Day 22: The Posters are Fiv -- SIX Dollars Each

 And then today I nearly clean forgot to post. Most days this month have been easy, which has not often been the case. 

Today was the viewing day at two schools for the Scholastic Book Fair. I love the book fair, but I kind of hate the viewing days - it's all the stress and noise and insanity of the actual fair without actually selling any books. I had double classes much of the time, and the number of times I had to tell students to stop blatantly breaking the rules I had gone over thirty seconds earlier was...high.

The pencils and erasers and highlighters and stupid gadgety stuff was covered completely at my morning school, and will be until students come in with their parents - too much theft and damage happening otherwise. At my afternoon school it was covered with clear plastic wrap so kids could still see it. This was.... a choice. (About the comments commiserating with me over the toys on the desk at my Wednesday morning school - I felt half vindicated and half sorry for throwing the other librarian under the bus, ha ha. I guess there are two ways of viewing it - leave the temptation there and count on it teaching the kids self-restraint, or acknowledging that kids don't have self-restraint and deciding to remove temptation so you don't flip your shit and go to jail for brutalizing a minor).

I started the day bright and calm and grew progressively more frazzled. I said 'don't touch that stuff, just look at it' a couple dozen times, progressively louder and more snappish until I finally yelled it and then just started laughing at the absurdity. A grade four student looked at me sympathetically and said "kids these days!" Another child asked me what one stupid microphone-shaped something was and I said "overpriced crap that will break within seven days, go look at the books". Then they mostly stopped asking me.

Do you think this is a joke, beyond the obvious? 

I have plans with an awesome group of women tomorrow night, which means I can't help out with the parent-teacher-interview-evening stretch of the book fair, which is in most ways a really good thing, but I kind of bizarrely miss it. I did it so many times one dad at my kids' old school thought I was a Scholastic rep. I still miss doing the book fair with that librarian, she had a British accent, and hearing the kids imitate her pronunciation of 'book fair' and "Fart Powder" was priceless. 

Is that enough? I'm so tired. 

I am determinedly NOT going to call a post "I think I can, I think I can" over the next few days, because I'm sure I've done that multiple times in past NaBloPoMos. But we can, right? We're doing it! Let's hold hands and ... well, not sprint yet, still eight days left. Anyone want a power bar? 

(p.s. I nearly posted a link to the Fart Powder book series on Facebook, instead of a link to this post, which would have confused the hell out of my friends on Facebook. Long day.)