with a week like this? Typically, very poorly. What ends up happening is that I usually have to drop one or two things and deal with feeling guilty about it afterwards. You're good in that you actually got all the important things done.

    Kudos to you!

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