Starting to Feel... Nerves?

It's Thursday and it hasn't been lost on me that this is going to be Johnnie's last online class day! More than a year starting with TK in March of last year. Daily lesson plans back then, daily learning now with a lot of extracurricular stuff I crafted. Music class, dance class, Math. Through it all Johnnie has been a gamer and I'm actually pleased with his progress as he's well ahead of kindergarten level. It's the socializing that I want him to experience more and that is where in-person learning is better I think. Johnnie seems to think so as well as I told him today is the last time he's getting online here in my apartment. There's still tomorrow for him of course, and Monday but pretty much for me it is a sense of MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Sort of a feeling of one way we stood up to the pandemic and kept going. So finally today I had my IS Team Meeting and right after that I forced myself to at least get familiar with the digital platform for tomorrow's talk. And once I got that done, the only thing left to do was to familiarize myself with my own talk. I mean the material is there and everything and I can make up stuff slide by slide as they come up but I want to do better than that. I want to be really REALLY good. I mean people PAID to attend this symposium. People PAID to here me speak! Does that make me a paid speaker now? LOL. I'd like to be able to say that I focused today on my presentation for tomorrow but instead I really just hung out with Johnnie and the dog. I'm not feeling much of anything about tomorrow which is a bit surprising. It's like I'm TOO relaxed if there is such a thing. By the afternoon I kept Johnnie occupied by getting him to build a booby trap so Claire doesn't go running around the living room. She has gotten a lot more familiar with finding areas she could hide in in my small apartment. Maybe she goes to these places when Johnnie bugs her too much. All I know is that she has discovered that there is a place under my bed she can get to. And with all the boxes under there, there are actually a nook and cranny she can hide in. Also under the dining room table. Who knew! I mentioned that Johnnie had been really good all week... or at least he is doing MUCH better about not being so rough with her. He did throw something at her which incensed me but I will continue to work with him. I was actually hoping Lisa would come early tonight to pick him up so I could actually have some alone time to practice my talk. But THAT turned out to be too much to ask. I called her by 7:30 and she was still at the office. And she wasn't coming yet either. It turned out that she is preparing documents for her soccer team that is trying to reassemble and start playing again in the Santa Monica league. I have ZERO emotional investment in that activity anymore, but I will admit to being annoyed that she is yet again not remotely focused on picking up Johnnie. She asked me to drop Johnnie and the dog off at her office. UNBELIEVABLE. I had no choice of course, at least, not if I wanted some alone time to do what i had to do. And so I packed up JOhnnie and Claire, got there, and then she asked me if I could watch Johnnie tomorrow because she had patients. She scheduled a work day on the day I was going to have a big speaking engagement. UNBELIEVABLE. I don't expect her to care about that obviously. But she should ask me ahead of time if she wants me to watch Johnnie on a non-scheduled day. That's just common courtesy. Was I annoyed? Very much so. I chalked it up to Lisa simply being Lisa. And walked off. I told her I couldn't do it until my talk was done at noon. And then I had to go home brush all that negative residue off and practice my talk. I ran through my talk a couple of times and each time I went well beyond 35 minutes <they want a 10-minute Q&A afterwards> I'm going to need to customize it some more I guess so I focus on the points I wanted to focus on. It was 10:30 by the time I was done practicing. I felt ok. I think I'm ready.