Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Conferences, Book Fairs and Voting

No matter the planning and your thinking you are on every detail of the day's and week's goings ons, something comes up that fell off the radar. It's one of those blinking lights the flight control guys see or submarine watches keep their eyes on that suddenly disappears or worse is cloaked under darkness and can avoid all detection ....

Yeah, I had three of those items pop up today that have really kind of blown a fourth part. Or the fourth part will happen around midnight. I keep,watching the DVR box to see if a red light goes on because that means something is recording that I will feel compelled to watch before night's end. Which means, a late fourth part.

Back to the three missing dots on the radar screen. 

Our elementary school has two early dismissal days this week for parent-teacher conferences. OK, first you have to organize the picking up and watching of your elementary-aged children until the babysitter or you get home. Second, you have to attend the conference because, well, you are the parent. And, it's football season, so you really are the parent responsible for the conferences. The teachers are so sweet and so patient and so loving. And, so desperately want you to understand the details of the testing and the charts indicating progress. I nod and say thank you and bless you and think I'm glad I only have two this age. I ask about number grades and joke about how hard that must be to average those out. (I mean, really, where are the check marks and check pluses? GPAs in elementary school!?!?)

Second dot that I tried to erase, color in and darken stared us in the face while walking to the conferences.  Book Fair. Bonus, book fair family night extended hours. Off we go to look at each and every book and add-on item (diaries, stickers, posters and all sorts of plastic doo dads to aid in reading). I lay down the rules -- one silly themed book and one real book. It makes sense in our family. The real book is a classic chapter book and yeah, we count Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Junie B. Jones as classics. Oh how I long for the days of Judy Blume Frecklejuice and Encyclopedia Brown. Or Charlotte's Web. Nah, classics have progressed into cartoons and poor grammar. We purchased five books because I want to try Magic Treehouse -- a soon to be classic series read in our home.

It's now 6 p.m. and we've not started dinner, bath or cocktail hour (for me, for me). 

Third dot -- voting. A few constitutional amendments and a bond issue for our district were on the ballot. Showed my voter registration card which doesn't stand on its own anymore (don't get me started on needing my driver license) and I voted. Quick. As we drove home, I let the girls know the lengths women went to so we could vote. I threw in the going to jail and suffering for the right. The girls were already deep into their new books. 

Home. Base. 

Thankfully, dinner was easy to prepare and everyone liked it! Loving Blue Apron. Bath was easy. Settling in for the evening was easy. New books! Glass of wine (or two ... for me, for me). Melatonin gummies all around and we have a fourth part miracle. Dishes are even in the dishwasher. Kitchen is cleaned. House is picked up.

8 p.m. Fourth part. Miracle. That blinking dot didn't fall off the radar. I would not lose that precious dot.


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