You probably know this already, but I pride myself on my organizational skills. Meal planning? Yes. To-do lists, long and short term? Yes. School and activity schedules? Yes. At the beginning of the year I take the Important Dates To Note handout from the school and I write each and every Important Date in my calendar, in a different colour, so that I can See At A Glance all the Important Dates for the year. Last September I wrote Last Day – Early Dismissal! on Thursday, June 26. At the time I thought it seemed late; generally the last day of classes is on a Wednesday, not a Thursday.
This morning I was chatting with a friend at the playground after drop-off and I casually mentioned the slog that is the last week of school. “Oh well,” I said cheerily, “Only three and a half days left to go!”. She looked at me strangely. “You mean two and a half,” she said, “Last day is Wednesday.” LO AND BEHOLD. The date had been changed on the website and it’s true, it’s TRUE. Wednesday is the last day and now I suddenly feel like Christmas came early this year.
Which is not to say I wasn’t a little unsettled by the reception of this new information. I scrambled to rearrange an appointment I had made for Wednesday afternoon and I rushed home to make the chocolates for teacher’s gifts. It was on my to-do list today anyway, but I felt like I was doing something totally last minute instead of being smugly early. I do better when I’m smugly early, I guess.
What are you doing/ did you do for teacher’s gifts this year, if anything? I normally give gift cards for the mall, along with some nice chocolates, and the kids make cards. Normally I buy the chocolates but this year the boys thought I should send some of my dark chocolate truffles, so that was my morning: rolling, dusting, and packing up three dozen little chocolates. I tied an ingredients list to the mason jar in an attempt to be Pinterest-y, but unfortunately I am unable to tie a decent bow to save my life. Hopefully the chocolates make up for my lack of artistic ability.
Our home phone is on the fritz, which isn’t generally a big issue – who uses land lines anymore anyway? – but this morning the telephone repairman was scheduled to come and fix it. It’s one of those rare Calgary days where it’s actually warm, and so today I am wearing a skirt and tank top. Making truffles is a bit of a messy business, and so I grabbed an apron and set to work. After I finished I made a pasta salad for dinner, then wandered off to do some work. I forgot to take off the apron and so I was a little startled when I looked at myself in the mirror:
I’m just going to say that I’m actually pretty glad the telephone repairman never showed up, even though no one can call me still and I’m worried I’m missing some important reminder that only comes via land line. Because seriously, nothing says “Adult Filmstar Awaiting Arrival of Telephone Repairman” like wandering around your house wearing an apron that covers your entire outfit. Plus that’s the apron my mother gave me for Christmas, that she bought in a lingerie store. Oh, nothing, just wearing my lingerie apron while anxiously awaiting you, Telephone Repairman.
It was a pretty lovely weekend all-round; my husband and I separately decided that the constantly-aphid-infested golden ninebark in the back yard had to go. I looked at it and looked at it and phoned my husband to say that we needed to get rid of it – the golden-green leaves always looked sickly instead of interesting, and it was always full of aphids – and he was simultaneously preparing to tell ME that we should dig it out. It was a very O Henry moment. Or maybe the opposite of O Henry, since we were both happy at the end, I don’t know. In any case, it’s gone and in its place are some beautiful purple and pink annuals. An unexpected trip to the garden centre for more flowers is always a happy thing, I think. Other than gardening, we also had some friends over for dinner AND went to a friend’s 40th birthday party, which is more plans than we usually have in a month of weekends.
This also happened:
Orange belts! I’m so proud of them!
Congrats on the orange belts! June quit Kung Fu at the end of the session last month, only two classes before she was supposed to test for her white belt and this after getting a white belt two years ago, quitting and coming back to it and having to start from scratch. I told her she can’t do it again. But she has shown a lot of stick-to-it-ness with the violin, so there’s that.
Meanwhile, I completely spaced the class gifts this year for both J’s morning and afternoon teachers. All I had to do was send money in an envelope for the mom who was coordinating it, but I forgot. I emailed her after school was out and offered to reimburse her in case she’d put in a little extra herself to reach a certain amount for whatever she wanted to buy, but she didn’t answer.
Any telephone repairman should be SO LUCKY as to have someone like you waiting for him wearing something like that. I often forget to take off my apron too, but it doesn’t have quite the same effect on me.
I did Chapters gift cards for everyone this year. I’ve done chocolates in the past, but so many teachers just fed them to the kids on the last day that I stopped. If I know the teacher really well, I get them a book I think they’ll like, and that’s always gone over well, but this year I don’t know Eve’s teachers well enough, although they’ve both been great for her, and I don’t know Angus’s at all, and hell, Chapters has tons of shit, they’ll find something if they don’t like books.
And don’t feel bad about the time slip – remember when i almost tried to fly to BlogHer a whole week early?
I got subway gift cards for some teachers as there is a Subway right by the school and I know the teachers like to nip out there for lunch, and a larger chapters gift card for my favourite teacher. We’ve had her for 3 years and won’t next year and I REALLY appreciate her.
Our last day IS Thursday, and they go all day,so I get one day alone without work. Any guesses on what I plan to do? You have your lists, I have my need to wash all the surfaces. It shall just be me, Mr clean and a scrub brush. 🙂
I’m a terrible person I guess but I’ve never done teacher gifts. *ducks*
This year it would be even harder because both kids are in job-sharing classrooms so there are four teachers to contend with.
Now I’m feeling like a lazy toad. Perhaps I should put on a lingerie apron to inspire me.
I totally biffed the teacher gift this year. Oldest’s teacher this year was fine. He is probably burned out, but he managed to communicate the necessary material in the necessary period of time so usually I’d get a small thank you gift card or something. But I completely forgot, as in, the thought didn’t even cross my mind until school had been over for two days. The gift thing seems to have got lost in the shuffle of Oldest finishing elementary school and having 1,000 (approx) celebratory events that week. I guess I could have gone by and remedied the situation when I realized but (1) the teacher has left the school to go teach elsewhere and (2) he wasn’t such a great teacher that the extra effort to track him down was warranted, so I just left it.
I always do gift cards now – I do try to match it to the teacher, like a Starbucks card for the one who shows up with a coffee every morning, or a Chapters card for the one who loves reading. If I don’t know, they get Target cards.
A friend of mine this year took her kids to the Home Hardware and let them pick out garden decorations – bird baths, hummingbird feeders, wind chimes. I thought that was super nice.