105 Ways to Give a Book

Just a Day

A day where you wake up to the anguished cry of, “Mom! The cat threw up on my social studies project!” is not going to be a good day. Oh, it may get better. In fact, one might say that it pretty much has to get better from that point. But it’s probably not going to be a good day.

As you carefully clean the cat vomit off your daughter’s project, you try to reassure her and yourself that it was lucky that she was using crayons, because the waxy finish made this much easier to clean and really it’s not noticeable at all. Well, except for the smell of regurgitated cat food. But you’ll take care of that with air freshener, and when that doesn’t work, with Febreze.

In the end, you wave the paper around to dry it of the attack of the smell-reducing chemicals, and advise your sixth-grader not to sniff it herself, as her strong gag reflex will certainly make it impossible to turn in — because of course it’s due today. You pray that the teacher has a cold with a very stuffy nose.

In tucking the project into the sixth-grader’s backpack, you have a moment to reflect on this accident waiting to happen — because face it, half of your earthly belongings are on the floor these days, and it was just a matter of time before something important was lost, or broken, or vomited upon. And the best chance to tackle it was yesterday, when instead you spent about three hours with the other daughter on her social studies project — because if you leave her alone for two minutes, she’ll stop working and start playing with the tree ornaments. So, in accepting her ADD, you sat on the floor with her and kept her on task, only resting your eyes — not napping — on the couch for ten minutes toward the end of the project. This turned out to be the ten minutes in which she wrongly drew the only scene in the whole stupid project that had to be done exactly the way it’s been told. But she drew Pocahontas saving John Smith from an Indian with a bow and arrow, not by putting her head over his on the pile of stones, and whether or not we want to verify the accuracy of that event or even look upon Pocahontas as an American hero for basically saving Jamestown and in doing so setting the events in motion which will eventually wipe out the Native Americans, the fact remains that the accepted scene has not been drawn because you took your eyes away for ten minutes.

Oh, and that project is spread out on the floor too.

None of this will make the Christmas letter.

Perhaps today is a day best left to the secret project that’s cooking over at Brotherhood 2.0, sure to be a winner. Or searching out fifteen tiny gift bags for the fifteen bracelets I bought for the Girl Scouts in my troop. In any case, I think it will be later today that I’ll post more Cybils reviews. Surely you understand.

5 comments:

tanita✿davis said...

It's so wrong to giggle at this, so I am keeping a straight face, saying we love you, and check out JoAnn's or Michael's (or whatever craft store you've got in your neck of the woods) for those cute little filmy gift bags - they're meant to be wedding favors, but what girl doesn't like silky bags?

Hang in there.

Anonymous said...

So very, very funny. And wrong. And true.

I hope today was a better day.

Camille said...

Oh my, this takes me back to the "good old days." Bless all your hearts.

Vivian Mahoney said...

Oh, I feel for you. I can so relate to this. And had to laugh.

I think Clementine needs to move over, and make some room for you.

Little Willow said...

Oh, kitty.