Panic Attack

It's about that time again.

School starts, for the kids, on the 7th of August, but I have my first in-service on the 30th. Oh boy!

So I decided to go into the building today to get my room unpacked and set up. We had all received an email from Chief Custodian to let us know that all the rooms were pretty much ready to go. They were still working on the floors in some of the hallways, so as long as we were careful we could get in and get our work done.

There was one problem. I couldn't find my freakin' keys.

I always keep my classroom keychain (which has my room key, a key to get into some of the outside doors, a key to my desk, a key to my file cabinet, and a locker key) in a pocket in my rolling backpack along with my ID badge. That way I don't have to dig around in my purse to find them, and I always know where they are at. (I don't know if it's age, too much going on, or what, but I tend to lose things a lot more lately, which, well, sucks.) I used the rolling backpack on our trip to North Carolina this summer and had placed the namebadge and such on a corner of the work table in my craft room/office. And that's where I thought my keys were until yesterday when I went to grab them and they weren't there.

Oh great.

So I tore apart the craft room/office, opened every drawer, cupboard, box, basket, anything that could possibly contain a keychain. I tore apart my kitchen drawers as well, checked the bathroom drawers, all the dressers in my bedroom, and so on.

I didn't find my keys.

So I came to a plausible explanation.

My cat hid them. Specifically, my youngest cat, Jackson, who is an instigator. He loves to play with things on my desk, and it wouldn't have surprised me if he'd knocked the keys off and played with them. This idea got me crawling around on the floor looking under furniture and bookcases.

Still no keys. But a heck of a lot of pipe cleaners (cats love these) and bouncy ball toys.

Could he have knocked them into the wastepaper basket and they got tossed?

Possible.

So, after several hours, much searching and frustration, I gave up on the keys. I'd just have to see if The Bookkeeper could get me a new one and see if, by some miracle, they had extra spares of the file cabinet and desk keys. The locker key was probably a goner as I think I may have the original. Oh well.

I slunk into school today, hung my head in shame, and managed to get an extra copy of my key from The Bookkeeper. Fortunately, I am apparently not the only one who loses things, she informed me, so that made me feel a bit better. She then handed me a huge, and I mean HUGE, container containing file cabinet and desk keys which would take me all day to go through.

Sigh.

Mrs. Eagle, who is an over-achiever and who has had her room set up since JUNE, came in to help me a bit which was more than nice on her part. Most of my classroom furniture was placed where it needed to be so we only had to shift a few things around. We were moving my desk a bit when the top drawer rolls open, which was odd because I had locked it before I left for the summer.

And there, laying in my top drawer, was my keychain!

"Hey, look at that!" says Mrs. Eagle. "There's your keys!"

Oh good gracious. They never even made it home with me for the summer!!! What most likely happened is that I left them on my desk in the rush to get everything loaded up and summer started, and my janitor found them, unlocked the desk, and put them away for me.

Bless her heart.

And I apologized to my cat for blaming him.