Back to School Chaos!

School started again yesterday. I fully expected to have a very calm transition into the school year, similar to what I had last year, when I was able to clean the house thoroughly and get everything in order. This year, though, the exact opposite happened. The day before school started, some construction workers knocked on my door at 8:00 am. I wasn't expecting them until another day, so I had to quickly jump out of bed and get dressed to meet them - no shower for me.

We're getting baseboards put in every room of our house. It's very exciting to think that all of the unseemly gaps between our floor and walls will finally be covered up. But this project (which I wanted to have done at the beginning of the month) has thrown our lives into disarray. Last night, instead of doing last-minute preparations for school, I spent the evening emptying out our closets and pulling all of the furniture to the middle of each room in the house. While I did that, J scrambled to put up some drywall patches in the basement, so there would be a place for the baseboards to go.

The day before school was filled with other bits of chaos as well. J bought a used car (which is happy and sad for me at the same time - I liked being a one-car family). The VW Golf was supposed to be ready about a week ago, but the dealership had some set-backs. The car was finished on Tuesday, at the same time that I was dealing with carpenters, taking Sam to a doctor's appointment, taking Sam to swimming lessons, going grocery shopping, and trying to pull everything together for school. We got the car picked up though, and everything worked out. It actually will be nice to have a car, because J can help to take Sam to preschool when I need to leave for work.

I hope that everything settles down soon. The baseboards were installed yesterday, and today a painter will begin to match the new boards with the color of our already-existing trim. Sam and I will try and stay out of the house for the next day or two, so we don't have to smell fumes all day long. I can't wait to put things back into the closets.

Oh, and did I mention that another adjunct professor suddenly quit her job the day before classes began? We have been scrambling to find a professor to fill the class that begins today. I teach another section of the same class, so I imagine that I will be meeting with the new adjunct and filling him/her in on the course outline.

Phew! And now, onward into the school year! Welcome to my 150 students! Welcome to my four classes! Welcome to my responsibilities as the supervisor for museum interns! This will be fun, even if it is a little hectic. I just hope that I don't feel as internally-jumbled as my office appears in that photo above.

UPDATE: The chaos continued throughout the rest of the week! Friday was pretty awful at school: the projector broke in my classroom and threw all of my lessons off. I had multiple issues with the temporary projector that was finally brought to my classroom, and I ended up having to teach half of two different class periods without images to show the students. It was a very stressful day, but luckily it all ended. The upstairs baseboards are finished too, so now we can maneuver around the house much better. I'm sure that things will get better from hereon out.