And I thought I was tired!

As you learned yesterday, today was the first day of school. I am officially exhausted. We had no breaks today (despite the fact that we were assured that our prep schedule would be emailed to us by this morning...ha!). I even had to eat lunch with my kids (as well as guess what time we even HAVE lunch) because my school can't manage to get it together enough to get gather enough people to supervise the lunchroom. Whatever...my school's disorganization is a whole different entry (and perhaps a whole different blog)!

All teachers know that the first day of school is more annoying than anything. The kids don't know what's what yet, so you have to explain absolutely EVERYTHING, from how to line up without causing injury, to how to pass papers down a row so that everybody gets exactly one, to how to walk in the hallway without alerting the entire building that you're there. These are probably things that civilians take for granted that people know how to do. But people only know how to do these things because their fourth grade teacher taught them to do so. It is no fun teaching this mundane stuff. It seems simple enough, but nine year-olds want to test how you're going to react when they start walking down the hall flapping their arms. Like I said, NO FUN! (Well, except for them. Flapping your arms while walking IS fun! Try it tomorrow at work!)

After school, even though I was VERY tired, I had to go to the main office downtown to hand in some paperwork so I can move up the payscale now that I've finished my Master's Degree. I knew going on the first day of school was going to suuuuck because about a gazillion new-hires were going to be there getting their paperwork submitted, their fingerprints and id photos taken, and generally running through the series of flaming hoops the Board makes us all run through. I finally found the building, which has oh so conveniently moved to the west side of the city, and joined the line in which I was probably 20th. The line barely seemed to be moving at all even though it had a sign that said "Express Drop Off." Twenty minutes later, I'm about halfway through the line and feeling even more tired than I was only 20 minutes ago. I was so tired that I wished that I could sleep standing up and take a little cat nap. At this point I hear deep breathing behind me. I turn around and see that the guy behind me IS asleep standing up!!! His eyes were closed, his chin was to his chest, he was slightly swaying back and forth, and he was SLEEPING! Poor guy. He looked like a new-hire and with this being the first day of school, I'm sure he had a hell of a day.