Have You Hugged a Teacher Lately?

We have reached the time of year that I think of as Mom Needs A Drink Season. Between end of year activities, Memorial Day band & scout stuff, picnics, parties, spring band and chorus concerts (also known as those times when I think about hanging myself with my camera strap), cheer goings on, and new this year, CLO camp, and dance recital - May and June are KILLER.

Somewhere in the middle of that, there will be a short beach vacation, during which I will drink every last weight watchers point in rum.

On Wednesday, I volunteered to help at the big end of year luau party at the girl's school. They have crafts and a dance party and inflatables and "minute games." I was assigned to a minute game called "This Blows." True story. Someone at the school thought that "This Blows" was a perfectly good name for a game played by 5-11 year olds. Personally, I didn't really care because I have a foul mouth and little class, but I am sure there are some parents out there who might not approve.

It wasn't the name of the game that bothered me - it was the game itself. You had to blow up a balloon and then use the air to try and shot down a pyramid of cups. This resulted in me and my partners in misery to have to restack those fucking cups approximately eleventeen billion times. Mostly while kids blew them back down before we finished. Again and again. And again.

And if that wasn't fun enough, let's talk about balloons. You know what you get when you add kids and balloons? Spit, that's what. Lots and lots of spit. The younger kids couldn't blow up the balloons on their own, so they'd spit all over one, then shove it in your hands to blow for them. We would throw those spit bombs away and get fresh ones. And then dip our hands in a vat of hand sanitizer. Or they'd spit all over a balloon and decide it was "broken" and put it back in the pile, then we'd have to dive in and retrieve it before another little germ factory came along and shoved in in THEIR little spit hole.

The older kids did a better job of blowing up the balloons, but then they'd point them at the cups (and us, sitting behind the cups) and blow their spitty, germ gas all over us. Then we'd bathe in hand sanitizer again. Repeat eleventeen billion jillion times. In between groups of kids, they would ring a bell to let the kids know they had to move to the next station, and I came about thisclose to tackling the bell handler about 40 times and ringing the fuck out of it.

After it was over, I walked up to a group of teachers who were standing around talking (probably praying and planning their human sacrifices to speed up the time until school is out and they are free), and said, "I don't know how you are not all raging alcoholics." Seriously, y'all - find a teacher and HUG THEM. And then buy them a drink or two. Or twelve.


The spit is invisible, but I assure you, it was there:

I need one of these in my backyard: 
 














She didn't weigh enough to stretch that cord at all:










But in the end, it was worth it, because it made this girl smile:





















Unrelated - eclipse!