Yesterday morning I dragged myself out of bed. This is becoming increasingly hard the closer we get to summer vacation because, frankly, I am over second grade. But the Texas legislature says we still have three weeks of school left even though everyone’s brain checked out sometime around Easter.
And so I walked to the kitchen in a stupor because it was time to make the donuts. And by donuts, I mean Caroline’s lunch. Packing a lunch on a normal day is hard enough, but factor in the fact that I haven’t been to the grocery store in over a week and it was like one of those bizarre Quick Fire Challenges on Top Chef. Except this didn’t involve making a canape in thirty seconds using lobster and asparagus as much as it involved what kind of sandwich can you make using no lunch meat or cheese when your child doesn’t really care for peanut butter and jelly and the only other thing you have on hand are some questionable carrots and a triangle of Laughing Cow cheese.
So I just did the best I could and threw in a granola bar, some cheese and crackers, four grapes, a stick of beef jerky and three Oreos in an attempt to compensate for packing such a lame lunch. Then I prayed that this wouldn’t be the day one of the other parents decided to join the class for lunch.
It didn’t help that Caroline was in a big hurry to get to school because the school store is open on Tuesday mornings and was having a big sale and there was some item that she was “DYING TO BUY” and had “WANTED HER WHOLE ENTIRE LIFE”. We rushed through our morning routine like a pit crew at a Nascar race and the whole thing ended with me yelling, “GO, GO, GO!”.
We just barely made it to the school store on time. Caroline took out the money she’d brought, picked out her item, paid her 75 cents and walked over to where I was waiting for her. Like you, I was dying to know what she had to have, what thing she’d wanted for her entire life.
It was a pencil sharpener shaped like a foot.
Well, of course.
I know that if I didn’t have some deep foot-related phobias, I would certainly want a pencil sharpener in the shape of a foot. Because it’s super classy.
After the foot pencil sharpener purchase, she still had money left over and I suggested she might want to buy a few raffle tickets for the PTO/Teacher raffle that’s going on this week. You can buy four tickets for a dollar and then place your tickets in various cans that represent items that teachers have donated for the raffle. There are iTunes gift cards, gift certificates to toy stores, and stuffed animals. A group of fourth grade teachers pooled their money together to offer $100 cash.
Caroline filled out her raffle tickets and ran off to drop them in the buckets she chose. When she came back, she announced, “I put four tickets in the bucket for that stuffed pony and the other four tickets in the bucket to win the betta fish.”
I said, “Did you see the bucket for the $100? You might want to put some tickets in that bucket tomorrow.”
She looked at me with a look just short of a major eye roll, a look that conveyed she couldn’t believe how much I don’t know about life and said, “WHY WOULD I DO THAT? I ALREADY HAVE $100”.
And I said, “Oh, okay”.
Because she’d probably just blow it all on pencil sharpeners shaped like feet.
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