A day in the life.

I got to work just after 7:30 this morning, well before school started, so that I could set up in my office and teachers could come talk to me about whatever before the influx of the wild children. And that they did; as I waited the 15 minutes for my computer to turn on, I heard all about the recent lice cases and a teacher confessed her reason for her frequent bathroom trips (diabetes). At 9:00, I was summoned to my middle school to check out a kid's blistering hands to ensure he's not spreading some contagious disease. He said he's being treated by a doctor, I made sure his open sores were covered, and sent him to class just as the phone rang for me at my other elementary school. It was Rietta, needing computer help for the ridiculous Medi-Cal billing thing we're supposed to do three weeks a year - this is one of those weeks (but another story). I told her I'd stop by on my way back to the school I'd started at when the attendance clerk stopped me as I was leaving the middle school to inform me that one of our students was in the hospital with newly diagnosed type I diabetes. Oh joy - this is something that in all likelihood will require me to come by at lunch to the middle school to check on her daily, which, needless to say, throws a loop in one's schedule. I finally reached Rietta, fixed her computer and showed her how Medi-Cal billing works; by then it was time to go take care of my diabetic at the school across the freeway. Finally, nearly 3 hours later, I returned to the school I'd started at just in time to find what appeared to be a bloody massacre in my office - multiple nosebleeds and sick kids all at once. I took over for the thankful secretary and got to working on the kids; it'd be another hour before my growling stomach was finally answered. Afterward, paperwork - the paperwork I was sitting down to first thing this morning that I hadn't touched. 

The last bell will ring shortly, and it appears as though a tornado has blown through my office: trash cans piled with bloody tissues, empty glove boxes, and papers strewn around in a seemingly haphazard way that only I might be able to decipher the meaning of. A lot of people ask me what I do, and there's really no way to answer: you just never know.