Academy Awards and a bouquet of roses

Fridays are always busy for me. Before I was principal, I loved Fridays. They were my easiest teaching days and we got out at noon. Gotta love that. But now that I'm principal, they are the most hectic day of the week, and there is almost no time to catch my breath. I run from office to class to office to class all morning long, with all kinds of loose end to tie up before I can escape.

Today was as hectic as usual in pace, but for some reason it felt more peaceful. Hard to understand considering there was the added pressure of our Awards Assembly at mid-morning. Crazy as that assembly always is, I always enjoy it because we get to honor our best and brightest students. This morning, I got to honor three students who have led the way their entire 13-year run in our school: my niece Julie, Ritchie Lawrence's son Brian, and their classmate Richardson. (They are the same three who are getting the Honors diploma this year.) Over and over they were called up to get the award for best in English, math, science, Spanish, etc., etc. It was nice for Lauren to be there to see her one last time.

Lauren gave out her own awards for her girls' fitness class, but she started by giving me a huge bouquet of roses to celebrate my birthday. The kids all sang to me, and later I got hand-made cards from the 1-3rd graders. They detoured into my office on their way to lunch, mobbing me with hugs as they piled on their their cards. Their teacher asked me if I felt loved. Yes, I did.

When I brought the roses home, the cats immediately wanted to smell them...and then wanted to chew the ferns. Soon, they would have pulled the vase over and that would have been the end of that. So I had to put them up on an unreachable shelf instead of letting them enjoy their own space on the dining room table. Such is life with my teenage cat-children...