Time to put on the big girl panties

Okay, I have been exhausting myself for the past two weeks, preparing for the beginning of the school year, addressing issues with student schedules, fixing teacher classroom issues, adding classes to the master schedule...  I have been leaving the office between 8:00 - 9:00 every night.  Last night I left at 9:30 because we had our freshman orientation today and every student had to have a complete schedule.  Everything was going fine this morning and I looked up to see that our master schedule was magically empty.  All data, schedules, requests were gone.  2000 schedules disappeared!  Zap!  Gone!  Apparently our school server had a power surge and there was a 6 second delay before the back up energy supply kicked in.  All of the work and hours of labor went to hell in 6 seconds.  The tech people came to the building and worked for 3 hours to try to restore the data.  They finally scrubbed in the data from a back-up from last night.  Most of the data returned.  However the back-up was done about 7:00, so we lost approximately 2 hours worth of work.  I suppose that I should be glad that we didn't lose 6 months worth of work, which is how long it takes to set up everything in the master schedule.  I am glad.  Believe me.  I really am.  I just think about how exhausted I was last night and how much pain I was feeling last night, and I can't help but feel frustrated.  That was my blood, sweat and tears that went away, or it would have been if I hadn't been too tired to bleed.  I have made myself sick from stress and lack sleep, but I was willing to do it to get the job done.  I have a rheumatic disorder that flares up when I am stressed and missing out on sleep.  My feet were red and swollen last night and my left knee was soo bad that it looked cartoonish.  My knee still hurts today, but I was willing to deal with the pain if I got the job done.  Now it was all for naught.  My knee still throbs, although considerably less than last night, and I still have as much work to do.  I have felt like crying all day, but I kept up a strong facade.  I even had teachers comment on how calm I was.  Why break down?  It's not going to help anything and it will cause panic amongst the department and the administration.  As it is, my principal looked at me and told me that he wasn't worried because he knew that I could take care of everything because I always do.  I'm flattered that he has that much faith in me, but I did inform him that if they couldn't reload everything from the back-up, I was going to teach he and the other administrators how to input schedules and they would join me over the weekend to input 2000 schedules.  He simply said that he would do whatever I needed.  I like that.

My response to all of this is that I left work earlier than I have been leaving because the tech people needed to clean the data and I couldn't fix schedules anyway.  I came home and promptly fell asleep for 4 hours.  I am soaking my feet in my massaging foot tub, listening to the beautiful music of one of my favorite a capella groups from college, and playing on LJ.  I will get a little work done after I paint my toenails and pack.  I am going to visit my father this weekend.  He is so excited that I am visiting, although in true father fashion, he told me that he didn't want me to drive in the nasty rain that is expected as a result of Tropical Storm Ernesto.  It's really sweet, but it will take a little more than hard rain to keep me from going.  I've driven in hurricane force winds.  We get that a lot during hurricane season.  I need to see my father.  He makes everything okay again.  I know it's all mental, but I feel better when I see him.  I think it's because he makes me feel like I can do anything.  He doesn't give me pep talks or anything like.  He just believes that I can do it.  As far as he's concerned, it's given that I will succeed.  He loves me and believes in me unconditionally.  I don't think that there is anyone else that makes me feel that.  I need a dose of that unwavering faith and love right now.

Enough rambling.  I'm going to paint my toenails.  Carribbean blue.  I love that color in the summer!