My mind has bounced around from topic to topic like a ping pong ball caught in a tornado and I'll be honest... I'm coming out a little worse for wear. I sent Ted and Teddy to cricket training 1 1/2 hours earlier than they were supposed to go. I washed Teddy's school uniform neck tie by accident. Last week I invited a friend to Teddy's sleepover birthday party on the 21st only to learn that I said it was this Saturday. Poor kid showed up last night ready for some hard core fun. Not cool. Yesterday I organized my whole family to help a dear friend move into her new house and forgot that Connor had a major band concert. Ted ended up taking her on the train to the concert and I found myself shoving a dryer up into a wall instead of my big strong husband. My back paid a heavy price for it. My brain is seriously on the fritz. I'm not sure if I'm coming or going.
If that's not bad enough we have two, count 'em two projects due this week. Connor has to make an Ancient Egyptian exhibit and Tessi has to write a fairy tale.
Great, the one with dyslexia and a hard time reading and writing has to write a story. Even better, it has to be a group family project. All five of us have to sit down and work together as a family.
Anyone who has ever had to do a group project for school knows that they are a living hell. They are the red-headed Edsel step child of the school project family. I have never encountered another human being, well at least one with an IQ over 70, who didn't groan with frustration upon their assignment.
There's always one jerk who does nothing except make smart-assed comments, two who try to do everything in spite of each other and at least one who hangs to the rear and hopes never to get noticed. A family group project is even worse. My family is almost untenable. There are two busy adults trying to get things ready for the upcoming week who want nothing to do with this, one bored pre-teen who is too good to do anything, one older sister who is far, far to busy pretending to be sick so she doesn't have to do her own project, let alone be forced to help her sister and lastly, one giggly happy child who bouncing with glee over everyone having to work on her project.
Right. There's nothing for it. I step in with military-like precision and using my best Mommy demeanor and voice I set up and organize Tessi's project. I do this while I am working on molding canopic jar lids out of the leftover dough. I write out four questions that Tessi has to ask each family member. The answers will help us create character profiles. She walks around asking everyone: What is your name? What do you do for a living? Why do people like you? What do you like to eat?
After I've given up trying to make the pig head look more like a baboon and cleaned the dough off of my fingers I sit down to the computer so that Tessi and I create her story. I typed as she answered all my what happens next stories. Here is what she came up with for a fairy tale:
Once upon a time in the tiny village of Texania
One day Cute Cat Lover and
Mortimer Bigglesworth had a terrible fight.
Each thought their jobs were better than the others. Cute Cat Lover had worked for years at the
local pixie bar while Mortimer had enjoyed a long career as a crown maker. Chelsea Wellsy tried to stop the fight by
having Brindlebutt and Sparkle Pony break up the fight. Brindlebutt blew the prettiest rainbow
bubbles out of her nose, but it didn't help.
Sparkle Pony put on the fastest Sparkle Unicorn race that anyone had
ever seen but nothing could stop Cute Cat Lover and Mortimer from yelling at
each other.
Brindlebutt, Sparkle Pony and
Chelsea Wellsy had a meeting. They decided to not play with or even talk to the
two fighters until they learned not to fight. Chelsea Wellsy said, "It is
pretty ridiculous to fight over the best job.
They both are pretty good, why fight?"
Brindlebutt came up with a plan to
stop the fight. Everyone knows that she
loves to eat cats. She ran over, grabbed
the nearest tabby and sat down in front of the fighting friends. She picked up the beast and started putting
it into her mouth. Cute Cate Lover saw
the kitten about to become lunch and she screamed but was too shocked to do anything.
Mortimer looked around and saw the
kitty go into Brindlebutt's mouth. Since
he is famous for being so nice and good to animals he raced over, jumped on top
of Bridlebutts shoulders. He reached
down into her throat and pulled the kitten to safety. And then Mortimer Bigglesworth said,
"Why would you want to eat this poor cat?" Brindlebutt said, " I was trying to stop
you two from fighting. I needed
something to shock you to make you stop from fighting over ridiculous
things! And also, I was hungry"
Cute Cat Lover thanked Mortimer for saving the kitten and then they both said sorry for fighting. In fact, they said it so much that they ended
up fighting again over who was the most sorry.
Everyone else just sat back and watched.
Except the kitten, who ran away in case Brindlebutt got hungry again. But no one knew which one started the fight.
The End
Not bad. I felt the narrative edge was lost a few times and that ending....sheesh! But a good effort and more importantly.....DONE.
I go back to concentrating on Connor's project. Helping Connor with her Egyptian project means essentially raining on her parade and killing all of her really amazing ideas.
"No, we aren't building a pyramid, the workers carrying the boulders up and around it AND the sarcophagus. Pick one"
"No, we are not making a spring-loaded mummy so it pops up when the lid opened"
"I am not using my gold earrings to decorate this thing!"
Here's what we could agree on so far:
Just so you know the pig is actually a baboon. Also the Egyptian doesn't have black eyes, they are kohl-lined and no Barbies were harmed or misused in the making of the mummy. We have decided in the interest in preserving Connor's and my relationship to find crooked paintings charming. Here's a free tip for anyone using salt dough. When you pile a lot of it together, say to build the wall of something and cook it, the laws of physics step aside. Even though there was no yeast in this sucker it puffed out like balloon. Again, in the interest of relationship preservation we decided to find this amusing.
She now has a few days to write up her information. I'm assigning Ted work on that with her as I'm scared if I do it today it will be an essay on Pharoh Brindlebutt eating a mummified cat before he was buried. Clearly I am having difficulty separating my topics today. Ether that or I've invite another one of Teddy's friends over to write a fairy tale or send Ted and Teddy out to build a pyramid.
