I'm Not Outta Here!

The school year is over, you know. I've been telling you that all along. See? I was right.

Today I had a half-day of official work, but stayed until 3:15 to finish up some stuff. Stuff I didn't know I would be doing until Monday. Stuff that will take a minimum of 30 hours to do. I have about16 hours in it right now. So of course it's not finished. If I'd only known I was being added to this project before the next to next to last day of school, I could have worked on it on my plan time throughout the year.

My #1 son was a big help. Yesterday, just before we left, we stacked 99 books on top of my wooden cabinets. 99 textbooks on top of the cabinet, 99 books on the top...if one of those books should happen to fall...Mabel will sue me for massive head injuries and live in my Mansion. But the point I am trying to make in a roundabout way is that all that stacking was a waste of time and energy. This morning, when I opened my cabinet to clean it out and stow more stuff in it, I saw that the top board of the cabinet was sagging like a hammock. Tomorrow, I have to find a place for some of those books. The reason I put them up there, from where they magically appeared on my table and desks throughout the last several days of school, brought by little elves who prefer to carry heavy objects rather than sit in class, was because my old, old lunch buddy, even before Mr. K, told me, "You're not going to leave those books there, are you? The custodians will have to move them when they wax your floor." Sweet Gummi Mary! How dare I force the custodians to do their job! It's not that I'm trying to be mean. I even take the drawers out of my desk and stash them in the cabinets so they don't have to carry a heavy desk. I took out three big bags of trash to the giant overflowing dumpster this morning so they wouldn't have to. I give them a good reveiw when those evaluation thingies come out, even though my room doesn't get cleaned during deer season.

Anyhoo...I followed Goodie's advice, and stacked the books. She came in this morning, and said, "Wow, it looks different with those books stacked up there." Then I pointed to the swaybacked top of my cabinet. "Oooh," she said, "you'd better get those books off there. That's what happened to my cabinet shelves last summer." OK. Did I miss something? She told me to put my books up there, knowing that the wood could not hold them. Did she think I got the special kryptonite cabinets, or what? Sometimes she cracks me up.

I also sent my boy on a gift-giving mission to return books I've had for nigh on 6 years. Don't think I'm a scofflaw. I return library books on time (sorry about your John Grisham, Mabel. I still have him here at the Mansion). These were textbooks and core class stuff that I needed for my classes. Some teachers were glad to get them. Others, not so much. In fact, my son said one reacted with, "Oh, great," when he said he had put some books on the desk that his mom didn't need any more. He had a large, yellow metal cart. The kind you can haul a desk and a file cabinet and a TV on, and still have room for a compact car. It had metal wheels, too. He thought he was something with his little stacks of books and directions where to take them. Oh, and I also gave away a perfectly good VCR (with all its connecting cables, Mabel, and it wasn't to YOU, so there, for you little LOCKED UP episode with the rulers and scissors and glue). The VCR was my mom's old one, and I'd been saving it for my old buddy whose job I now have, but she never got a TV. And even an itty bitty child knows that a VCR is no good without a TV. Unless it's my #1 child, and he hooks it up to a computer monitor or something. I gave way 7 parts-of-speech posters. Laminated, by cracky! Too bad Meanie doesn't work in my building. She could have raked it in today.

And now I must go put in a few more hours of work on my 'project' before I go back to school tomorrow, on a non work day, and then take a little recess before returning tomorrow night for graduation.

The summer is almost over, you know.