Thursday, February 15, 2007

Did I Bump My Head?!

Last night the creative juices were flowing but today I am merely a vast wasteland of random thoughts.
-- Peckeroy

I have been in "rush mode" since last Thursday! Girl Scout meeting on Friday. Daughter's game on Saturday. Daughter's Harriet Tubman paper and project. Attend a high school fund raiser with Daughter Sat. night. Son's valentines. Daughter's valentine box. Packing Daughter for her trip to Raleigh to represent the school at Legislative School Technology Day. GETTING AN UGLY COLD(not part of the plan, but totally expected with all the disease at school - I continue to sing the praises of Zicam! It is the bomb-diggity! Go for the nasal options - most of the other stuff tastes HORRIBLE). Son's last basketball game. Botching dinner plans for after the game (yes, another fine disaster wracking me with guilt). Daughter's oral report practice (by the way - she did an awesome job). More Girl Scouts (cooking and all). AND THE ABSOLUTE BEST: preparing a presentation for the Best Practices Conference our county is sponsoring. Why I ever agreed to this is beyond my realm of understanding. I abhor speaking in front of adults. I typically mock those who present at these things because it is so pretentious the way they speak so upbeat and giddy....quoting research and warm-fuzzy quotes (yes, I use quotes - but you KNOW that they aren't all warm & fuzzy....and, yes, I must admit that I have already found and inserted a cheesy quote into my Power Point) . What have I done?! In true anal fashion I have created two Power Points: one that will loop as the people foolish enough to enter our realm (our referring to Luscious and me) and one that we will use to drone on endlessly during our presentation. The second one, in addition to the cheesy quote, also has documented research to back our method. What is wrong with me?! Luscious and I stayed at school until after 7 to prepare our "stuff". First she helped with Girl Scouts b/c Clementine's son is sick. Then we helped Daughter get ready for the 4th-6th grade dance and snooped as the kids arrived. This seems to be some odd obsession we have. When her son went to his first prom we camped out across the street from the place and commented on all the clothes and activity as if we were hired by E! to critique the red carpet at some foo foo award ceremony. We have since joked about being Prom Stalkers. Even worse was that we both had our daughters with us. I am sure they will be worried about us doing this again for their proms (Luscious's daughter has already been to a prom without us stalking.....but we just might show up when we're least expected). Progressively sadder is the fact that we drank in the car while doing this and then convinced my daughter that the cops came and caught us (while she napped). Now we have resorted to spying on elementary students as they arrive to a dance in the gym. Forget those Desperate Housewives and Real Housewives of Orange County.....we've gottem beat: The Pathetic Moms of Dare County. Every now and then Luscious and I have to do something naughty that real criminals would snicker at. However, our little mischievous acts satisfy our need to "be up to no good". On Thursday two guys were in our pod at school installing these sweet new projectors that will allow us to project our computers onto our whiteboards. We will no longer need to reserve the computer lab to show our students anything on the computer. We noticed that some of the projectors were being positioned in such a way that they would not project onto our whiteboards. Instead, they would project onto our bulletin boards. This was not good...our bulletin boards are always decorated to reflect our latest theme....not set up to be projection screens. We told our Technology person who came down to check it out. The expert installer felt that we were wrong and offered to turn one on to show us (dumb women) just how it would work. Luscious carefully watched him hook up temporary power to the projector (the electrician will eventually come to give it juice through the maze of wires in the ceiling) using an extension cord. It was hard not to crack a smile when he had to admit that he was wrong because part of the image projected onto the bulletin board and, try as he might, he could not get the image to appear solely on the whiteboard without moving the projector to a new area (causing him to have to go back and move each one he had already installed). In the course of all this Luscious also got the Tech person to show her how to get the computer to work with the projector. Can you see where this is leading? Last night in order to prepare for our impending presentation, Luscious decided we needed the projector. No, the computer screen would not suffice. We got the ladder out of the next classroom, got the extension cord, and hooked up the projector. This involved Luscious moving a ceiling tile and reaching up into the area above the ceiling. In true Luscious fashion, she wanted a Clorox wipe to wipe some filth. Neither her daughter nor I would get her one....wet wipe, electricity, $800 projector we're not authorized to use: not a good combo. We practiced the presentation and then her daughter...gee, have I "nicknamed" her yet?....I think Vera will be good for her! YAY!... went "screen shopping" (in the mall it would have been "window shopping"), projecting cute bags & stuff from the Vera Bradley site and cute dresses from American Eagle Outfitters on the board. My blog looked pretty sweet up there, too...especially the paper plate art...nothing like the big screen to enhance that mouth! There. That's it. The true tale of our criminal behavior. We're rebels. The car is now packed full of our presentation crap so we can go set it up tomorrow afternoon (an hour away). Monday morning we get to travel there again so we can present from 9:15 to 10 and then quickly break it down for the next group that presents in our room at 10:15. We'd be freaking out if we weren't presenting first because there is absolutely NO WAY we could set up our junk to our anal specifications in 15 minutes. I am still pondering why I agreed to this. I know I must have bumped my head. I think I will get to take a small breather after this....or at least I can try to fool myself into believing it.

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