Too Much Information

It's report day. So I'm running reports for the board and general meetings, having lunch with the LC, trying to clean a little around the house, preparing for a meeting after school for the challenge competition, and then I'm off to my first official meeting of the party executive committee. I've already averted disaster by redating two requests that put me off by $33.16. Glad that's fixed.

I'm not a math person at all. Why did I agree to do this treasurer thing? For that matter, why did I get an accounting degree?

At any rate, aside from trying to figure out who spent what on which things, I'm reading Dinesh D'Souza. I always feel dumb when I start one of his books. He's a Dartmouth-educated immigrant from India, and incredibly detailed in his analyses of whatever he tackles, from higher education to religion to the post 9/11 world. By the time I finish a book he has written I do feel smarter, but I also have headaches from stretching my brain. I haven't thought this much since college lit.

It makes me think of going back to school for something. Anything.

I miss hashing out ideas. I miss pouring over a work and feebly attempting critical analysis. Reading this level of stuff actually makes me miss my high school friend Sean. He was one for making me stretch my brain on a daily basis. Between Sean and Burte, another one too smart for me, I was able to divert my attention from all the high school mess going on around me and stay sane. But nowadays, there's almost nothing making me insane that I cannot walk away from.

I worked the first of the last three days at church yesterday, and as I thought, it went easier because I knew there was an end date. It actually wasn't a typical crazy day, with the possible exception of Charlie. When Charlie and his mom arrived, I got the warmest greeting. Poor guy, I've had him under my supervision one way or another since he was three. The first day I met him he tried to throw himself down the stairs to get away from me. (Charlie does NOT like change.) Since then, I've had him in class and then as a hall monitor, and when nobody else can handle him, I get him.

He got booted from worship for doing whatever he wanted a few months ago, and his parents have been trying to come in and stay with him to ease the problem. That didn't work out well, so they went back to leaving him. It makes their Sundays crazy, because they never know when they'll get a call to come get him.

But when he started again yesterday, we pulled him out of class and he had to sit outside the room with me. It took about 20 minutes for him to settle, and only the prospect of getting cupcakes for snack sobered him. He tried everything; whining, wrestling, crawling all over the hallway, but I worked him over with Love and Logic principles and he seemed to respond a little. When it was snack time, he carried in the cupcakes for the class, and then went like an angel to service and participated more fully than I had ever seen him. His parents had a whole Sunday in class and worship without the fretting, and Charlie had a good time once he reined himself in. It felt good to report back to his mom and brag on how he got himself under control. The look on her face at pickup time was worth all the fuss he gave me.

Then I had to tell her I'm leaving. I don't regret leaving, but I hate to see them get him settled in again only to have him regress soon after I leave.

*note to self: this is not my problem*

So maybe I can go back to school for early childhood development? At least there's no accounting involved.