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Thursday 4 December 2008

Celebration time.

I’m celebrating today. For the past eight weeks I’ve been under pressure (mostly of my own making) at work. Now it’s over and I’m having a lovely day off.

Every year for the past 10 years I’ve attended ‘Presentation Night’ at school, watched the prizes being given out in faultless order, seen the whole thing proceed like clockwork, without giving any thought to how that happened. This year I found out how it happened. The library assistants and admin staff had worked their butts off for the past term making sure it did.

We’ve been sorting books, putting them in order, checking lists, double-checking lists and ironing out every last possible glitch for weeks now. To make it worse, I’ve had to work full-time most weeks because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control and without the help of the other (experienced) assistant most of that time. Never having done all this organisation before, I was panicking a bit for a while. But the staff at school are a great bunch and anyone who’d ever had anything to do with it before offered help whenever I needed it. Though I sometimes felt like I was driving without a licence, I was never left to feel like I was in it alone.

In the end everything went just as smoothly as always and the best thing was that I was so busy on the night that I didn’t have time to get teary over Eldest being amongst the ‘Graduates’ (the school only goes to Year 10). He also got a prize for Digital Media –ie.computing. And Dynamo was in the choir singing all those inspiring songs that they sing at these affairs. I know if I’d been sitting in the audience I’d have been bawling half the night, but I only got teary when I’d finished handing all the graduate certificates to the Principal to present and moved round to the front to see them all lined up. Just writing about it now makes me teary. It only feels like last week they were all starting Pre-Primary. Big sook, I am.

Anyway, I celebrated the fact that the pressure’s off and the fact that I just got a pay cheque for the illustrating I did, by buying myself a new guitar. Playing the guitar is something else I used to do a lot and haven’t done for years. I’m going to enjoy building calluses on my fingers again. It’s a beautiful guitar, but I’ve not brought it home yet. It’s my Christmas present to me...and as I haven’t got any presents for anyone else yet, I thought I’d better not bring it home or I’d spend all my time playing and not get around to doing my Christmas shopping. There’s a certain relish in the anticipation!

3 comments:

Brenda said...

Congrats on things going smoothly for Presentation Night and for getting paid (that is always nice...grin) and for the new guitar!

As much as I love most of the presents Hubs has gotten me over these many years...the gifts to myself have been some of my favorites...grin...

C.R. Evers said...

Good for you! YOu go girl! Enjoy your gift and your time to relax!

:0)

Kate said...

Thanks, Christy!

Brenda, my husband does sometimes surprise me with the thoughtfulness of his gift, but usually it's exactly what I've suggested anyway - so I may as well buy my own.