I have been entrusted with a secret, and told not to tell anyone. So I told the Colleage, and now I'm telling you. And that's it! Oh, and the Hubs. And probably the Chum tomorrow. And that's really it. Maybe R.What the Psycho (aka my boss, the principal) specifically told me was not to tell any other teachers and especially not the SCM. But the Chum and the Colleague and I are all covered by the Rob and Laura Petrie clause, to whit:
Millie Helper tells Laura a secret, but first she makes Laura swear that she will never tell another living soul. Laura agrees. Millie then says that when Laura tells Rob, she has to make him promise, too, to which Laura says, nodding, that her swearing covers both of them.
The Psycho called me into her office this afternoon and told me that the decision has been made at a higher level (as in by the superintendent of schools) that when the school construction begins next month, they will be simultaneously remodeling the old building while they begin to build the new. She had just found this out herself, and was told to be at a meeting next Tuesday and to have me there, too. She thought that I could use a little heads up.
What this means to me is for one year, I will be a librarian without a library. They will be gutting my library to make way for a new guidance office while they slowly build me a new one out where the parking lot is now.
I laughed. I said that if they wanted to give me a year off with pay, that was fine by me. She laughed, too. Because there is certainly nothing either one of us can do but laugh. Both of us had previously asked, as had others, if I would be able to stay where I was until the new library was ready and I was assured that this would be the case. My plan was not to pack up the books at all, but move them on carts from one library to the other. Now, no such luck. Everything will be packed up and put into storage someplace, and I will, apparantly, be working out of some "Internet-only Library" for a year. The Colleague will probably be working out of the Main Office, or someplace else where they need a secretary at the moment and I don't know if I will ever get her back. As for the SCM ... crap, let's hope nobody realizes that there's a librarian opening at one of the elementary schools next year, because baby, that would suck for all concerned. My best hope is that he and I will be assigned to the computer lab, we can teach computer research methods, at least, from there, and that I'll get a desk where I can work on the website and other assorted crap.
What can you do? It's all out of my hands, so there's no point in getting all worked up over it. Although when I was leaving today and walking around the library turning the lights off, I thought, crap, I've worked here for 28 years, it's the only real job I've had as an adult, in this room, and now I can't deny that it's really all going to be demolished and gone. I promise to start taking lots and lots of pictures so you can all see my little home-away-from-home while I've still got it.
GSA sponsored a really good workshop this afternoon; people came from PFLAG to come and talk to staff. They were really quite impressive, quietly telling about how they found out their own grown children were gay and how they reacted to it. It was very moving. Glad we did that.
