I kept hitting the snooze alarm this morning.  Not because I really wanted to sleep any longer, but because I wanted to delay the start of my day.  Last week, while on vacation, I realized that I could easily retire now, and spend the remainder of my days in blissful slothfulness. 

Why is that?  I know I love my job, and logically I know that I would be bored out of my mind if I didn’t work at least a bit.

So here’s why: tomorrow is the first day of school in the town where I work.  The summer reading program has barely finished (in fact, I just started the summer bookplate process yesterday), and school is about to start again.  Summer was so busy that I didn’t have a chance to pre-plan the fall storytimes like I wanted to, and school is about to start again.  The children’s room was crazy busy all summer, so much so that often I had a hard time breaking away to use the restroom, and the kids will be back in classes tomorrow.

Lisa, the reference librarian, was looking a bit haggard and stressed yesterday; in my post-vacation bliss,  it took me a few minutes to figure out why, then I did.

School starts tomorrow.

On a typical day last spring, Lisa or Nicole (who is on maternity leave at the moment) could count forty students up in the reference area, sometimes playing guitar in the study rooms, sometimes sneaking food, sometimes playing computer games, sometimes studying quietly.  Lisa’s role in the after school hours is to retain decorum and a semblance of silence in the reference area and the rest of the second floor.  I get far fewer students down in the children’s room, probably because it’s an enclosed space and I can see all indiscretions from my desk, but I too have a role in the after school hours: room monitor.  I try to keep the kids quiet (ha!), amused, and under control, and I try my best to do so without causing them to leave the children’s room and go up to the reference area.  Most afternoons I feel like a substitute teacher during a free study period.  In good weather I’ll assign the kids a soccer ball and tell them to go outside and play for a bit until they can come back and be quiet.  In bad weather I make a show of loaning them one of the “good” board games, and sometimes I even give them permission to play the game in the story room.

There’s not much time left in these after school hours for planning storytimes and ordering books.  Oftentimes I end up doing that work in unpaid hours at home or early in the morning before the library opens. 

So you can see why the start of school makes me a bit quesy.  I love the kids, but we need a better solution to the over-crowded, under-behaved, after-school set.

Now the second cup of coffee is in my belly (good thing I have a bottle of Tums in my desk at work) and I’m sufficiently jazzed up to get ready for work.  Maybe I’ll have time today to plan a gazillion storytimes.  Hmmmm.  I’d better wear my pink flowered shoes to get me in the mood.  And you can be sure that I’ll enjoy this last day of peace before the storm breaks.