Hard at work or hardly working?

Yesterday, I finally moved my boxes and boxes of classroom stuff over to my new school. I am very thankful for my wonderful in-laws, who are always willing to help us with things like that. I'm also thankful that my father in-law was able to sweet-talk one of the student custodians into helping us haul it all in. And, did I mention that I am grateful to be at a school with an elevator?!? Heavenly bliss!
This is actually the second time in two years that I've had to move my classroom. Two years ago, I moved to a different room in the same building, and everything that I owned--books, filing cabinets, TV/VCR, bookshelves--had to be carried piece by piece up a flight of stairs. This fall I will be starting at a new school entirely, so my classroom moves again. It's been in my living room for the last three weeks while I waited for the carpets to be cleaned at my new school.
I think it's interesting that no matter what school you go in to during the summer, if you go expecting help from the custodians, you can pretty much forget it. "Oh, they are really busy--we can't spare any of our student custodians..." or "I think I could maybe send you someone in about an hour, but only for 10 minutes." These kind of statements are generally made (in all seriousness) while the student custodians are horsing around in some other part of the school, "cleaning lockers" or whatever else they pretend to do.
Yesterday was no different. I was going to avoid the whole issue and not ask for help, but my ever practical, silver-tongued father in-law wanted to expedite the process, and managed to talk one of the student custodians into finding a third hand-truck for us, and still another to haul boxes. It went a lot faster, and even though one of the full-time custodians kept muttering things like: "These teachers expect us to drop everything and help them haul all of their crap around," we managed to get it all done in short order.
Now I'm officially moved in to my beautiful room with windows (sigh!), and my not-so-beautiful sky blue and brilliant sunshine yellow walls. That's another story for a different day. I think sometime soon I will be thankful for some buckets of paint, and the off-the-record permission granted from someone at the school to paint... ("Teachers aren't supposed to paint the walls. We won't be painting your room anytime soon. If you do it, no one would blame you, and I didn't hear a thing you just said about painting.")