Post Production

I'm finally done with all the parent day productions! Yipes, but that was difficult. A co-worker had to come help supervise one class as they were so hard to teach, and the boss stepped in on the last young class to help me with changes we had to make at the last minute. Ordinarily I'd be ticked off, but not in this case. I really learned quite a bit I can use in future classes, and some of the things they stepped in to do are things I know to do but I'd lost them briefly in the chaos. Nobody disgraced themselves, and I can stop worrying about how everything will go. At least for a month or so when we start working on the final production.

The shuffle begins to reorganize classes, as new students come in and others drop. Supposedly I'm losing three big troublemakers in my first class of the week, which makes me so happy I can't speak. This bodes well! In my last class of the week we're down to seven, one of whom has never actually been to class since November and another whose parents can't get their schedules straight. Ought to be interesting when we get to the end of the year.

Around home things are okay. Nice and slow, really. The Bigun is off for two weeks doing Army things. The Little Critter, coming off a high from a straight A semester, is throwing herself back into school routine. JJ is out tonight, bowling with the guys from our new Bible study class. And I'm contemplating the next year in PTA.

I turned in my form today for the nominating committee, entering Treasurer and Membership as offices I'd like to hold. But I've learned that the first VP doesn't intend to run for anything next year, and the only two other viable president candidates don't seem to be good choices. If the committee gets nominations and doesn't like the choices, they can recruit more people for the positions. I'm wondering if I'm going to be asked to run for president after all. This is frustrating me, because I JUST sat down with JJ and talked it out and decided NOT to run for president, and just to give the PTA this next year. Of course, nothing happens unless I'm approached by the committee, but I have a feeling it's coming.

Meanwhile I'm studying for the parliamentary exam, and not feeling so confident, so more study is in order. I have a month or so, and there are 300 questions, so I ought to be able to get there. It's been ages since I took a test in anything. On top of that, just the other day JJ mentioned me going back to school to get my CPA. Ick ick ick! If I can't hack a 300 question multiple choice/true false test on nerdy parliamentary procedure, no way can I get my Masters in Accounting.

The only other thing going on is a weird little struggle in JJ's family. I say this because it's usually MY family having the weirdness. We thrive on the weirdness. We attract the weirdness. We manufacture the weirdness when it is in short supply. Not so JJ's clan.

That clan, whom we'll call the Jennings since they are distantly related to William Jennings Bryan, has always been ten kinds of normal to me. Three sisters, each of whom had three children. Normal sibling squabbles in each generation, but nothing nasty or vicious or wicked. Scratch the surface, I'm learning, and the weirdness emerges.

Case in point - Janelle. Janelle is in her late 40s or early 50s, but thinks she's 28. When JJ needed a car he called his parents to see if they had one he could borrow until he could find one. They usually do have two or three lying around. (I don't know why this is.) His mom suggested calling Cousin Janelle. Janelle's parents had passed away within five years of each other, and Janelle was supposed to be living in the house tying up loose ends of the estate. Janelle had a hoopty rusting in the driveway and would give it to JJ for $1500. Sold! We drove up and got it and Janelle said she'd send the title in a few days.

This was November. Still no title. Which means no inspection. And no plates.

First she said the title was lost. Then she said she couldn't get to the courthouse to get the paperwork done for a new title. Then she said she lost her driver's license. Now JJ and I think she never changed the title when her parents died, and it is titled to the estate, and that's why she won't get it done.

Now JJ is hopping mad, though I passed that threshhold into denial long ago. When talking to his mother about it, he learned there's another Janelle issue going on. Apparently their 101-year-old grandmother changed her will. In it, I'm told, she's accounting for the fact that JJ's parents moved up to be with her so she can stay in her home as long as possible. Apparently Janelle feels cheated somehow by the new arrangement as it reduces the potential amount the grandchildren get.

Huh?

The lady may be old, but she's still there, and still able to say what she wants to do with her stuff! I'm hoping I understand this all wrong. Really I do. I'd hate to see a will squabble over Grandmommy. We love Grandmommy so much we named the LC after her. The last thing she needs is a tug of war over her stuff.

Blinded me with Science

Yes, and now you will hate me for getting THAT song stuck in your head.

But I'm the volunteer coordinator of the hands-on science project and I wanted to share one with you. Each grade level has a lesson designed to work with the curriculum and give the kids a lab experience to drive home the main thrust of the lessons. Last year I got sucked in, and I'm glad I did.

Sunday afternoon last year, at 2:30, Reyna calls me. She's in a panic. The science lesson has to be done Monday morning and she has no owl pellets to dissect. She has no idea of how to obtain said owl pellets. And is up the proverbial excrement stream sans means of locomotion.

"Come over," I say. "We'll figure something out," I say.

I dig up an old recipe for play dough and start rummaging in the pantry. Out comes pasta, jelly bellies, and rice. I hunt up the yard for dead grass, thanking JJ that he didn't bag the grass clippings. Which causes him to worry about me. But Reyna has arrived, desperate and not even slightly disturbed at all the mismatched junk on my counter.

We make up several colors of dough in batches, and start folding in the pasta; wheels, spaghetti, curly noodles. We add rice to other batches, along with grass and jelly bellies. Into some samples, we mix a little of both combinations.

Then we make a key.

Jelly bellies = berries
Rice = seeds
grass = grass (wow, that creativity shining through!)
wheels = skulls
rotini = leg bones
spaghetti = spines

So the end product is dozens of batches of play dough shaped like technicolor crap. Now with prizes inside!

In class the next day, we explain about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. Then we have the kids use plastic knives and carefully pry into the poop. They dig in with gusto, even after (or due to) hearing that these represent animal poop. They carefully consult their keys, then argue, debate and decide which type of animal they are tracking. The rule is that each group must decide on a corporate answer. Once they get their answer, they have to explain how they got it.

After we deal with animal poop, we move on to other ways of tracking animals, such as actual tracks. For that exercise, each student cuts out a set of seven animal tracks, from elephants to ducks to bunnies to bears. Then they have to glue the tracks onto a paper with different habitats represented; a farm, a savanna, a jungle, a field.

The teachers are impressed, the kids have a blast (and a year later can tell you all about that lesson) and Reyna is spared. I get to make up the whole thing from scratch, and teach it too. Oh, and a year later the second grade team is insisting on doing the lesson again, exactly as before, so my work is now built into the curriculum.

And me? I get to put that on a resume when looking for my drama teaching job. Because, not only can I create the shit and deliver the shit, I AM the shit.

Out of Order

Oh, did we get back into the swing of things when school started again.

Firstly, we're in production in six classes for Parent Day, and that means three different types of presentations, two scripts, endless pair scripts and monologues, various speech exercises and so on. In the middle of that, everyone seems to want me for something else, but more of that later.

Today's older class was excruciating. Of the eight students that are on the roll, five showed by class time. Our play requires all eight members, so we couldn't work on that. The speech work planned we did get to cover, but I'll have to reteach next week to the other ones, and this is a 32 line piece complete with motions and variations in pace, pitch, and energy. Ugh. Their pair scripts went very well, which gives me some hope for Parent Day. The biggest challenge is getting them focused. When I entered the room, all of them were on their knees and genuflected, saying "All Hail the Mighty Fish!"

OK, I admit, that was funny.

Most of the other classes are okay, but nothing I am too confident about. I'll lose a third class after January, as there are too few students to keep it open. That's one of the sub classes I picked up, and I'm not too sorry to see it go. How can you have a class with two kids in it? You just can't, though I've done it. Until then, we'll work on some pieces for an end of January Parent Day and then close the class. I want to blow them out of the water at that one so that everyone feels bad they wouldn't get their kids to class on time each week. (So there, nyahhhh.)

At the same time as all this, there are school things as usual, and election things approaching. One day this week I had one friend drop by to chat coupons for 5 minutes (when I was going to nap) and then two people over right after school for different things. One was letting her granddaughter try on my stage to see if she could earn money for pageants that way, and another wanted all the info on elections and primaries I could give him in five minutes. Yikes.

Shockingly (not) the PTA meeting was cancelled, and no sign of a reschedule in sight. This probably means no carnival. The president really needs to be removed, but this late in the game nobody wants to take her on. It's agonizing. And it's only going to get worse.

My friend J, who was there when I got the true story about being maligned, is in a dither. She's worked herself up over the incident and has decided to insist that I get a formal apology at the next meeting. What triggered it is a chance meeting at a restaurant with a peripheral member. They were talking PTA and the member declared she wouldn't be active in PTA because of the politics. When J pressed for examples, the lady referred to me and that incident. This was a full two months later. So J spent ten minutes setting the lady straight, at which the lady declared she was going home to make phone calls about this.

I'm STILL trying to live this down, and what ticked J off is this: when the president called me out over it (and I denied it) she didn't even have her facts straight, which a simple visit to the nurse would have accomplished. So far bad, but understandable. What was worse was when J walked into a meeting of the HOA a few days later, everyone THERE knew about the episode. Now, how, she asks, could that have gotten around without the president spreading it?

Well, I know; the president heard it from the Fundraising chair who misheard it, embellished it and then spread it far and wide, and didn't take the detour to the nurse before jumping me over it. For the record, J found out who did it and it was our old dear friend S, but again I got tarred with that brush.

Can't wait to see the sparks fly.

Oh, and the title for this post, which is what I logged in to blog about in the first place? I'm studying for the National Association of Parliamentarians exam, so my brain is awash in procedural technical jargon. I'll take it in a month but until then I'll be making motions and calling "Point of Order" in my sleep.

Just Bummin' Around

I have rediscovered my Inner Lazy Bum and it's delightful.

There have been no meetings this week or last. Not one class did I have to teach. No deadlines, no headaches (both figuratively and literally,) no massive food shopping excursions, no political tasks (with the exception of filing for precinct chair) and not one school-related activity.

Bliss.

I should have been blogging during this time, but alas, there has been nothing to tell, other than the fact that there's nothing to tell.

We had a blast at my boss's New Year's Eve party, where they had crockpots of chili and queso and platters of food, along with a firepit in the backyard and karaoke in the house. Oh, yes, Fish jammed on some karaoke with the gang. At least I did when the boss's spouse wasn't hogging the machine. He loves him some karaoke, and treated us to some interesting interpretations. It's funny when the drama teacher in the family is the normal one. Speaking of that, JJ got up and acquitted himself quite nicely during Mack the Knife. It took several glasses of adult beverages and some prodding, but he did it. I love that man.

Somewhere in there we drove up to the Woodlands to scope out convention hotels for the PTA convention in February. We scored a suite with kitchen and living area for about $120 a night, which will be an in-your-face to some of the people who aren't sure what they want to do or where they want to stay. The president was talking about sleeping 5 to a room so several people could go, and so my friend J and I pledged to pay our own way. We get the room and they get whatever they can find.

Eventually I'm going to have to turn my brain towards work again. There are three classes in which I need to revise a script so the students can learn it before parent presentations. I'm not all excited about that, if only because each class wrote their own material and some of it is good, some not so much. Still, Tuesday is days away now and I have to return to the real world some time.

The one thing I'm really dreading is that there's a PTA meeting the day BEFORE the kids go back to school. I have to get into the school somehow and run reports before that meeting, and I have no idea how to do that. Oh, well, there just won't be any financials if they haven't got it together.

Until then I think I'll clean house and try to avoid learning who won the Iowa Caucuses.