A bad Friday

The day started out with a team meeting for the third-year British literature class I teach. I'm the head teacher this semester as my colleague who developed the course is currently on sabbatical. The purpose of the meeting was to organize the upcoming oral exams. The meeting went well, my colleagues are great. However, I left the meeting feeling very stressed about the amount of work we need to produce during our upcoming week of Spring Break. Last year, we used seven different text extracts for the exam. However, during our meeting, we calculated that to run things the same way this year, we need fifteen different extracts this time. That's more than twice the amount of prep work and something I had not been expecting. I knew there were more students this year, as more students have passed than usual during the two distance-learning pandemic years. However, I wasn't expecting a more than doubled work load.

After my meeting, the girls and I went to do our pet sitting duties in Roquevaire, then we went to Aubagne to meet up with my friend Régine for lunch. Afterwards, we went back to Penny's one last time to say goodbye to Oggy and do one last round of tree climbing. On the way out shortly after 4, we closed the metal gates and I put the keys through the mail slot as Penny and Co. were on their way home and set to arrive about 8pm. When I got back in the car and started driving, Maëva shouted out something about her glasses. She didn't have them and thought she had left them in the garden, maybe on the picnic table. However, by the time we arrived home, she wasn't sure whether she'd even had them after we left the restaurant. I called the restaurant. No glasses. Maëva remembered I'd taken a photo of her at Penny's. She was wearing her glasses. So we knew they were there, but she wasn't sure exactly where.

When I connected to yoga at 5pm, I was in quite in a state. Luckily, the session helped me relax a little.

Still, I was not happy and grounded Maëva for 36 hours, if her glasses were retrieved intact. I said I would reevaluate if Penny found them damaged or not at all. Luckily for all of us, Penny and family arrived home at 9pm and found the glasses no worse for having been left behind.

By the end of the day, the work situation was looking less dire, as well. Some streamlining became possible and we're now down to 11 or 12 extracts, rather than 15. I'll still have to spend next week working on that, though, instead of on other things.