In Which I Realize I Am Insane

Once again, this afternoon, I spent 45 minutes of a gorgeous autumn day runing an art class for 11 3rd through 5th graders. The Bunny's school has an annual book festival as a fund-raiser, and I am involved. "Incarcerated" may be the better word. "Semi-voluntarily committed" also works.

See, this school is a private school started for all those premier Saint Paul families who were not Catholic, and thus were stuck with either the public schoools, or raising their children to go to daily mass and to get their information from cloistered nuns. Robber barons of the early 20th century didn't apparently like those options, so they started their own school.

And overachievement has reigned ever since.

Don't get me wrong, it's a fine, fine school, and I am thrilled with the academic opportunities my kids are getting. It's just that there is something...I don't know, maybe "off"...about having volunteer meetings with women rifling through DayTimers (TM) and FiloFaxes (TM). Once something happens at that school, it just keeps growing and growing.

Many schools have book fairs for fundraisers, and they put up tables in the cafeteria, call Scholastic to bring some books, and then are done. Not us. Oh no--that wouldn't require the tactical and strategic effort of all our Type A stay-at-home parents. So ours lasts a week. We have daily readings by parents in all the classrooms. We have class trips to fill out wish lists. We have appearances by authors and illustrators and professionals who embody the year's theme. We have Family Night, in which families are invited to shop for books, AND have dinner, AND have story-time, AND see a presentation by an entomologist, AND another presentation by the Minnesota Zoo...

And we decorate the cafeteria. And not just decorate--the goal is to transform it. This is my job.

I got into it because a friend of mine was doing it all by herself. She came in with rafts of pictures she had been painting in her basement for weeks, and I told her that she should let me help, because I enjoy painting. So, one year, we did it together. And she suggested that we should co-teach a mini-course: 45 minutes twice a week for six weeks and get the kids involved. I agreed, and then her kids left the school, leaving me to run it. This is now my third year. Like I said--semi-voluntarily committed.

Now the event is next week, and it's time the rubber hits the road. Or the craft paper hits the walls. I have a ton of ideas, and no way to make them reality--having two kids playing sports and having to drive to away games totally takes away the time I can use the school to paint and plan.

Well, this is the last time I need to do this, and I'm totally going to have to have my head examined before I take on this big of a project again.