Thoughts on Bladders, Boas, (year)Books, and Bright Sides

Two weeks from today I will be back in school, surrounded by nervous seventh graders and excited eighth graders, wondering when on earth I am going to have time to go to the bathroom. I can feel my bladder tingling in anticipation already.

Registration starts tomorrow, so I have spent the last two days making my classroom beautiful. I already have a post about that brewing, but here is a little sneak peak of the design-on-a-dime-on-crack-ed-ness that is my classroom.

Last summer the custodians found this great old podium for me and I spent the rest of the year "dressing it up" to fit various seasonal themes. The kids seemed to enjoy it, so I decided to continue the tradition this year. This is how the podium looked yesterday morning... ...and this is how it looks now. I decided to go with a back-to-school theme: Feather boas in our school colors and bobcat prints that match the boarder on my bulletin board.
With the start of school so close, I would hate for all of you to think that I have spent all of my time decorating when I could have been lesson planning, running copies, and doing other productive teacher related activities. Let me just state now for the record that I haven't just been decorating. Of course, I haven't been doing any of those productive things either. I have also been stressing out.

On the last day of this past school year, I was recruited to be this year's yearbook advisor. I was pretty excited because I have yearbook experience (Editor of THE SPUD my senior year[insert your own corny Idaho joke here]) and 10 out of the 12 kids who had been selected as staffers were all from my amazing honors class. Times have changed since my yearbook days...now everything is done online. Point and shoot, click and save. Pretty simple, right? Here are the last two yearbooks...
The yearbooks have been so amazing the past two years that I just couldn't resist buying one... especially since I so HIGHLY approve of the student's choice for favorite teachers those years.
(Note to self: It would probably be a good idea to cut back on feather boa purchases and start saving to buy a scanner!!!)
Pretty cool, right? So you can imagine how good I felt when I went in to meet with the old advisor to pick up some of the yearbook stuff. This is me thinking, "What a lovely little binder. Being yearbook advisor is going to be such a fun, low-stress, positive experience!"

And this is me thinking, "Oh, there's more? Well, that's cool. I can handle this. After all, I spent all of high school and most of college working under the pressure of publication deadlines. No biggie."
And this is me thinking, "Ok, so maybe this is going to be a little more stress than I anticipated. Oh, what's that? I get to work with the yearbook staff during my A-day prep hour so I only get to have actual preparation time once every two days? Hummm...Well at least I will have 12 honors kids as staffers to do most of the grunt work...."
And this is me thinking..."Ahhhhh!!!!! What do you mean registration starts tomorrow and there are only two kids who actually have yearbook as part of their schedule?!?!? "

I guess a tingly bladder is going to be the least of my problems. Does that count as looking on the bright side?