"Calgon!, take me away!"

This is my happy place! I love Epcot World Showcase Lagoon, specifically the Italy, France, Canada, and England sections! If I could go anywhere right now it would be there right now, and stay a while! Yes, I'd get a table on the back porch of the Rose & Crown in the England section and gaze out over the lagoon and sip iced tea under a table with an umbrella! Yes, or go to Saratoga Springs, our home resort and sit out by the pool that also overlooks the lake and Downtown Disney and read a book and sip Diet coke! Ahhh....if only I could go there now!

Instead, I have to figure out how to manage a caseload of 80 special ed students who have speech therapy services and completely set up my office at my 2nd and new to me campus, from scratch! Oh, Lord, can I do this? I am totally over whelmed! I am in panic mode! But no one can tell. I smile and say hello and utter positive phrases. My palms sweat and inside I am screaming. Why do I have to do this at 52? Why can't I simply have a manageable number of students to serve? ASHA recommends 30! I have 80! When I was lead I worked hard to get each therapist at 60 or under, that is manageable but 80? Yikes! I had this high of a number about 13 years ago when I first moved here but after much assertive self advocating they came to see that this was forcing me to do a type of "hit and run" minimal therapy and they changed my assignment. On top of this we are having to learn and use an additional new web based data system where all the special ed audit files will be accessible. We are supposed to have two screens for our computers so we can view the audit file while conducting our work in the new file in e-sped and then we save our work, archive it, and then have it ready for pick up each week for the data people to input into the other data base. Yikes! My palms are sweating again! I've read that is a stress response. Ya think?! Anyway, we also have to do our schedule in another web based site called Caselite. This allows big brother to over see our schedule and our attendance and delivery of services. It is very time intensive as well as the other two aforementioned. Then we are going to learn another new system and website (this makes 4, so far we have to use), where we will document our daily data from every therapy session we perform. We haven't been trained on it yet but we will have to backtrack and input our data from when we start services this week. I am sweating more now as I share my thoughts and starting to chuckle nervously like some of my Autistic students do or maybe like some of my Tourette's kids do, nervous ticks. Then if we want to check our pay and our new salary for this year we have to go into another website "Skyward Financial" and figure out how to find OUR pay information and make sure it's right. Ok, sure! I don't even know what my Skyward password is from last year and I understand they have changed them all anyway! Isn't this crazy, I'm working somewhere I don't even know exactly what they are paying me this year and I don't have a password yet to get into their system and check that ! CRAZY! Next, we have to become proficient at Skyward Student website to find our student's schedules and info etc to be able to set up a scheduled time to serve them. However, their schedules always change some in the first 3 or 4 weeks of school but we must do our schedules and "publish" them in Caselite ASAP! I don't even the speech materials for GPHS moved into the new location/office I had to assertively advocate for this week and then it is going to need a vigorous scrub down, some paint, a rug I will have to buy, some lamps, stuff to go on the walls that I will also buy and more. Oh, but I need to have my caseload set up in Caselite and my schedule asap as well as print out all my 80 student's schedules from Skyward and print out their IEP's from E-sped and their frequency they are arded for services from e-sped and start putting my therapy data daily into a website we haven't been trained on yet, and check my pay in Skyward - which I don't have a password for yet, and schedule and attend ARD meetings done on E-sped and archived and then printed out (oh and they took our printers away!) we have to print to a copier across campus and run half a mile to go get our confidential papers printing out over there and sift through what's on the deck of the machine! Then have any new E-sped ARD's etc ready for pick up weekly by Harding that scans those into their data base.

I could go on and on but I'll stop that dribble here.

See why I am wanting to be in Orlando, or at Aulani in Hawaii? Man!.... why do they expect us older folks to automatically be proficient at all this computer stuff when we didn't even have computers in college!!! I typed my college papers all on a typewriter!

Oh, Lord, can I do all this? (I'm sweating again!)

I have really good people skills, I LOVE doing speech therapy and I am really good at that too! I even like doing paperwork and am really good at that too but now everything is paperless!!! Why can't I just do my schedule and data etc on paper like I've done for over 25 years!!! It worked well and it is what I know. Oh, God, help me learn all this, get really good at it, make a difference in these student's lives and remain positive, kind, and efficient! I can't do this God, without your help! I am in panic mode! I want to just run away! I fell like I'm on the verge of tears every once in a while but then another co-worker shares their worries and I realize that I CAN do this, for 2 more years, I can do ANYTHING! But as of January 31st, 2013 I can hang it up, say farewell, walk out the door and never return! I plan to go ahead and finish out that Spring and work until the end of the school year and retire for real in May 2013 but it can't come soon enough for this ole gal! God help me! Seriously, Lord under gird me, help me, give me the brain and body strength to do this and to do it well, excellently, not just get by buy hit a home run. I want to do such a good job these next two years that they beg me to not retire! But I AM retiring!! (I'll still work 2 days a week but for some rehab company that will let me do just the things I enjoy the most!!) OK, Lord, lift me up, I need some supernatural help here. I am doubting myself big time so I need a Big God to convince me otherwise and give me the Grace, Strength, and Wisdom to do this! I'm counting on you God!

Psalms 28:7 "The Lord is my strength and my impenetrable shield; My heart trusts in Him and I am helped!, therefore my heart greatly rejoices and I will praise Him!"