It was a busy week: two soccer games, Meet the Board Candidates Meeting, two Back-to-School Nights, WGGS meeting and WGGS fundraiser, two ESL tutoring sessions, a blood donation appointment, M to pasta party (so food to bring), J birthday party (so gift to buy), high school homecoming (with emergency dress-shopping at mall), and hosting J’s sleepover on Saturday night. And in between I had a later-than-usual newsletter night, I managed to finish my draft of the PTO directory I do every year, and Cute W drove up to Vermont to work on a family project for a day. Phew.
So: at the Meet the Candidates Meeting I went in completely undecided and left a big Backus supporter. This was a surprise to me, but on multiple occasions the other two candidates literally didn’t know what they were talking about. Which is maybe only clear if you go to enough board meetings and pay attention enough to actually know what all of the hot topics are. I used to be a very regular attendee of board meetings, and I’ve slacked off lately, but I still basically know what’s going on. I feel like a bare minimum for a prospective candidate is someone who’s been coming to enough board meetings to have an idea of what’s involved in being a board member. Anyway, if you’re Nisky, don’t forget to vote on Tuesday.
The middle school BTS Night was not the best. Perhaps in response to parents always wanting to speak directly about their child to teachers, they chose not to do the usual “this is how my class runs” presentations and instead did a single “here’s how to make sure your kid is doing homework” for all the classes, then let parents wander around. So then you’d try to walk into a classroom and you’d see some parent urgently whispering to a teacher and you’d back out, because you don’t want to interrupt, then we’d repeat that three or four times. It wasn’t great. I want to know, for example, what topics they’re studying in social studies and which books they’re reading in English. And, okay, the truth is that I know this from looking over each teacher’s syllabus, but I like to hear what the teachers have to say about it, and this didn’t really happen.
In contrast, I pretty much love the high school BTS Night. I love being semi-lost as we try to find our way to classes. I know that other people hate that, but it makes me feel almost euphoric because it doesn’t actually matter at all. I still remembering moving to a new high school as a freshman and getting completely lost and feeling like an idiot and worrying about getting yelled at by teachers for being late and realizing that it was impossible to get to the second floor because the second floor was on one end of the building and I was on the only-a-basement-and-ground-floor end of the building. Man, it was traumatic. So somehow getting lost at high school when there are no consequences reminds me of how splendid it is to be a grown-up, to be decades past that adolescent angst. Â I love seeing so many people I know (even if we usually don’t get a chance to chat), and I love seeing what all the teachers are like. They only get seven minutes for a schpiel, so it’s interesting to see who can make it work and who can’t. And of course it’s a bonus when a teacher actually asks who my kid is and says that they like her.
On Thursday I ran from M’s soccer game to the WGGS fundraiser to HS BTS Night, and later I felt pretty stupid that I didn’t think to take any photos of the fundraiser. Because no one thought to take any photos of the fundraiser. I was too busy making quick hellos and scarfing down shrimp.
On Saturday J had just a few girls over for her birthday sleepover, so getting ready for that was a project.
First, I think that I’m just temperamentally incapable of keeping a tidy linen closet.
In my defense, this is a very teensy closet. It is the kind of closet that visitors see and say, “Oh, that’s so cute and charming! Who says that old houses don’t have storage space, look at that!” and I will smile and nod, but I tell you, I SAY THAT OLD HOUSES DON’T HAVE STORAGE SPACE. This space is ridiculous. It is skinny and deep. The lower section is a funky little drop-down thing that may or many not have been a laundry chute at some point. In order to reach the higher shelves I monkey-climb and hoist myself up so I’m standing on the banister. I have organized this closet repeatedly and it just doesn’t stick. Then I am preparing for an event (like this sleepover: I wanted to find two spare twin fitted sheets for the spare mattresses, just in case), so once I finally find whatever I’m looking for, I’ve lost all patience and I just shove everything back in. And of course, after all that, they didn’t even USE the spare mattresses.
Meanwhile, J was down in the basement playroom, organizing things just-so. I love how she added pillows to her Yogibo so it looks like a little sofa, and her gymnastics mat became a teensy fort.
More on the sleepover later.
