A day in the life

I don't want to downplay the Tobe, but I've GOT to recount my day.

8:30 am arrive at work and begin looking over the day:
100 children
7 teachers
2 managers (me and a part-timer)
6 trial classes coming in (3 scheduled to arrive between 9 and 9:15)

8:45 am conduct a quick start of the day meeting with the team, and run my assistant through how to welcome and follow up with trial classes.

9:00 am enter trial class #1, Elle, 3 yrs old clinging to her mother's leg. I walk them down to the Spanish classroom, the teacher says, "hola," and Elle bursts into tears. Mom thinks she'll stop crying faster if she leaves the room, so I sit with Elle sobbing and screaming on my lap while the teacher teaches and the other children arrive.

9:15 am Bella arrives to class and immediately bursts into tears because Elle is crying. Elle's mom comes back in to sit with Elle and I sit with Bella.

9:20 am a mother of an Italian student walks into the Spanish room looking for the bathroom. (the downstairs bathroom is accesible only by walking through this classroom, so we typically don't use it) I ask her if the bathroom upstairs is in use. She tells me there's an out of order sign on it.
"Great," I think (or say, come to think of it).
I extract Bella from my lap, give the teacher a the-show-must-go-on look, and head back upstairs to find out what's wrong with the toilet.

9:25 am after serious plunging I manage to fix the toilet

9:30 am teachers go into panic mode because our copy machine is out of toner

9:45 am teachers panic because the Italian poster is missing!

9:50 am resolve to use the Spanish one since the 3 and 4 year olds can't read anyway. I call the education team to order another poster for delivery tomorrow.

10:00 am UPS man arrives with our toner!

10:05 am copy machine is back in the game
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And they wonder why we have so much trouble getting to follow up calls with inquiring families.
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Cut to the afternoon
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5:00 pm get bored for the first time EVER at work because the only things left on the to-do list are things I don't want to do.

5:45 pm scoot out the door to make it to an interview on time

6:30-8:30 pm sweat through a LONG group interview full of role playing and case studies surrounding being responsible for groups of high school students (birth control and diary entries included). I begin questioning whether I really want to do this...

9:00 pm arrive home, begin dinner, walk into the corner of the open microwave door that is just perfectly at forehead level. That's gonna leave a mark.

And with all of that under my belt, I'm going to bed to get ready to start over tomorrow.

Glad you're here, Tobin. Happy birthday. Maybe someday your crazy Aunt Cait will teach you a thing or two about how to remain calm in times of trial. Can't wait.