Things have not been going quite as I had planned. In fact, if I were to plan how they could go awry Monday , today would have been pretty much bang on. Okay. I arrived at school at my usual time, went to grab a coffee but it wasn’t ready yet so I go down to my office and began my morning looking at paperwork that I had ignored yesterday. (that was my first mistake, looking at paperwork so early) I proceeded to go talk with some of the teachers, stopped in the hall to talk to a few students and then back to my office to look at email. My normal Tuesday morning ended. What do I find but a reply to my email about a meeting today that I figured was in the afternoon. Nope – 9:30. Location – an hour away. Time now – 8:35. I didn’t panic but I also didn’t get my cup of coffee.

For the  next 20 minutes, I’m dashing around trying to get someone to cover my supervision, cover my class, be acting-principal (never have figured that one out. How come someone else who takes my place is acting? What does that mean when I’m there?) Then there is the phone call home to make arrangements for hockey practice and a few other after school activities. By the time I leave town it’s now 9:10 and I’m driving in fog so thick you can cut with a knife.

Why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, it’s for the kids and I love my job and I have payments.

The meeting was ….. – it was about technology use in the division. The coffee, when I finally got there, was pretty good and lunch was great – lasagna. I figured that things were turning out not to bad and I was going to get home in time for hockey pick-up. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I made a fatal error at that moment. Something that usually only rookie principals make. Something that I should have remembered. It’s Tuesday. Go home. Nope, not me. Not today.

I went back to the school. For some reason I do this when I’ve been at a meeting out of town. Even though I kept telling myself to just go home and go in early tomorrow.

We had 7 new students register in school. One who will need a full-time aide and others with some learning difficulties. Teachers are going on breaks already and the substitutes aren’t really ready to come in yet. I have a request for semester 2 timetable for a distance ed class and, well, I’m not even close to being done. And to make things really interesting, my office is now the football equipment room and old computer dumping ground for the moment. It’s only Tuesday!!!

See, if I’d gone home, I wouldn’t have known any of this until Wednesday and you kind of expect this kind of stuff on a Wednesday. I mean, it’s the day when many things take place because everyone is finally fully awake and recovered from the weekend. People are finally realizing that the paperwork isn’t in or they’re missing a form. Parents feel that all kids need to be back at school because, well, it’s Wednesday and they were feeling okay this morning. (especially after they threw up. Really. They did.) Teachers are realizing you had said you’d do something and are reminding you that you said you’d do something. (Thank goodness that by Thursday afternoon they forget because neither of you can remember what it is you said you were going to do.) Kids have been aggravating one another for two days and someone is going to get it and you might have to figure out who got what and who was really aggravating whom (even though this has been going on for longer than they have been in school and will only end with, well, probably old age and death) but you still have to work through things to make sure that everyone knows that you actually did something this week.

But oh no. I figured I’d just drop by and see what went on during the day. Thus I began my Wednesday work today and I’m not really ready for it. My body and mind are still in Tuesday and what I’m needing to do is really in need of Wednesday thinking. But I’m here so I’d better do something besides write this post. Post writing doesn’t really have a day. You can write on any day it’s just the content will be different depending on the day. Like if this had been tomorrow, I would have written about it being a typical Wednesday with all that was going on and what had happened.

All this has really messed me up but, as I work through this, I realize that if I’m already doing Wednesday work that means that Friday can be partly Saturday so I can leave early and begin my weekend Friday at noon. Hey, that’s sounding not bad. Wait, I have to go to a basketball tournament with my boys team which will not only make it impossible to leave early Friday but I have to spend Saturday with students so it really won’t feel like a Saturday.  Now I’m really down. I don’t think even an Aero bar is going to get me over this. What was I thinking when I booked that? It was probably in early November when all those stupid tournament requests come out and you figure “Hey, that’s sounds good. What’s the worst that can happen? What, will Tuesday really become Wednesday?” and you laugh it off. Every year the same thing happens and yet I don’t remember. I think that when they took out my heart and my sense of humour (you have to have those removed to be an administrator. True story. Mine are in a jar on my desk so I can show the kids when they come in.) they also removed also done a bit of a nip and tuck on my longterm memory so that I only recall things after I’ve committed to them. (Probably why I sit on so many committees.)

I was blocking it out and not thinking about it but now I end up thinking about it all because my Tuesday ended up being a Wednesday.

Better get at planning semester 2 and figuring out where I’m going to put all this stuff stacked in my office. And to think, I’m the guy supposedly in charge around here. Can you imagine what Thursday must be like;)