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So, I may have mentioned once, or twice, or many, many times that I have issues with being on time. I have to be on time, or someone, somewhere in the world may die. I arrive everywhere fifteen minutes early to save lives people. So you can imagine my discomfort when at 1:17 pm my babysitter was MIA and I had to be at Aaron’s school to help with an art project by 1:30pm. Oh, yeah, I was kinda losing it just a tad, and when I called and confirmed that the babysitter had indeed forgotten, and I was on my own, I switched into haul ass mode, and was all, “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
I threw a jacket on Elyse and ran out the door, hoping and praying that she had socks and shoes in the van. Her shirt was covered in yogurt splatters from lunch and her hair was absolutely everywhere. It must have looked like I rescued her from a life on the streets on my way to volunteer at the school.
Now I get her into the car seat and praise be to God there was quite a selection of socks and shoes scattered around on the floor. So I’m putting on her shoes and socks when she says something. It was muffled, but I knew exactly what she said. Had I not been completely scattered, I might have thought twice before I said what came next, but I was insane with the threat of being late and so I blurted out, “What did you say?” And of course, with out missing a beat she said, “DAMN IT!” I closed the door and headed to school.
The entire way…the ENTIRE way to school she sang a lovely chorus of, “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” And I totally would have stopped to pick up my Mother of the Year trophy, but I was running late you see.
So we get to school and luckily I was able to distract her with the notion that she was going to get to see Brother and she forgot all about the Damn It song; at least, I’m sure, until she gets to Sunday school this weekend. Then it will be all, “Hey, guess what I learned…”
If you remember some of my previous dealings with Elyse at Aaron’s school, then you know why I was not exactly thrilled to have her with me. I thought for sure that things would get ugly, but somehow Elyse managed to pull herself together and actually behave. Although when she was running around Aaron’s desk giving him kisses on the fly and inciting giggles and laughs from all of the other kids in the class, Aaron’s teacher looked at me and said, “Oh, she’s rotten, isn’t she.” Uh huh.
Now the project at hand was a cute little foam turkey. The kids had traced their hands on a piece of brown foam and then each kid had a little baggie that had all of the other pieces for the turkey inside. It seemed pretty straight forward. Cut out hand…glue on pieces…VIOLA…handprint turkey. Except that the mom in charge of us volunteers decided that we were not making turkeys, but rather constructing very intricate, super elaborate, amazingly involved scale models of foul in turkey form.
Once we had gotten started, I opened bags of turkey bits for the kids and then was like, “Ok guys, go to it.” I mean, you know, it’s a freakin turkey. But then Nazi Mom…after most of my kids were elbow deep in glue and foam pieces…announced, “Ok, now the first thing that you have to do is glue on the hat.” I was embarrassed at first that I had let the kids just dive in when apparently there was a process, but then I was all, “Talk to the handprint turkey lady. We got this covered.”
So my table was having a blast gluing all of the turkey bits and Elyse was happily sitting at the table across from her big brother coloring her own handprint turkey, when I saw it. There was a little girl at the end of the table, and in between turkey construction she would pick up her bottle of glue and sniff it. SHE WAS SNIFFING GLUE!!!!! Holy crap that girl is sniffing glue! As the volunteer was I supposed to put a stop to that and totally harsh her buzz? I decided that it fell under the domain of teacher responsibilities and I left well enough alone, but I had a hard time wiping the stupid grin off of my face. I mean come on! She was sniffing glue for cryin out loud.
Everyone was just about done when the mother who was overseeing all of the art projects for the entire school walked into the classroom to see how we were doing. Nazi Mom was all, “Well, there were steps to the turkey, but they’re not patient enough, and blah, blah process, and yada, yada method,” and I’m all, “That girl was sniffing glue!”
So the turkeys were done, Nazi Mom tried to make peace with her disastrous failed attempt at total militant turkey assembly, and I got to take Aaron home early since I was there and all. We went home, put Elyse down for her nap, threw some pre-made cookie dough into the oven, and spent the afternoon watching A Christmas Story. Not a bad end to what had the potential to be a total disaster.
PS. The turkey at the top of this post was the exact turkey that we made in the class. Looks complicated, huh.
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