Back To School

What a week.

With Ainsley starting school on Monday, and me starting Wednesday, it's been a rough five days. Some funny things have happened, and I have been blogging inside my own head all week, but when dinner is over and the kid's in bed and I finally have a few minutes to relax, I simply have not had the energy to put the thoughts on digital paper. One night this week, we put a very tired Ainsley in bed at 7:30 and Jason and I turned in at 8:30. I didn't think I would ever go to bed that early until I was 90 and in a home. But that's the first week of school for you.

I've been in a bad place all week; before school ever started I felt overwhelmed and felt like I had taken on too much. Then once my new crop of library students came in, and I started their week-long "boot camp" to get them ready to help me run this place, and found myself repeating the same script 45 minutes a period six times a day, I lost my will to live. Just a little.

At a meeting I had last week, a colleague started to complain about one of the many things there are to complain about in our economy-bitten schools this year. The person running the meeting advised her that things are going to seem dark but that we all need to put a positive spin on everything, including, apparently, our complaints.

So in that spirit of zen-like (or propaganda-like, take your pick) rethinking about bad situations, I am going to rephrase my own complaints about the first week of school in the form of positive speech. Will it make me feel better? Probably not, but that's what the beer I will pop open at 6pm is for.


Getting up at 5am every day is a great cure for insomnia!

I had too much free time this summer, anyway. I no longer have the ugly specter of leisurely boredom to worry about.

Getting chewed out by a colleague in front of your 1st period students during the first five minutes of the first day of school for something that's not even your fault just shows those students that working in a library is a thankless job that involves working with a hard-to-please public. It's a good thing that this is the first library lesson they got. Really. It is.

Being able to prepare a nice lunch for me and Ainsley in my own kitchen was contributing to some weight gain; inhaling a cold sandwich that has gotten soggy from being in plastic all day during my 20-minute lunch is much more the American way. It will insure that I fit in with all those friends of mine who work in the "real world."

Having a child not of the "morning person" persuasion allows for some mother/daughter bonding in the form of being cranky over our cereal together. It's good practice for when she's a teenager and acts like that all the time.


Your turn. Take a complaint you currently have about your life and spin it. Turn that frown upside down. It's cheaper than therapy, and almost as ineffective.