Finals ended last Friday for Vince. Yesterday was MLK day and today was a teacher’s professional day so the fine people who educate our children could do grading and pull together the report cards. So it was a 4 day weekend for the children.
Vince and three of his pals suddenly realized – pretty much at the beginning of the four day weekend – that they had a project due on Friday the 23rd. This project required 4 hours of community service and also a colorful presentation. Frantically, the other parents and I scrambled to find somewhere where the kids could go (3 hours Monday, 1 hour today) to be somewhat helpful. They ended up picking up a lot of trash in parks which sounded really dull and boring to me, but ended up being very entertaining because they ended up crossing creeks and climbing up and down large rocky mountains and getting muddy. Sometimes this coordination effort that goes on behind the scenes, hidden in the dark corner of my email inbox, exhausts me. I have no good reason for this, it’s only email and a few exchanges. I’m tired and then Vince lobbied hard for a sleepover with the boys between the two trash picking up episodes. His lament? It’s been a while since the last sleepover. A while? It’s been like since FRIDAY. It’s been two nights since a sleepover.
Anyways because I’m a pushover (and beacuse Jeremy gently reminded that the kids were on break and that they really had this time off) and Vince rapidly curtailed his eye rolling tactic into a sweet talk tactic (i.e. You are the best mother I’ve ever had!), I had three boys over at the house for over 24 hours. It’s too long really, you can see their eyes glaze over at the 20 hour mark even though it’s only 3 pm.
Part of the sleepover deal was that they finish the presentation before everyone went home. Vince complained when I stipulated this, because it’s due FRIDAY and it’s only TUESDAY. But I was not going through another round of coordinating emails to get this sucker done. Just an hour of concentration is all that I asked for. And this is what happened:
This is such not a girls’ group project. When I look at this, I just want to straighten everything and make everything evenly balanced. Oh well. Good enough.