Tomorrow is International Walk and Roll to school day, and this year I am in charge of it. Not for the entire international community, you understand; no, my friends in Sweden are on their own. Sounds easy, right? Get kids to walk or ride their bike to school for one day? No problem! Wrong. There are meetings and boxes and banners and e-mails, and flyers and posters and all kinds of other things that go into getting a kid to walk to school. Use to be, you put on your backpack and kissed your mom goodbye while she sat at the kitchen table in her bathrobe (counting the seconds until you left, I have now learned) and walked your sorry third grade ass to school, but not so anymore. I have had it up to here (points at forehead) with this project. I can't wait until its over, and over it will be tomorrow morning at around 8:15. The person from whom I am taking this over has done it for the last five years. She's one of those moms who has lots of energy and is really dedicated, and it exhausts me. Last year, she won the PTA's volunteer of the universe award, and her husband is the damn mayor, and she has solar panels on her house and two hybrid cars in her driveway and she totally walks the talk (no pun intended, although, on second thought...) and all that is really fabulous, and I, bored housewife who loves the Tori and Dean show, have to follow that act? What, on God's green earth, was I thinking?
Admittedly, I have taken on too much. I am on the PTA board, I'm the head room parent for my daughter's class, I'm the friend of the Foundation for my daughter's class (a mercifully small job) and team leader for the Walk and Roll thing. I thought if I was going to be a stay at home parent, I should get involved, be a Mom, bake things, volunteer. I thought I would become one of those energetic moms who run around the school with their blackberries and their exercise clothes, and I would love it and be so happy. Either I am really a sloth-like person, or all those moms are on something. Really, I am beginning to understand the suburban meth problem. The energy and sense of fulfillment I was expecting has yet to hit me, and I think all these other moms are secretly suffering and wishing they could watch Tori and Dean. During the PTA meeting this morning, several moms, including me, were so excited because another mom had saved her Halloween party sign-up sheet and was going to send it to us for use in our classrooms; you'd have thought she was going to take us all on a shopping spree, we were so happy. It was all so very sad...
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