Happy Leap Year Extra Day, everyone! Leap Year Extra Day seems to be the least appreciated of the holidays, probably because it’s just an extra day in February. I celebrated by shovelling a tiny bit of snow for the first time in a while.
Have you noticed that I have not been complaining about the weather this winter? We’ve hardly had a winter, really; there have been only a handful of cold days since October, and of those, not one has been below minus 25. That, my friends, is a win. And yes, like any good Calgary girl worth her Stampede wear, I am cognizant of the fact that winter cannot truly be declared over prior to the May long weekend, but still. Getting through January and February with greatly-above-average temperatures is absolutely glorious, and even if that means we are going to get a ton of snow in the next few months, well, so be it. It has been so warm that the leaf buds on the lilacs are starting to swell, and the day lilies are popping tiny green shoots out of the ground. Fortunately, the residents in my garden have been chosen largely due to their extreme hardiness, so even if we do get two feet of snow, they will be fine.
Another thing of note that I have not been complaining about: the book fair. Last week was the book fair – it was my sixteenth! – and I was not at all stressed out about it. For one thing, I have been transitioning my duties to the co-coordinator in anticipation of my Book Fair Lady Resignation in March of 2017, and she has really hit the ground running. (HI HAYDEE). She did nearly all the prep work for it, so I felt like I was on easy street. In fact, now that I see the light at the end of the Book Fair Tunnel, I am starting to feel a bit emotional about it. I really just had a live in the moment feeling and enjoyed the kids and their incredible excitement about the fair. One kindergartener was vibrating with excitement at the thought of buying a Lego Ninjago book; that excitement coupled with the fact that I’ve really seen some of these kids grow up vis a vis their book choices gave me a mixed feeling of contentment with my Book Fair Lady lot in life and also pre-nostalgia. I did not even feel impatient when I received six questions about the cost of the posters ($5) in a ninety-second span, nor did I tire of explaining that the cupcake wasn’t an actual cupcake but a pencil sharpener. I just thought, it won’t be long until I will no longer be the Book Fair Lady, and then I might miss saying The posters are five dollars, yes, the Minecraft one is also five dollars, and so is the Batman one, they are all five dollars, yes, Shopkins too.
It’s wonderful that the kids are that excited, but even better was the fact that this year we’ve raised over $8500 for the library, ELL, and home reading programs. So I feel great satisfaction due to the money raised and general student happiness. This feeling even extended to doing the book reorders on Friday, since demand for certain items much exceeded supply. People, I had to order an all-time record of sixty-seven books. Nineteen of those were “Stampy’s Lovely Book,” which I had never heard about before. The cover was Minecraft-esque, so I wondered why I had never heard of Stampy, given my children’s penchant for crafting tables and the like. Jake informed me that Stampy is a YouTuber, but not one that he deems worthy of notice. “He’s super LAME, Mom,” he said when I asked about it. “He talks about Minecraft, but in a totally lame way.” Jake seems to be in the minority, however, given the clamouring for Stampy at the book fair. Tomorrow the orders come in, and I am wondering how to effectively manage my schedule. I’ve never had to distribute sixty-seven books before.
Time, it flies. On Wednesday I passed off my Book Fair duties to a couple of devoted volunteers (HI JEN HI BERNY) and I took Mark to the orthodontist. We now have a metal mouth in our midst! To be honest, I was expecting things to go, how shall I say this, not well. I was very pleasantly surprised; I think his expectations were so low that the whole experience was much better than anticipated. “I thought it would be like someone hot gluing metal in my mouth!” he said, which, what? I thought it was well explained to him but perhaps not.
In any case, he was sore for the first two days, and now seems to be just fine. He’s thrilled with the orthodontic swag bag given to him that included such thrilling things as an electric toothbrush and mouthwash. So all is happiness and roses in the Boy House.
Noah’s had braces for a little over 2 years now and it’s really gone better than I expected, too, in terms of pain and discomfort. Either there have been advances in orthodontia since we were kids– I remember it being just excruciating– or our kids are just more stoic than we were.
I’m glad your book fair was relatively stress-free.
Book Fair! It’s amazing what can make us nostalgic down the road.
So happy the bookfair was such a success again! I love being a part of it! And good luck to Mark and his new hardware. We’ll be down that road soon enough!
I was terrified when Eve got her braces on – I don’t know, something about her anxiety, and pain triggering anxiety, and whatever. It’s been fine. Also, I’m running a book fair as part of my placement and when one of the school moms heard this she said thank goodness because every time she comes home from a council meeting her daughter asks if they talked about book fair – so that’s nice. I’m glad you’re savouring the craziness as it comes to an end.