First Day Tea of Terror

We just dropped Alena off for her last first day at Pleasant Hill Christian School.
It was bittersweet.
A mixture of happiness to have her back in school, and sadness that it's her last year at that wonderful school.

She's attended PHCS since kindergarten, and almost all of her class has, too.



She forgot to kiss me goodbye. I guess I should be used to it.
She was too busy showing off her new lunch bag and making the face she makes when she's excited and is trying not to smile.

She looked cute.
An amazing feat when you're in middle school.

I think it's basically a generally accepted thing that your middle school years should be your most awkward.
This is a concept I refuse to accept, and one day I'm sure Alena will thank me that lastnight I pinned her down on my bed and plucked her eyebrows for her.
She thinks I'm torturous. I think I'm saving her life.

I stood around with the other parents snapping pictures and trying to keep Tessa from freeing the class chinchillas until the teacher actually told us we had to go. Like, NOW.

PHCS always holds a First Day Tea at the firehouse down the road, so off we went in a parade fashion down the hill and in the doors.

While Justin swan dove into the mound of sweetened carbs on the table, my eyes immediately went to the poster on the wall that said:

Wednesday Janitorial/Bathroom Clean Up Volunteers
and I had a mini panic attack.

It was like a movie where everything fades to a cloudy white and I was taken back to a time when we used to clean the school for extra money.
We went there two times a week, a half hour drive each way, and cleaned as a family.
It was sheer torture.
There wasn't a week without a game of
"guess what substance is stuck to the boys bathroom stall walls"
and the vacuuming ALONE could be part of the plot line for Saw VI.

We did that job for four years. Four that felt like ten.

I thought about the moms at the school who do everything. EVERY THING.
They sign up on every sheet. They drive to every field trip. They make crafts and poster boards and cheer at every relay race. They probably have pictures of the school building tattooed across their lower backs.
I thought about how I would like to be that type of mom, but then I thought that if it required Wednesday janitorial/bathroom clean up volunteering, I was going to just have to settle into my title as
Slacker Mom who's kid frees the chinchillas.

But, good ol' Justin.
He signed up for something.

After school pick up for the little kids.

The little kids who get out an hour earlier than Alena, who is our only child attending the school.
He signed up when his schedule is likely to change every week and there are many days he'll probably be working.
He signed up not realizing that signing your name for Thursday afternoons meant THIS Thursday afternoon, as in TODAY.

He's upstairs asleep after working all night.
He's supposed to be there in an hour.

He signed up, but in reality - He signed ME up.

I can just picture it now - Me out there in the afternoons with both girls who will be missing their nap because of the time slot, trying to keep them from meltdowns and from running into oncoming school pick up circle traffic while simultaneously shoving kids into their cars and chit chatting with their parents.

Oh yeah - and they want me to paint a mural.
I'll get right on that.

After I snapped back into reality, I saw that after Tessa had removed half the table cloth and shown her belly to the entire room, she had helped herself to about half of a watermelon with the same fingers she'd just been sticking in her nose and Chloe's.
She climbed, she jumped, she rifled through the baked goods, she shrieked as the Parent Club tried to explain e-scrip.
(An explanation that for the LIFE of me I cannot stay concious for.)

It was like I was in the primate enclosure trying to teach sign language to monkeys that, frankly, would rather be eating their own mites.

Meanwhile, Chloe sat next to me with a scowl on her face and the only words coming from her mouth being,
"Mommy, will you wipe my noooooooooossssseeee?" 4000 times.

I picked her up to cuddle her and she layed her face flat into my chest and blew out the biggest, snottiest sneeze there ever was all over my skin.
She was so pressed up against me that besides all the snot, the sneeze made a raspberry sound (Why do they call it that, anyway? Raspberry?....)
and then she sat up, looked me in the eyes and said, "Mommy. You look pretty."

Gee. Thanks. Snot does that to a person.
As does making the room think someone over here farted by the noise you just made.
As if all eyes weren't on us already.

What can I say? It's a glamor job.

By this time, Justin was almost in a diabetic coma from all the sweet rolls he ate, and after waking up after only one hour of sleep to come to this, he wasn't looking so hot himself.
He almost looked in need of oxygen.

I realized we'd better leave before they posted a
"Do not allow this family to register for school again" poster next to the bathroom cleaning sign up sheet.

I'm pretty sure we terrorized everyone sufficiently.
We Greens aim to please.


"Mama, Where are we going next?"
"We're going home, Honey. Home where four walls hide our insanity from the world, at least most of the time."

"Mommy?"
"Yes?"

"Can I have a snack when we get there?"