R u ok, Volunteering & Dog Poop

Something must be seriously wrong.

Even my husband texted me…

r u ok?

It’s 6 o’clock on a Friday evening, the parking lot is empty except, of course, for my trusty mini-van, and I am just now walking out the door with my bag lady cart stashed with stuff still left undone.

Where in the Sam Hill is everyone else? Oh, yeah, I forgot. They must be out to dinner, or at the movies, or at home…anywhere but here.

r u ok?

Nope, I mutter to myself. Yep, something must be seriously wrong because now I’m talking to myself. OK, OK, OK, so maybe I’ve always talked to myself… but muttering? OK, OK, OK so maybe a bit of muttering here and there. But this latest little episode of being the last one leaving (again) got me to thinking about things. And, OMG, we all know what happens when that happens. Well, I got to thinking about those darn tootin’ things again and decided I really needed to make a list of things to avoid at the end of the school year.

I was going to make a really clever list that said things like “Don’t assign major projects at the end of the year that take a gazillion years to grade,” or perhaps something wise like “Don’t agree to take 20 or so kids to a summer journalism workshop for five days,” or something esoteric like “Don’t eat your body weight in sugar and emergency chocolate,” but that would have been a lot like closing the barn door long after the horse has vamoosed. (Come now, ya gotta love cliches.)

So, no siree, Missy. I don’t have a list for you because quite frankly I kept getting stuck on my Number 1 thing that one should never, ever, ever do…Volunteer for anything.

Yep, in a moment of weakness, flush from the excitement of the state journalism convention and filled with all that pie-in-the-sky-stuff-that-we-all-want-to-do-if-we-only-had-the-time, I actually went to my principal and volunteered.

Let me say that again v-o-l-u-n-t-e-e-r-e-d. Yes, I volunteered to produce a special fish camp newsletter to hand out to freshmen over the summer. What should have been a slam dunk, homerun, easy to assemble deal-e-oh, of course, morphed into a five-alarm-emergency-chocolate extravaganza because some of the kiddos volunteered to help. (There’s that word again–v-o-l-u-n-t-e-e-r-e-d.)

Jeez Louise, I shudder just thinking about that word.

Let me tell you what volunteering gets you. First, it took me a good hour or so to discern exactly what was wrong with the s-l-o-w loading files. Hmmmmm. Guess it had something to do with the larger than life size digital file of one of our assistant principals. I guess the 1.22 gig size should have tipped me off. A quick image size check registered 74 inch tall by 49.333 inches wide. You do the math… Hails bails, the digital photo was more than twice as wide and almost a foot and half taller than the real person.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, it took many more hours to convert files, edit and clean up the other stuff my volunteering darlings did. I won’t even mention the other things I somehow v-o-l-u-n-t-e-e-r-e-d to do with only a week left of school and stacks and stacks and stacks of teacher things left undone.

Yep, something must be seriously wrong with me.

r u ok?

Next time I get that overwhelming urge to volunteer for something, I think I’ll call the SPCA. I think they need someone to pick up dog poop.