Some of the blogs I love to read are about large families - WAY larger than mine. It makes me feel better that other people have to multi-task faster than I, and I appreciate the pictures of their children, but I'm really looking at the backgrounds. I want to see the laundry piled up on the couch, or the shoes and backpacks dumped in the middle of the floor. It's one of the main reasons I watch Little People Big World - that woman lives a REAL life with 4 kids - except for the whole destroy the house and live in two rooms and run out of money to finish the house thing.
I'm having one of those days that I wish I could pull off gracefully and full of fun, but the reality is that I blew it in the cheerful department today.
First, I am having to casually clean out my classroom while trying not to remind 7th graders that I am leaving. I will be switching to my kids' school next year, and my students are none to pleased. Many of them (no, not all - I'm not THAT nice) want me to go up to 8th grade with them and make Algebra the most amazing experience they will ever have, but I'm dropping down to 5th. So they are building bridges, and chatting at their tables, and I hear, "Look Ms. D someone glued a penny on the wall!" Another group got detention because it is SO FUNNY to put glue on each other, that conversation went like this:
Me: What are you doing?
Them: "OMG Ms. D. Chillax."
Me again: WHAT ARE YOU DOING !!! (note: you have to raise the voice because they don't hear you unless you yell or repeat yourself 4 times)
Them: IDK Ms. D like having fun?
Thankfully I speak fluent cheerleader so I could translate. My response? I put my hair in a ponytail and said," FYI ladies, D 10 chun see ya there."
After school I picked up Cheesie, drove across town to sign my new contract, and then went to the girl scout store - on a different part of town. I grabbed a million badges that the girls have earned, and called Brian. Now, men do not appreciate the stress that woman have on their lives until they work from home and therefore have time to pitch in a little more. Brian was trying to put Blondie in a tutu and follow all directions on the recital sheet, when T-Rex piped up with the fact that even though she told me she had overalls to play Annie in her recital she didn't actually have them, but remembered she used to have a pair - at some point in her life. So she went in jeans and a t-shirt that are SO not right that we will replace by Saturday. I finish filling out camping paperwork. We meet at dance where millions of little girls are in absurdly colored costumes, waiting in a huge room for their chance to run their dance two times and then get their pictures taken. While waiting, and being the multi-tasker extraordinaire that I am, I use my time to put up Blondie's hair, frown at T-Rex's choice of "orphan clothes" and put together the girl scout envelopes for most of the girls, and the special Bronze Award boxes for the 5 older girls. I did forget the camera, so Brian volunteers to run home and pick it up (surely trying to avoid the tension exploding from my head). I will give credit to him (although I'm sure Big Al had something to do with it) he did remember a brush, and ponytail holder and all parts of Blondie's tutu.
From there the girls and I went to a restaurant to meet the rest of the girl scouts to celebrate Big Al earning her bronze award and Brian ran to represent us at the soccer parent meeting. By 8:30 we are all home, and I look around and realize I haven't been here since 7:00 this morning.
I know that I hear frequently, "I don't know how you do it, I sure couldn't." The truth is that I don't do it perfectly everyday, and my house is only clean if I am 100% certain that someone is going to come over. Thank goodness for teaching schedules and summer vacation. I'll finally get to some of those projects that need to be done, and maybe I'll be unstressed by the time August rolls around.
I'll post the pictures tomorrow because I still have to get the laundry off the couch, and stack the dishwasher and water the garden, and then...
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