Another book fair in the books! For those of you playing along at home, that was number fourteen, and it was by far the most successful book fair ever! We raised over $4700 for the library, home reading program, and English as a Learned Language program, which means that the total for THIS SCHOOL YEAR is $8200, far and beyond what our fundraising has been in the past. Yay for book fair! Now that I’m slowly coming to the final chapters of my years as Book Fair Lady, I’m starting to already feel nostalgic for it. The posters are five dollars, I said starting at 9:10 on the first day and then repeated that mantra many times over; this isn’t unusual, but it was unusual how unbothered I was by the question. Is this one hundred dollars? a child asked, holding up a highlighter shaped like a bottle of nail polish? No, I assured him, It’s one dollar.
But it has two zeros at the end of it and that means one hundred! the child argued. Not wanting to get into a whole decimal point explanation with him, I sold him a pencil sharpener shaped like a fish.
I ran into a friend on the way into the book fair, and we laughed about the nail polish highlighters. But you can polish your nails with the highlighter! she joked, unwittingly foreshadowing the very first conversation I would have about those highlighters. How did she know?
Anyway, I’ve been feeling pretty good about the success about the fair, or I was until someone mentioned to me that it might be worthwhile to run another one, so we could have three a year. I stared blankly for a minute. Blink. Blink. I don’t think so…
In addition to the great excitement surrounding the book fair was Pink Shirt Day. I always, always vow to finally find or make a pink shirt for my kids, and I always, always forget until the day before, when it’s too late. Do your kids have Pink Shirt Day at school? It’s an anti-bullying movement sparked by a boy wearing a pink shirt. I feel that it’s a great thing to raise awareness about bullying – of course – but I have to tell you, it’s the bane of my existence. As I said, I never remember to buy/ make a pink shirt. I feel slightly weird about the whole thing, kids wearing their pink shirts with pride while I meanwhile know about certain girls pulling that emotional bullying stuff that only tween girls do so well. Also, one year one of my sons burst into tears at his lack of pink shirt; he assumed that everyone would consider him a bully for not having one. That year I had to pin a piece of pink paper on his shirt, frantically, because explanations were just not working. I also feel weird about the families who maybe cannot afford to buy a pink shirt that will go unworn for the remainder of the year. And yet, I don’t want to be the person who is NOT for Pink Shirt Day.
Our amazing principal saved the day, however, declaring that red and purple shirts were just as good as pink. Now that is some good leadership. I was relieved…until I discovered that for Jake, blue and green are the new black. What my drawer is for black sweaters, his is for blue and green waffle weave. We had to improvise with a karate t-shirt that had a red flag on it.
Yesterday after school, Jake came out saying he couldn’t find one of his mittens. We do have spares at home, but these are not cheap mittens, and so I hustled him and Mark back to the school. We grabbed a door as someone was coming out just before it closed – the doors are locked for safety reasons – and as we waited for the kids to come out so we could go in, Mark leaned on the closed double door. The door snapped open with a child eager to get the funk out of school, smacking Mark directly in the face. Eeep! He had a huge lump on his forehead and has had a headache since then, but otherwise seems okay. I’m just happy it didn’t hit him in the nose, because it would have probably been broken. Small mercies, but with the help of Tylenol, an ice pack, and an episode of Seinfeld – which he currently professes to love – the swelling seemed to go down a bit.
Now, about this Seinfeld thing. I’ve seen every episode ever made, and I love that the kids are interested enough to watch with me. They think Kramer, Newman, and George are the funniest characters on TV – which they just might be. However, there are some adult themes (“It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning lady had sexual intercourse on your desk.”) that are slightly awkward, but the kids aren’t interested. Ew. If this is about sex, can you fast-forward? Yes. Yes I can.
Happy weekend, everyone. I for one will be enjoying my wine, and also the new season of House of Cards! xo
Congrats on the book fair! You actually make me want to volunteer at our own book fair. I want my own “the posters are $5” t-shirt!
Our oldest is almost 12 and begged us to start watching The Big Bang Theory this year, because “everyone else watches it,” and it’s not until you are watching something with your kids that you become painfully aware of how much sex and/or reference to coitus is in every episode. We are working with it but I find it fascinating how uncomfortable it makes me, when we are able to watch violence and fighting in superhero movies together with no issue. I suddenly understand why the ratings board has much looser standards for violence than sex. They probably watch all the movies with their kids.
My 10 year old has been begging to watch Glee, and we tried the first three episodes on Netflix and they contained adult sex, teen sex, fake pregnancy, real pregnancy, and fighting off orgasms by imagining hitting a mailman with your car. I decided we could wait until she was 11 to continue, but I do worry I’m a fuddy duddy. GAH.
I’ve never heard of Pink Shirt Day. Interesting.
I tend toward the strict side on media. We saw It’s a Wonderful Life at Christmas and the mild innuendo with Violet, which probably went right over June’s head, was giving me conniptions. That’s my limit.