Multi-Tasking

Three weeks ago the robotics season started again. The past three weeks plus the upcoming four weeks are the busiest weeks of my year, weeks in which I somehow do a full time job on top of another full time job. Robotics alone requires nearly 40 hours of work a week and includes seven grueling 14-hour Saturday Robotics Extravaganzas. I get paid about 12 cents an hour for the work--work that is a million times more intense than my day job as a photography teacher--but there is something magical about seeing a 120 pound robot built from scratch by a bunch of teenagers. Not that they are your ordinary teenagers. They are more like mini-NASA engineers somehow misplaced in a high school environment. Trust me, you would not let the average high school student touch an exacto knife, let alone a band saw or a drill press.

I am also co-chair for a charity event that is being held tonight. It happened to fall, with extremely bad timing, right in the middle of the robotics season. I have spent the past two days hanging giant parasols, arranging fruit and flower centerpieces, creating big ribbon bows, baking cherry-vanilla cupcakes, organizing small committees, cutting programs, picking up tablecloths, choosing music, and generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

It has been a real scheduling nightmare, these two operations, and has required less sleep than usual and many long to-do lists that I add items to when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking things like "Flowers! Did we order the flowers?!" and "Where the hell did I put that ribbon for the centerpieces?" At this very moment, I am sitting in a classroom managing the robotics students in a t-shirt and a pair of warm-up pants. My floor-length dress for the charity event is hanging in the classroom closet. I plan on getting ready for the event--an event to which I am wearing a vintage Oleg Cassini silk and pearl skirt--in the high school bathroom. I have gone totally classy. And totally insane.

Comments

[Alison]

You blow my mind.

[Katey]

you're like martha, only nicer and you haven't done jail time.

*hugs*

[Benji]

Should make the media team help you with that stuff, they need the work and the practice.

[nicole]

Busy girl! You're gonna be a great lawyer. xoxo

[Pamela]

I can relate to running around like a chicken with your head cut off -- I've been working on a huge SuperBowl promotion plus planning my four year-old's birthday party plus interviewing for another job. I'm exhausted.

[Char]

I definately hope the event is a success!

[Zandria]

I can't think of anyone who would be able to handle all this better than you, Janet. And like Nicole said, this will be great practice for your upcoming uber-stressful law school days.

(Speaking of which, I just started listening to "One L" on audiobook. And may I just say: it's very interesting, but it totally reinforces for me why I could never be a lawyer. Scary stuff...)

[j]

Good luck! You must post a photo of your dress...it sounds so pretty!