Nothing a bubble bath and some wine won't cure.

It's late at night and I'm sitting here trying to wind down from a long, long day. Actually I'm amazed that I'm not ready to collapse in bed from sheer exhaustion since that's pretty much how I've felt all this week. (Momma Bird had a cold when she got back to California so I'm wondering if I'm fighting a bit of the blahs myself.)

However, it was Fall Festival and Dance night at school and like always, Mrs. Eagle and I volunteered to work the event. You know there is always a group of people in the building that seem to be the ones that volunteer for amost everything and Mrs. Eagle and I are among that bunch. I suppose the fact that we don't have our own kids to go home and worry about, and the fact that our hubbies are the kind that understand that the kids we teach are pretty important to us, helps. However, sometimes I wonder if we aren't a little bit nuts for doing all we do.

We decided, however, after finishing our lessons for the week, and getting the homework put together, and grading our tests that we really needed a decent sit-down dinner before the festival, so we dashed off to Ruby Tuesday's and treated ourselves. Thank goodness we did.
Because when we got back we were on our feet for the next five hours (I can't believe it really was that long, but it was.)

Which probably explains why I hurt from the knees down. And I'm a walker, believe it or not. (And a wannabe-trying-to-be-a-runner since my cousin is actually going to be running her first marathon this month and she's not that much younger than I am!)

The festival was a lot of fun - they had booths all over the core of the school. It ranged from pudding-eating contest, to cake-walk, to temporary tattoo, to ring-toss, to a jousting ring where the kids could wack each other with foam rubber swords. The comment Mrs. Eagle made when she saw the ring toss where the kids could toss rings and win a 2 liter bottle of soda pop was, "just what they need, more sugar." They also had little craft booths where they could make neclaces, feather fans, colored sand in bottles things, and all sorts of stuff. The Technology Club was taking digital pictures (with a suit of armor as a prop). We had the Jr. ROTC club from the high school we feed into over and they were working booths as well (including, of all people, Meltdown Boy from a few years ago). And making me feel really old as some of those kids had been mine a mere two years ago and now they looked so grown up. We had a lot of parents there, former students, younger brothers and sisters and all sorts of folks from the local community. Considering the community we serve (low-income, to say the least) it was nice to see these folks out there supporting their school. They even had a live auction (which did well) and a silent auction (which did well too, but I lost out on the John Deere basket which would have been a great gift for my Poppa Bird.)

And then there was the dance. Oh gosh, there's nothing like a middle school dance. I swear someone should videotape these things and use them as a psychology experiment. If I had a dollar for every time I told a kid to STOP RUNNING AND SLOW DOWN, I'd be rich. We also had to tell a bunch of the kids, as usual, to stop being so blatantly sexual in their dancing (never fails, they look like they're auditioning for a pole dance job at the local strip joint). The amazing thing was that, due to the festival (cotton candy, soda pop, brownies, etc). they were so hyped up on sugar that they were literally bouncing off the walls, the floor, the bleachers, you name it. And they're going home tonight so they can drive their parents nuts.

The kids in my school like to dance to an interesting mix of music. Of course we have the hip-hop stuff (which I personally can't stand), then country, latin, one token AC/DC song, then the Macarena, the Electric Slide, and...last but not least....the Chicken Dance. The fact that these kids all know how to dance to all of this just cracks me up. Since my muscial tastes run to hard/class/progressive rock, I was dying for a bit of Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin or Van Halen. To no avail.

Goober Boy was there and I'm beginning to think that he's hoping one day I'll forget that he isn't mine and take him home with me. I wouldn't mind, really, because I adore this kid, but I wonder what his parents would say. Of course, the fact that he's just one of six, perhaps no one would notice that he was gone. He'd have his fun, circulate through the dance, then swing by to chat. Of course I had to give him heck over his less than stellar report card.

So, by 9:30 the kids were all gone (thank goodness) and we headed home. I'm going to sleep in tomorrow...maybe to 6:00 am.