Oh people, I am wiped today. I cancelled my morning training session because I was just too tired for it, and when Kevin, who had slept badly himself, asked if I could give him a ride in to campus, I kind of wanted to cry. (I gave him a ride to the train, because I am not heartless, but that was as much as I could manage.)
Here’s the problem with school board meetings: they’re too long, and they go too late (especially given that I am a lark and not an owl).
If my normal day is 6 a.m. – 10 p.m., and I go to a 6:30 p.m. school board meeting, which is frequently very energizing, and it ends at 10 (like last night’s, and like many of them, some of which go later), then I am generally so buzzed by the discussion, that even if I come home immediately and do all my normal soothe-and-go-to-bed things (snack, bath, meds, read on the Kindle), I often still can’t sleep until midnight or 1.
It’s like flying across the country and dealing with jet lag, but it happens every two weeks.
And the worst part is, I can’t really complain too much, because:
a) the material is meaty and substantial and important and everyone is trying hard to trim the time, but there’s only so much you can trim it before you start cutting into important matters
b) our questions and comments from board members and from staff are substantive and interesting — I feel very privileged to be serving in a community with such dedicated and hard-working people, who are bringing their intellect and passion and compassion and just their whole selves to these school board meetings — we recently had a governance session with someone from the state reviewing how we were doing, and she was a little shocked, I think, that our meetings ran more than 2 hours, but this is just Oak Park, folks, this is what you get when you live in a town like this…
b) I am probably currently the worst offender, in terms of asking questions and making comments that eat up time and make the meeting go later. (Some of that will improve as I continue on the board — I remember this from the library board, that I had a ton of questions in the first year, when I was learning the ropes, but as I went on, I had far fewer, because I already understood how many aspects of the library worked.)
So, anyway, the upshot of all that is that I’m very tired today, and cranky, and I don’t want to go in to teach, but I will go in, and it will be fine, because I love teaching once I’m in the room (see ‘energizing discussion’, above), but am giving myself permission to do nothing else today. It snowed, so it’s not a good day to garden anyway, not until the snow melts. I might cook a little, or sew, or crochet, but I don’t have to do any of it, so there. I will likely watch lots of British murder mysteries (watching Endeavour currently, liking it a lot).
Oh, just remembered, I’m hosting a game of Codenames for the SLF at 5 CST, let me know if you want to join in, but that will be fun and non-strenuous. But that’s it! Gaming and rest. (And then do it all again in two weeks. Whee!)
Pictured: My extremely deft cat, who manages to jump up there without ever disturbing the teapots. Not that this picture is relevant to this post at all, because I am feeling the opposite of deft this morning (also, I seem to have a pinched nerve in my left arm, which is sending shooting pains up it at random intervals, very annoying), but it’s always nice to look at my cat, I think. Calming.