I'm home sick today. I've got either a slow-moving head-cold or that sinus infection that's been going around the 'net. I've been feeling crappy since Sunday, but although I didn't get to leave work early Monday, I did get to leave early yesterday. Stupid sinuses. Here's hoping a day propped in bed with movies and the computer help.
Ms. P is home sick as well. She's got the edges of my sickness, and she's depressed besides. I've finally gotten her to admit it, but now the psychiatrist isn't getting her in to see him ASAP like she needs to. Rather, his staff is not getting her in to see him ASAP. Soon I will declare this an emergency and call his cell phone. Leaving very depressed people to get more depressed is contraindicated.
So, you'll never believe my day at work on Monday. The ribbon-cutting/dedication of the new building was on Tuesday, so Monday was the day when we'd all run around doing random tasks. I knew that I'd end up spending my morning finishing and sending off the revised School Improvement Plan that was due because, like every high school in this city, we didn't make AYP last year. (I'm going to rant about the No Child Left Behind act soon, just you wait.) I'd been reminding our admin folks for weeks that they needed to get this in, but they sent me things to edit on Friday. *sigh* So I walk in knowing I'm going to be dealing with that.
But not minutes after I get there, our executive director flies in asking if he can assign a task to our grant writer. I ask him what it is. He says if he tells me, I'll say no. I insist he tells me. He has decided that what we need for the ribbon cutting (the following day) is to have our logo chalked on the lawn because, you know, we need more branding. I recognize that I'm not going to stop this by telling him he can't have the writer, but it turns out she's gone for her required TB test. This lands in my lap.
After calling athletic departments across town, I finally talk to a nice man who lets me know that 1) it's paint, not chalk; 2) it's special paint; 3) you need a stencil. He gives me the phone number of the company who makes their stencils. I call and ask how long they need. They tell me: a month.
Amid my editing tasks, I inform my ED that we cannot get a stencil in time. What if we can get someone to do it freehand, he asks, can I get the paint? Sure, but where are we going to get someone who will render our logo 40-feet wide freehand? He calls our architects, who have done masterful work alongside our contractors in getting this building feat, which should have taken at least 18-months and took 8, accomplished, and used his considerable charm. Sure enough, a poor lowly architect has now been assigned the job. I sigh and return to my editing.
Soon enough, I'm having back-and-forth conversations with the architect. I've found paint, it's at Home Depot. He doesn't have a car. Okay. I don't know if it's spray or can. We need stakes and 1000 feet of string. Okay. He asks casually if we're going to have students doing the painting. I tell him my ED thinks he's doing the painting. Oh no, he says, he has other things to do today. He can come lay it out, but someone else has to do the painting. I tell him I'll call the ED. I know what will happen next, and it does. The ED calls him back and tells him he's doing the painting, that the higher-ups know we've asked for the whole shebang. I finish my editing and send the thing off three minutes past deadline. I ask, hopefully, if we can make them get the supplies. My ED says I need to get the supplies. I demand the credit card, which he happily hands over.
I grab our grant writer, borrow a colleague's car because mine is full of leftover things we've extracted from R's house, and leave for our shopping excursion. We also need to stop at the office supply house for nametags, because aside from editing (which I only suspected), making name tags for the ribbon-cutting is my only non-negotiable task. We get the name tags and stop for a quick lunch at Wendy's. My boss calls us to tell us there was an article on our school in the city paper, and are we in the city? No, we're in the suburbs because that's where the box stores live. Can we swing back to the city to get a city-edition paper? We agree to try, rolling our eyes all the while since our school is in the city and the convenience store down the street likely has a copy.
We get to Home Depot. I've called ahead and checked and they have what I need, so when the guy at the paint counter says he doesn't know what I'm talking about, I very sweetly tell him someone in his department does. The lady in question comes up and shows us what we need. We can find three cans. Since I only have a square-foot estimation for the required paint, I don't know how many cans we need, but I know three isn't enough. Our helper is called off to returns, but promises to come back and climb ladders and find more. We call the architect and get him to convert his square-footage to linear feet, since each spray can will do 75 linear feet. He needs 17 cans for the outline, and another 24 to fill in the picture and the letters. We stand around and wait some more. Our girl finally comes back with the original paint guy, who digs and climbs and manages to come up with a total of 16 cans. Good enough to begin, we decide, and head out to find our other items.
Only no one can tell us where those other items--string, small metal stakes, measuring tape--live in the store. We go to Garden, inside and out. We go to hardware. In the midst of this we run into our paint man again, who gives us no good information but asks for our astrological signs and then reads our palms very badly. He attempts to begin numerology, but we refuse to divulge our birthdates by claiming to be sensitive females. The architect calls in a panic because we still aren't back and there's only four hours of daylight left. We find string and the tape measure. We ask after contractor stakes over and over and find nothing. We finally buy two 5# boxes of 4" nails. It's not perfect, but it'll have to do.
We race back to work, ignoring the newspaper issue. When we get there, our architect and his fellow architect are there, waiting in their office-people clothes, since they didn't anticipate coming to work today would involve spray paint. Our ED comes out to check progress; we tell him we need another 25 cans of this paint and he has to find someone else to do it because we cleaned out the store. He duly assigns the head contractor the job. I manage to make name tags and clean my office (since the ribbon-cutting will involve tours). When I finally leave, head pounding and chest tight, I am only half an hour early leaving and the two architects are hard at work gridding out the logo.
The next morning, before the ribbon-cutting, I get to see it. It looks very good, although not as dark on the grass as would be ideal. The ribbon-cutting goes incredibly well, our student tour guides run good times, and the speeches are inspired. As people are leaving, my colleague asks me how we're going to get it off. "We aren't," I reply. The water-soluble paint has to be ordered online--we had to get the non-water-soluble kind, although it is still designed not to kill the grass.
So we've now got a semi-permanent logo on our grass, and I got my palm read by an incompetent middle-aged spiritualist. It's no wonder I had to come home early yesterday.