Back to School is Lots of Work

This post is a series of Random Thoughts surrounding school, work, and home.

• Apple brings out the iPhone 6 (and 6 Plus) this week. This causes overtime at the wireless service carrier where I work. This is a Good Thing (because I can really use the money - more on that later) and a Bad Thing (because school just started... and more on that later too).

• Lizzy's birthday party was a rousing success. Lots of kids, lots of fun. Leanna couldn't make it because she was sick, but I suspect she wouldn't have been all that entertained anyway, as Abby was the oldest child there and I was using Abby as a helper; she would not have had time for Leanna. Parties for little kids are boring for big kids as a rule.

• Speaking of Abby helping, I applaud her organizational skills, though she was perhaps a little overenthusiastic about whisking gifts right out of Lizzy's hands so she could get onto the next one. At one point (she was trying to get the littler kids to line up) Laston told her there was a difference between organized and bossy, whereupon she gave him one of those withering adolescent looks, turned back to the little kids, and said, "All right, everyone who wants to, line up over there." All adults were hard pressed not to crack up.

• Lizzy is still young enough to be indifferent as to gender among her friends (hence Stick-the-Glasses-on-the-Barbie even with boys at the party)... most of the time. There was quite a bit of dithering over which thank you cards to use for which child. Is it okay to use flowered ones for a family where there are two girls and one boy? What if they're all friendly, but the boy is the one who is really Lizzy's friend?

• Oh my goodness, never try to nail a Bouncy McGee to a kitchen bar stool to write thank you notes. It was a much harder ordeal than it should have been. Rather like homework, for which she also cannot sit still unless Abby is doing hers beside her.

• Which brings us back to school. Abby's sixth grade is still elementary school (at least until they finish building the new high school in our district; eventually there will be a middle school model). But in an effort to get them ready for junior high, they have a homeroom class and three other classes they rotate through. Abby's homeroom teacher is the language arts teacher, and given that her only big issue academically is spelling, I wonder if that was deliberate.

• When I went to the school last Friday to drop off a forgotten binder (don't worry - we had a chat about personal responsibility and the need to keep track of one's own things) I chatted with the school nurse (with Abby's nut allergy, I find it behooves me to know the school nurse well... just in case). She said that usually there is a honeymoon period of a couple weeks at the beginning of the school year, where kids only get bumps from soccer balls and falls from playground equipment; they do not usually get sick. Not this year. This year they started showing colds and flus out of the gate.

• Which is probably why I have a cold right now when I am scheduled for a ton of iPhone 6 overtime. La gripa, my neighbor calls it (as opposed to la influenza - she understands much more English than she speaks, and the inverse is true of my Spanish). But I promised to work the overtime, and I need the money badly, so I will muddle through. I have zinc and vitamin C at my desk, Nyquil at home, and I could float away from how many fluids I've been drinking. 

• Because of the previous snafus (and a couple of new ones), I could really use a fairy godmother right about now. I know it, and I'm not too proud to admit it. But I don't want one (need is different from want, as every parent has told their child a time or two); I want to work for my money. But working for my money is so slow. And it doesn't help that somehow financial institutions - even credit unions - think that if you don't have the money to pay a particular bill, then an NSF fee will somehow miraculously appear. Um... no. 

• On the other hand, I am working for my money, and I think I'm doing well at it; as any of you who know me probably understand, I'm not as technical as some of my compatriots, but the customers like me. So I'm slow but I give great customer service. And right now - the running joke is that ATT stands for At This Time - that's what they're looking for; those soft skills outweigh the tech skills in my particular job description.