I Had to Laugh

I looked back at a post in February where I said, Snow Days are Good Days, and now I am sitting at home on Spring Break thinking, "Snow Days are Bad Days," as flakes flew listlessly outside my window this morning, and the sun is nowhere to be seen. I have been feeling a bit sorry for myself for not being in Florida with the other 50% of my town, but if I were there, would I be feeling relaxed, or just wondering if I'm going to be stressed coming back home to a house that needs to be cleaned and nothing done at home that I cherish days off for?

I have not had a terrible spring break, other than fighting a cold, but today is better and we still have two days plus the weekend coming up. I have enoyed spending time with my girls and two friends. My friend Rachel is very dear to me~ we met in college, and how we met there is quite another story, but I am so thankful to God for her. While our visits are limited to two a year right now due to both having kids and being caught up in their activities and work, I know that she will always be my friend.

One of my newer friends in the last two years came over today with her small children, and it was fun to just sit and visit with her and be reminded of my girls' stages when they were very small.

The other things I have done so far this week is clean a corner of my garage, make a homemade potato soup, and bake some monster cookies. I love to cook and bake, so having days I can do that are rare, but fun. I may even try to load up a picture of the soup and cookies for you. Do you want some?

Four Thousand E-mails

Wanting to keep my entry lighthearted this time, I thought hard about a topic that still relates to school counseling. While sitting at my school computer, I had an "a ha!" moment. I spend almost 3 hours a day looking at my computer screen and either making phone calls or sending e-mails. The other 4 hours I actually get to talk to kids, attend meetings, and work on various projects.

So, the day I had this idea, I looked in my e-mail "trash" bin. I had 4150 e-mails and the last date I emptied it was on November 23rd. So from November 23rd to February 22, I had 4150 e-mails. So, I decided to break that down. That was 11 weeks of school minus Saturdays and Sundays. That leaves me with 5 work days a week times 11 weeks. So 4150 e-mails divided by 55 work days equals 75 e-mails per day? Could that be possible??!! I walked over to my wall calendar and counted the days, subtracting Thanksgiving and Christmas break. Yep, that's my average amount of e-mails to read per day. If each one averages 30 seconds to read, and 1 1/2 minutes to respond, then 2 minutes per e-mail would be 2 1/2 hours per day spent reading and answering e-mails.

So what in the world could be the content of that many e-mails per day? Luckily some of them I can delete right away. We have a "BBay" listserve (sorta like Ebay), and I can delete those e-mails without reading them (maybe 5 per day average). Those are the easy ones to eliminate. The others are from various school employees and parents (and yes a few from my husband as that's the best way to communicate about the evening activities for the girls). I get e-mails from the Tech Department, the other counselors, my assistant principal, my principal, teachers, and parents~ all of which require a timely response most of the time.

Sometimes I prefer not to answer e-mail, but instead go to the person who sent me the e-mail and talk with them, or pick up the phone and call someone. So, that actually takes MORE than 2 minutes per e-mail, which leads me to my next Math problem . . . .