I don’t have my Halloween decorations up yet, but I do have all of my October displays out.

I love my displays so much more now that I’m doing the signs in color. And work has been so great this month, I’m tackling a ton of projects that are so satisfying. My brain is working pretty well during the 2nd trimester, so I’m taking advantage before it turns to mush again in a couple of months. I’ve totally revamped the Battle of the Books program at school, I’ve got the schedule finished for the library moms, I put in another great book order, I finally tackled the filing system my predecessor left behind, and all my lesson plans are written through the first week of November.

I love productivity.

I got the tree started this year, but it was really the 4th graders who turned it into a masterpiece. This is my favorite tree yet.

I sketched out the tree on brown craft paper and cut it out.

The background from last year was still up, so I flipped the tree over to hide the sketchlines and hung it up. I do this part myself because I had to use 2 pieces of fabric to cover the board, so the tree is strategically placed to cover the seams. I have to add a long branch up the middle to hide the rest of it (the craft paper isn’t quite big enough to cut the tree out of a single piece). Then I added the bottom border, all before the first day of school.

My 4th graders with the best handwriting put all the staff names on the leaves for me. While they do that, another team does this:

Three girls with a good eye for design get started on the filler leaves of the tree, construction paper cutouts I recycled from last year.

The kids get the tree this far by the end of the day.

Then I fill it in, while getting scolded by my supervisor for climbing on top of the bookcases. You can see some of my recycled pieces facing the wrong way, with the spring tree flower outlines still visible. No matter, the leaves will fix that.

The next day a new crop of 4th graders help with the actual placement of the leaves. I had a ton of leaves this year for some reason, so I had to do a little directing here to make sure they weren’t all on top of each other. But they got the idea, and by the end of the 2nd day of school all the leaves were up.

And then finally we have this, the fall 2011 Library Tree. I’m in love with it, they did such a great job.

I was so determined to be better about blogging this week, but all I do is come home from work and slip into a stupor. I forget everything, and just about the only non-school related thing I’ve been able to concentrate on is Bravo TV.

But here’s what’s been happening the last week:

I grew a bump literally almost overnight. Yesterday my stomach was suddenly rock hard, and Adam noticed that my belly button is starting to work its way out. This is what I looked like today for Picture Day, and half the staff commented on my emerging bump (if you look closely at the top row of this picture from March, you can see what I used to look like wearing this dress). This is what standing up straight looks like for me now. Also, I really need to clean that mirror. Remind me, I will definitely forget.

Secondly, I bought this most glorious and genius thing of all things in the universe:

The Comfort-U CU9000 Total Body Pillow. I can’t even tell you how many pregnancy pillow reviews I read, and in the end I ordered this one. I am so completely not sorry, I’ve had the best sleep of my life this week. That doesn’t mean I’m not still comatose all day, but still.

Okay, this post wasn’t actually about the first week of school at all. But, I have photos of the new library tree to post, plus the new crop of library cards, plus all my wonderful 4th graders who now know I’m pregnant and have been the greatest helpers ever getting us rolling for the new school year. So I WILL post about all of those things. But this very minute, I hear the doorbell for Chinese, and then I’m heading back to the CU9000.

It’s the first day of September, and for me the summer is over. But August had a lot of sweater days this year, surprisingly. Maybe that’s my own crazy body temperature, I’m not sure.

Anyway, the teachers report back on the 6th, the kids the following day. But in the meantime, I’ve gone from bailing out the basement post-hurricane to working up a storm at school getting the library ready. My mom, my niece, and my nephew all came in with me today to help process books and move stuff around after some library changes at the end of the last school year. They were such a huge help, I don’t know how I would have done it without them. I had terrible luck going in early this year: last Wednesday my mom came with me, we had to leave an hour later so the floor could be waxed. Next day Adam was off from work so he came to help, but my carpet was being shampooed. Then the hurricane. Now I’m running out of time, and I’ve got to get stuff DONE!

It’ll all be good by the first day of school.

Matt Damon is one of my favorite actors, but I also love his activism. And his defense of teachers and taxes to pay for public services. But I really love him because of this: