I'M GLAD YOU ASKED

 Only Nicole did, really, but I was kind of thinking while I was doing it (selecting books and signing them out to deliver to classes) how I would blog it, but then didn't because it has the potential to be very dull, but this is my third post in three days so it's easy to skip if you feel like it!

So what I SHOULD have done was sat down and figured out the logistics first. But my first class is supposed to arrive very shortly after I do, so I didn't have a lot of time and what I did was grab the cart (I had to clear some picture books to be reshelved off of it first, at Monday school I have two carts, but at some I have none, so lucky, I guess?) and head down to the kindergarten hallway to grab their book bins. I got two bins, and only one had the kids' book bags in them - in kindergarten they have large ziploc bags with their names on them to keep books safe and dry in backpacks.

When I got back to the library, I counted how many kids there were and how many books I needed to pick. Then I realized I only had bags for one class, so I could check out the kid's book and immediately bag it, but how the hell was I going to do the others? I went to pick books while I was working that problem.

It was French book week - they alternate- so I went to the French book section. I didn't want to look like I just pried a wedge of books out without any thought, so I started sorting through them looking for newer-looking, interesting-looking ones. This was extremely unintelligent - it was only for one week, and who the fuck CARED if I just grabbed an armful of thirty books and parceled them out? By the end, this is what I was doing, but I BEGAN the process very thoughtfully, TO BE CLEAR.

I started out looking at each child's name and looking at the books and trying to figure out which book I should give them. I know gender essentialism is out, and with good reason, but in kindergarten do we really need to insist that the little girls can't have princess books and the little boys can't have truck books when mostly this is still what they all want? (not all, by any means, but when I'm picking and not them, it didn't seem the hill to die on). I put the books in the bags and put the bags back in the bin. By this point, the presentation was going on, and although they had left me a skinny path to get in and out, I had to ask kids to move every time, and it was disruptive (clearly the vice principal didn't have enough time to think things through either). So I decided for the second class I would put little slips of paper in the books with each kid's name.

This takes more time than you would think.

It also necessitated me ripping papers up into little slips if I didn't want to waste a lot of paper, which I did not. Was I happy about making paper-ripping noises while Nabil from Equity was doing a presentation on racial slurs? No, I was not. I was not happy about the little 'beep' the scanner made with every book I checked out either, but needs must. No one looked disapprovingly at me, anyway.

After I finished that class, I wheeled the cart out, dropped off the two bins I had and went to the third kinder class and said I needed the bags. It took a bit to locate them (this happened the first week back from March Break, which made things even more confusing), but we did. So then I went back and did those. At this point I was late for delivering to the grade one class upstairs, because the library periods are only twenty minutes long, and that wasn't long enough to do what I was doing. Someone came down and said the grade one teacher wanted to know if I was still coming. I'm sure she didn't mean this to be judgy and annoying, but it kind of was. I realized she hadn't sent their returned books down, which the vice principal had said she would ask them to. Also, the class was upstairs, and when I'd asked the vp if there was an elevator, she'd said 'yes' and walked away without telling me where.

*hysterical giggle fit*

Do I look like I'm having a nervous breakdown?

This random women went back and got the books sent down. I returned them, took some deep breaths ( I was so sweaty, and my hands and back were so achy by now). I went over to the non-fiction section, grabbed a bunch of the gnarliest shark, spider and bug books, slammed them onto the cart. Then I grabbed a chromebook and attached the scanner to it. I found the elevator, got to the classroom with about three minutes left in their library period, spread the books out over a pod of four desks and let them have at it, bracing for complaints.

Damned if it didn't work like magic. 

I only had one class left, so I got back to the library, picked some books much less judiciously, and sorted them into bags. Then I looked at the computer and saw that the scanner was still not there because it was attached to the chromebook and realized that I had looked up every name but NOT ACTUALLY SCANNED THE FUCKING BOOK.

So I took them all out of the bags and scanned them. Then I delivered them.

Then it was lunchtime so I went in the office and ate some cauliflower and grapes and laughed and cried a tiny big. Then it was after lunch and I was going to shelve a few books before leaving for my other school. Classes filed in for the next presentation, and even though I kept asking them to leave me a path so I could get out in twenty minutes, no one did. At this point I was extremely fed up, and imagined stomping through the crowd with the presentation already in progress, and thought NOPE, grabbed all my stuff and left a few minutes early. 

It's funny now.

Have a picture of Lucy's adorably enormous ear.