cease fire
It's graduation week in this fine country in which we live. Well, graduation month I suppose. The university I attended graduated last weekend if the schedule there is still similar to what it was when I attended, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth...Or, as my darling LB likes to say, "...Back in the 60s and 70s, when people didn't have bathrooms..." I'm not sure exactly how old he thinks I am, or where we pottied back then. Anyway, here in the college town where I find myself living and raising a family (and paying a hefty student loan for GBs education), it's graduation week.
Last weekend we had the school fair. Put on by the PTA, which I have joined, as you may be aware. Nice affair, it's grown larger in the last few years. This year it seems to have been particularly successful.
Anyway, I had two jobs for this fair. One job I was not supposed to have, and that was as the room mom. Somehow at the beginning of the year this job was foisted upon me. Now, it's not that I have a problem with being room mom on principle, it's that I happen to be at work four out of five week days and, well, that becomes problematic when little things like classroom parties, snack day, field trips and PTA fair come up. Because the room mom's primary job is to man the booth at the PTA fair each year. Six hours of your school year, sewn up in September. Now, it's held on a Saturday so in theory I should be able to pull this off. Especially since there are two room moms in our class. Alas, the other room mom was also assigned as room mom to her older daughter's classroom, so there we have it. She's backed up over at that booth, which is quite popular. However, what is truly problematic for me about this is my other fair job, and that's a pretty big job.
I'm in charge of food. All of it. 500 hamburgers and buns. 500 hot dogs and buns (sold out an hour before the fair ended--note to self for next year). 128 cases of soda. sold out. 15 cases of water. sold out. 12 cans of disgusting looking nacho cheese sauce and 9 cans of equally gross chili sauce. sold out. It's a busy affair. Mustard. sold out. My job is to order all the food prior to the fair, coordinate pick ups, drop offs, handing outs. Coffee and donuts the morning of the fair (6:30 a.m.). Answer questions. 1500 pounds of ice. It's not that it's hard, it's just very tiring in the last 48 hours before the fair, and on the day of the fair I really have to be available to all the people selling food, not standing behind a popcorn machine next to a snow cone machine dancing madly because I am going to pee my pants and the family who signed up to work at the booth for a mere sixty minutes is nowhere in sight. That's where it becomes difficult for me to be room mom and in charge of two really big things at one time.
And we had a very popular booth this year. Nobody enjoys a snowcone more than a kid, and especially on a warm day. Now, generally the teachers work the booth for an hour or two, but recalcitrant teacher did not sign up to work that day. whatever. I had steeled myself to be polite and act as if GB and I had not basically asked to have her fired and then all that angst for naught.
At some point during the day I was able to leave the booth and wander around with the kids. It was then that we abruptly met up with her at the hamburger booth. She apparently had steeled herself as well because she gave LB a big hug, me a big smile and started idle chit chat. I noted that I'd heard she was graduating (see? I can bring it around) with her master's degree. She laughed and said something about having to spend some late nights typing over the next week. We both laughed and I commented that the thesis was the worst part of it all for me, that by then I felt I should just be done, etc. Then she acknowledged. She said she'd been telling the kids in the class how they were getting the worst of her (uh-huh), that the last two years have been the worst two years of her life in so many ways (oh yeah?). Trying to smile the whole time. I acknowledged by sharing that the worst year of my life was when EB was a baby and things were wacky all around and at the end of that year I got kicked out of the school I'd been working at. Big smiles all around for that little anecdote. Nothing personal, you know.
Still, I get it. She's stressed. No excuses, no justification, but I've been there. I choose to take my anger out on adults generally, but whatever.
This week was Open House. Now, she's been a little more standoffish with GB, who, you may recall, essentially threatened to kick her ass last time they spoke. He picked LB up from school one day this week and said she'd turned her head to avoid eye contact. Well, she pulled it out again and to her credit, mustered up her professionalism and approached us when we hit the classroom at Open House. I asked her how the thesis writing went. Not well. But they're letting her walk anyway and she has to finish it up this summer. Eh, I did that too, it happens. We laughed. Then she dropped her little bomb. Because, you know, she couldn't really finish it because there had been too many things *wink* *wink* recently, keeping her from concentrating, from sleeping, apparently from functioning in any way. GB and I both smiled at her vapidly and moved on.
Part of me is a little shocked that she actually tried to guilt us into accepting responsibility for her lack of a thesis. Part of me wants to laugh in her face. Part of me is shocked that she's actually getting a master's degree because I cannot imagine that it's actually in education, and if it is, it is certainly not in anything having to do with understanding children and their development. A lot of me thinks that's just icing on the cake. Rather than stopping to look at herself and her methods, she lays the blame at someone else's feet. Refuses to accept responsibility for herself, her speech, her actions. Yet expects a six year old child to not learn from that example and instead accept responsibility for his behaviors that, while definitely must be a pain in her ass, are far more age appropriate than lots of hers have been. Mostly though, I'm just happy that she has apparently actually been disciplined because she's learning to shut her mouth when it comes to my kid and my kid is no longer crying in the morning saying he doesn't want to go to school.
Some lessons we learn the hard way.
Last weekend we had the school fair. Put on by the PTA, which I have joined, as you may be aware. Nice affair, it's grown larger in the last few years. This year it seems to have been particularly successful.
Anyway, I had two jobs for this fair. One job I was not supposed to have, and that was as the room mom. Somehow at the beginning of the year this job was foisted upon me. Now, it's not that I have a problem with being room mom on principle, it's that I happen to be at work four out of five week days and, well, that becomes problematic when little things like classroom parties, snack day, field trips and PTA fair come up. Because the room mom's primary job is to man the booth at the PTA fair each year. Six hours of your school year, sewn up in September. Now, it's held on a Saturday so in theory I should be able to pull this off. Especially since there are two room moms in our class. Alas, the other room mom was also assigned as room mom to her older daughter's classroom, so there we have it. She's backed up over at that booth, which is quite popular. However, what is truly problematic for me about this is my other fair job, and that's a pretty big job.
I'm in charge of food. All of it. 500 hamburgers and buns. 500 hot dogs and buns (sold out an hour before the fair ended--note to self for next year). 128 cases of soda. sold out. 15 cases of water. sold out. 12 cans of disgusting looking nacho cheese sauce and 9 cans of equally gross chili sauce. sold out. It's a busy affair. Mustard. sold out. My job is to order all the food prior to the fair, coordinate pick ups, drop offs, handing outs. Coffee and donuts the morning of the fair (6:30 a.m.). Answer questions. 1500 pounds of ice. It's not that it's hard, it's just very tiring in the last 48 hours before the fair, and on the day of the fair I really have to be available to all the people selling food, not standing behind a popcorn machine next to a snow cone machine dancing madly because I am going to pee my pants and the family who signed up to work at the booth for a mere sixty minutes is nowhere in sight. That's where it becomes difficult for me to be room mom and in charge of two really big things at one time.
And we had a very popular booth this year. Nobody enjoys a snowcone more than a kid, and especially on a warm day. Now, generally the teachers work the booth for an hour or two, but recalcitrant teacher did not sign up to work that day. whatever. I had steeled myself to be polite and act as if GB and I had not basically asked to have her fired and then all that angst for naught.
At some point during the day I was able to leave the booth and wander around with the kids. It was then that we abruptly met up with her at the hamburger booth. She apparently had steeled herself as well because she gave LB a big hug, me a big smile and started idle chit chat. I noted that I'd heard she was graduating (see? I can bring it around) with her master's degree. She laughed and said something about having to spend some late nights typing over the next week. We both laughed and I commented that the thesis was the worst part of it all for me, that by then I felt I should just be done, etc. Then she acknowledged. She said she'd been telling the kids in the class how they were getting the worst of her (uh-huh), that the last two years have been the worst two years of her life in so many ways (oh yeah?). Trying to smile the whole time. I acknowledged by sharing that the worst year of my life was when EB was a baby and things were wacky all around and at the end of that year I got kicked out of the school I'd been working at. Big smiles all around for that little anecdote. Nothing personal, you know.
Still, I get it. She's stressed. No excuses, no justification, but I've been there. I choose to take my anger out on adults generally, but whatever.
This week was Open House. Now, she's been a little more standoffish with GB, who, you may recall, essentially threatened to kick her ass last time they spoke. He picked LB up from school one day this week and said she'd turned her head to avoid eye contact. Well, she pulled it out again and to her credit, mustered up her professionalism and approached us when we hit the classroom at Open House. I asked her how the thesis writing went. Not well. But they're letting her walk anyway and she has to finish it up this summer. Eh, I did that too, it happens. We laughed. Then she dropped her little bomb. Because, you know, she couldn't really finish it because there had been too many things *wink* *wink* recently, keeping her from concentrating, from sleeping, apparently from functioning in any way. GB and I both smiled at her vapidly and moved on.
Part of me is a little shocked that she actually tried to guilt us into accepting responsibility for her lack of a thesis. Part of me wants to laugh in her face. Part of me is shocked that she's actually getting a master's degree because I cannot imagine that it's actually in education, and if it is, it is certainly not in anything having to do with understanding children and their development. A lot of me thinks that's just icing on the cake. Rather than stopping to look at herself and her methods, she lays the blame at someone else's feet. Refuses to accept responsibility for herself, her speech, her actions. Yet expects a six year old child to not learn from that example and instead accept responsibility for his behaviors that, while definitely must be a pain in her ass, are far more age appropriate than lots of hers have been. Mostly though, I'm just happy that she has apparently actually been disciplined because she's learning to shut her mouth when it comes to my kid and my kid is no longer crying in the morning saying he doesn't want to go to school.
Some lessons we learn the hard way.
posted by LB @ 9:20 PM
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