Whew!

These first two days of the new school year have been hectic. I'm sipping my second glass of wine right now, so I feel nice and relaxed, but I'll need to go to bed extra early again tonight to keep up with the demands of this week. The district rolled out a new registration system this year, and it's an utter nightmare. A large chunk of our sizeable student body still doesn't have the registration process completely done, and enrollment is way up. Our classrooms are bursting at the seams. And the bus department....what a nightmare. I remember Ms. Moon talking about her grandsons being stuck on the bus for two hours on the afternoon of their first day of school. The same thing happened here yesterday. Some of the bus kids were still getting picked up at the school over an hour and a half after dismissal. Some of them didn't arrive home until after 6:00pm! We have almost a thousand students, and about half of them ride the bus.....so can you imagine how many frantic phone calls I took in the front office yesterday? I stayed almost 2 hours late to reassure parents that their kids were fine, just really late. And then this morning the pissed off parents started to call. I'll bet that altogether, between the bus fiasco, the registration problems, the requests for schedule changes, the new parent questions....I took several hundred phone calls over the last few days! I stayed late again today because there was so much left to do. It's been a lot of work.

I had some embarrassingly nice compliments from the principal and one of his assistants this afternoon, though. We were talking in Mr. Oates' office late this afternoon and he said something to the effect of: "Mrs. Barlow, you have one of the most stressful jobs in this school. You have to juggle demands and people asking you for things all day long, and you always keep a great attitude and go the extra mile. You deserve a raise, and I wish I could give you one. (Raises come from the district office, and I actually did get one this year). I appreciate you and I want you to know it." And then the assistant principal, Mrs. Frierson, starting talking about how much I do and how she knows she can count one me if she needs anything, and how I always smile and make the effort to be pleasant to everyone no matter what--I'm able to keep my composure. Well, after all these compliments, my head might have started to swell!!! Haha. But seriously, it feels so good to work somewhere a serious effort to do a good job is noticed. That's worth more than money, honestly.

Well, off to feed the dogs their supper (ours is still in the oven, but it's almost ready), take a short walk, watch some tv, and go to bed early. Tomorrow promises to be another busy, busy day. My apologies for being somewhat slack in commenting on your blogs right now--when the weekend arrives I hope to catch up with you all!

Have a great week.