.5 (but who's counting...)

The last full day of the '07-'08 school year is behind me.  Tomorrow, I shall arise, perform my usual morning beautification of self, visit the new coffee maker that is programmed to have hot go-juice ready for me and take my cup out to the car.  I shall make the forty minute drive southward and put in a half day with the kiddies.  Then I shall wave good-bye in a manner befitting such a somber and sad occasion for their fragile self-esteem might not be able to take it if they thought I was happy to see them leave.

I firmly believe that their mooning us and waving certain forbidden fingers from the bus windows as they pull away is merely their way of covering the pain.  

Today is the longest day of the whole year, though.  The fifth graders, accompanied by the Cheerful Teaching Assistant, headed out to the local water slide in order that they might make good use of their fund-raising efforts.  The sixth graders, carefully monitored by Ms. Sheep, had their annual Field Day complete with relay races and giant buckets of water.

All this would have been quite nice had it not been for the frigid temperatures.  We barely squeaked into the mid-sixties.  And then it rained.  The weather-watchers and resident doom-criers even went so far at to predict lightening and hail.  I didn't see any of that, though.  It would have made for an interesting day...

It's kind of hard to believe that this time last week, we were edging into mercurial readings somewhere around one hundred.  I suppose it is a good thing that today was cooler.  I shudder to think what could have happened during the sack races under such conditions.  We surely would have experienced a "thinning of the herd" to heat stroke.  

I went into this day of low temps and high hilarity with a full three hours of sleep under my belt.  Despite my tiredness yesterday, I found my brain working in high gear come bedtime.  Every few years, I come up against a Last Day Of School that has come too soon.  I am not ready.  I end up spending the first few weeks of summer vacation trying to finish everything that I didn't do back when I was supposed to.  This is not one of those years...but that doesn't stop me from worrying that it might be.  How not sleeping over the whole thing is supposed to help, I don't know.  But that is apparently how one deals with it.  

It also doesn't seem to matter that everything is done.  And then some.  In fact, when my only "Must Monitor At All Times" sixth grader opted to take today off, I found myself with quite a bit of time on my hands.  I probably could have knit.  But I didn't bring any knitting.  There I was on the last full day of school, no children in my care for several hours and I was at a loss as to how to spend the time.  My greatest fear, of course, was that this would be discovered and that I might be assigned some horrible task like overseeing the Dance 'Til You Drop event or the Run In Circles Screaming For No Apparent Reason activity.  

I got lucky.  No one noticed my lack of students until things were just about over for the morning.  All I had to do at that point was wander around outside carrying a whistle and everyone just took it for granted that I was Very Busy.  The trick is to assume a stern expression and look very concerned by everything you see.  When you stand in one place, you must make sure that your arms are crossed.  Sometimes you should nod approvingly.  They won't even notice that your whistle doesn't work...

I like to think I pulled off a very successful Last Full Day Of School today.  Tomorrow, I'm going to toss the knitting into the bag just in case the Real Last Day That Is Only A Half Day proves to be as easy.

I fail to see how that level of confidence could backfire on me...

SA