Life Rafts and Tidal Waves

I worked registration the past two days, and it never ceases to amaze me how rude people can be to others over things that are nothing. I got "cussed at" more times than I can count because our district now requires two forms of proof for residency verification or because a student was on a list for old fees and could not therefore start registration until the proof of residency was shown or the fee was cleared. For this, people were willing to be obscene. I didn't do it. I didn't make the policy. I didn't even want to have to be the one to tell them, but they surely too it out on me. I hate that.

These were parents of juniors and seniors who have all had students at our school for years. That means that the process of registration is well-known to them, except of course for the new residency requirements. They know that getting through the entire process from Old Fees to Book Pick-Up and final form sign-off can take as long as two hours at peak times. However, every year, we have parents who come in and act as though they should be able to sail through in fifteen minutes. They act as though we have a personal vendetta against them and are trying to deprive them of their livelihood because we can't forward them to the front of a line of three hundred or so other people who have all been waiting in the heat just as they have. They get angry when we tell them that they have to be with their student to complete the forms, that they can't just kick their kid out of the car with a blank check and go. If it were the first time around, I could understand, but if your child has been with us three years.....

It's over for me now, thank God. I only work seniors and juniors. I leave the sophomores, who are coming in for the first time, and the new students and makeup day to cooler heads than my own. I need the rest of this last precious week to recover and rest up. Next week starts our staff development, and then we'll be back in harness for the long haul of our new year with all our new plans and designs in place. I'm excited to see how it goes and am hoping for a great good year.

One good thing from yesterday was seeing my friend. He'd been on a trip to see some of his girlfriend's family in California, and he brought me a gift. It was so sweet of him to think of me, and although I didn't really get to talk to him much in between the unending onslaught of people coming in the door to curse me, just seeing him and knowing that somebody in this world didn't wish me ill was a big boost. Since I've also been trying to wrangle with the insurance issues of getting someone down to look at the roof and my ceilings lately, I have been feeling very overwhelmed. It was like a little life raft put out there for me in very choppy seas. I needed it a lot, but then, he's good at that. It's nice how God works that out.

Well, I'm off to do as much nothing as I can for the rest of this afternoon. This is the last day of it, so I have to make it count.