Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Pray for me

Tomorrow, I am taking 100+ people to Busch Gardens.

Organizing this trip has, by far, been the largest "work project" I have ever had to undertake in my life. I am incredibly, incredibly stressed. You've gotten a small dose of it on here, but I cannot tell you what I've been through to organize this damn trip. It's so overwhelming. At this point, I feel as though I'm as prepared as I can be. The buses are paid for, I have a $3500 + check in my purse for the tickets--I even have each group assigned to a bus, PLUS laminated card for each chaperone with their assigned kids on one side AND the cell phone numbers of all chaperones on the other. There is nothing more I can do at this point, other than go to bed in, like, an hour (mind you, it's 7 pm) in order to get up at like 4:30 in the morning (yes, you read that right) so that I can be at school by 5:30 AT THE LATEST (the buses aren't leaving till 6:30, but of course I told the kids 6 am).

I guess at this point, my biggest stressor is this: will the buses show up? Several years ago, before I was even a 5th grade teacher, the team lead unknowingly went with a shady bus company, so on the day of the trip, the buses NEVER SHOWED UP. The story made the news and other local charter companies volunteered their services--so, although the trip was postponed, it eventually took place and everything was just fine in the end. Still, those are the things that will keep me up tonight. There are so many "what-if's"--everything from will we be rained out to will the kids who have BG passes BRING their free passes because we don't have the money to buy all those extra tickets--not to mention will the buses SHOW UP--oh, and when we get there, if ANYTHING goes wrong in ANY group it will be MY responsibility to deal with it...O.M.G. Seriously.

But...all I can do is worry about what's in my hands. And everything IN my hands has been taken care of to the best of my ability. I just have to trust that everything else--from the buses actually showing up to the weather--will fall into place.

Please, think of me tomorrow. Pray that I can give these 5th graders the trip that they've been looking forward to all year--and deserve. I will try to post from my phone tomorrow--God willing, a "we're at BG and everything is fine" post.

The amount of stress I feel right now is overwhelming.

I hope that everything goes as planned.

With any luck, I'll be posting tomorrow night (we are expected back to the school around 8:30 pm) that everything went very smoothly.

I need to take a sleeping pill and GET MY ASS TO BED. I can't do anything else tonight. I have prepared as much as I can.

What happens tomorrow, happens.

I AM SO STRESSED.

3 comments:

Renee said...

Well, you should be there by now... I hope everything went, and continues to go, as smoothly as something like this CAN go. Did you volunteer for this? Meds may need to be upped if you did ;-)

Can't wait to hear all the little anectdotes from the day! You'll be fine. And just imagine the weightlessness of your shoulders tomorrow morning when you wake up and this whole day is behind you!

Renee said...

Provided, of course, that no one sues you for losing their kid or letting them eat something they're allergic to or gets in a rollercoaster accident :-)

Anonymous said...

It will be fine.

If you don't lose anyone and no one gets killed, call it a success. :-)