since last

Thursday – parent night in my part of the school, parent night in GMB’s part of the school
Therefore, scrambled home to nurse and play, left Beck with my sister, scrambled back to school to set up table of info on library and greet parents and chat and answer questions, scrambled out of there over to the high school to attend parent night with Wes for GMB. Beck had gone to sleep but woke up one hour later, just in time for me to get home and nurse him back to sleep. Hard, hard night, very little sleep.

Friday – can be summed up by this email I sent to Wes midmorning: "The assembly could only have gone worse if an earthquake had caused a gaping chasm to open up in the middle of the gym and a sea monster had come out of the chasm and eaten all the small children."

First thing in the morning was the assembly that Shadow Pregnancy (anyone just joining us? that means my co-worker with whom I work closely and whose baby was born on the due date of my ill-fated pregnancy) and I have to do each year. The 5th grade had a big activity going on in the gym before the assembly. Which meant no time to set up or test things out. Which meant that the first Kindergarten students were already filing in as we realized that the laptop wouldn’t work with the fancy new projector setup. Scrambled to get another projector, a cart, a boombox only to find that the laptop had suddenly just stopped allowing us to login. The whole lower school was there including administrators and some parents. Tech goddess woman did not give up on us and got another laptop and I had most of what we needed saved on my keychain flash drive and the show went on. But only after our director stalled the assembly for almost 20 minutes by talking about… what? Papyrus? The industrial revolution? No idea how he did it. It was miraculous. The assembly was a success in the end (even the first grader who dissolved into tears when faced with the microphone for her booktalk eventually came around and delivered a tear-streaked but brave book recommendation) but it was nearly an hour of some major high adrenaline and serious stress. For the rest of the day it felt like there was no blood in my legs and I might pass out. The only assembly worse than this one was the last one I was asked to give at my Former Place of Work, where the computer wouldn’t work and I had to give up and my boss made me feel like the biggest idiot on the planet and yelled at me to such a degree that I went crazy and left the job.

And then my stepmother and Wes’ father were in town all weekend (not together – very, very, very separate, actually, so Wes and I saw very little of each other) and there were dinners and fanciness and much shopping for pants and some excellent fun and even less sleep than usual and not much fun time at all spent with my darling baby. So now the idea of going to work tomorrow feels hideous.

Fortunately, I have Tuesday off. Of course, I will be spending it driving GMB to a college interview. But baby will be along for the ride. So there’s that.

I hope that now that last week is over, my blog might get interesting again. Parent night and this assembly are the sole focus of my first month of school and now that they are done, life may be a bit easier. Maybe.