Exhausted by Thinking Day and Ready to Drink

How much can you drink if you are already on codeine anyway? (1) Nothing; (2) One or Two drinks; (3) Three or four drinks; (4) Don't pull a Judy Garland! You have Destination Imagination tomorrow!

Somebody email me or FB me quick, before about 8 pm so I don't get it wrong.

Overdosing is so not cool when you are a mom, a Scout leader, and a Destination Imagination coach.

OMG, I am SOOOOOO EXHAUSTED! After completing my to do list yesterday with no codeine in my system after 3 am, we went out to eat and absolutely gorged ourselves, even though we knew there would be food at Populace. (There's always food at Populace. It's the SCA, for God's Sake! There may be people on diets and people who are overweight and people who have really strange eating habits or likes and dislikes, but there is ALWAYS food).

We went to Fish City because we didn't want to go over to Snuffer's (the girls had just come from there because they went on a field trip to see The Lightning Thief--they loved it but they complained because it wasn't like the book). Snuffers has THE BEST Cheddar fries in Dallas. They are even better than that racist Eskimo Joe's place in Stillwater, Oklahoma (have been there, too). They are AWESOME. They are gooey and rich and loaded with fat and grease, and you eat them with ranch dressing and bacon bits and chives and jalapenos on the side (if you have my digestion, anyway), and if you eat Cheddar fries once a day you don't need any other meals or calories at all, all day long. This is what I lost half a tooth on a week and a half ago but you know, Cheddar fries are even worth a root canal every once in a while. But we wanted to eat next to the road we were getting on to go to Populace so we went and spent $60 at Fish City.

Miranda no longer likes the kids' menu. I don't really blame her. How many chicken nuggets, hamburgers, mac n cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches can you eat in 10 years? They have fried shrimp but she prefers her shrimp steamed. She's actually a pretty healthy eater. Well, Amelia got a burger of course but then we got the FOUR Person Crab leg and shrimp steamed platter. I couldn't really eat the corn, sausage and potatos because of the temporary crown so some of that went to waste (couldn't really take it home because we were going to Populace and I didn't want it sitting in the car for three hours and giving us food poisoning--probably should have chanced it). Anyway, we ate and ate the Alaskan King Crab legs and shrimp and more shrimp, and I did eat a little corn, and we dipped it in butter and got slathered with it all over, and...sounds almost sexual. I had butter stains all over my shirt even though I put a napkin on fairly soon after starting. Even Amelia got into the spirit of it. She's grossed out by crustaceans but if you take the meat out she will eat the crab legs, so we did. I didn't absolutely eat every single bite (it was enough for four adults and we had 2 1/2 really), but I sure enjoyed it. $39 and I think we will be doing that again soon. If they are going to eat off the adult menu anyway most of the entrees are about $8 to $15 each so $10 each is not that bad. They also had happy hour and I was on codeine, and the mixer in the margaritas made me nauseated, so I switched to bourbon and coke. So I know you can have 1 codeine pill and one bourbon and coke and one maragarita without being (1) hung over or (2) overdosing. Not sure about how much more though.

When we finally got to Populace at Lady Elec's, they asked me how I was doing since the root canal (I had to miss Calligraphy and Illumination unfortunately because I was too doped up to drive, much less paint charters). So I said, "well, the drugs and the alcohol helped!" I think they were a little shocked since I am the MOC but I reminded them that I am off duty. I was having a GOOD time. We took some thin mints and some Samoas and I gave Fiona her cookies and had the girls thank her since she ordered a bunch (some for the freezer). I am telling you folks, if you buy a bunch and freeze those girl scout cookies you can have them all year long. Fiona bought 18 boxes and I think we are buying about 3-4 cases ourselves, and doing the same thing she is. This year we ran out of thin mints two weeks before we got our new cookies. It's a bit of an outlay this month with Gulf War and everything but I am telling you, we will be fixed for cookies all year long if I just hide a few around here so they don't get eaten so fast.

So for a mere $168 a year (only $8 more than the 15 x 9 mundane tent I want at Wally-World) you too can have a year's supply of cookies for FOUR people (at $42 a case or $3.50 a box) and help the Girl Scouts too. Call your local council today!!!!

Wow, I really do love Girl Scout cookies. I think I will keep my girls in Scouts through high school just so I can get cookies from them every year. Even if I have to sell them to myself, well, myself.

And no, I really don't need to eat all those cookies but they have no Trans Fats, remember? I didn't say they had no calories though and I wouldn't exactly describe Tagalongs as a health food. But they are high in protein.

So, on to bigger and better things. We did Thinking Day today and it was AWESOME as usual! This year I assigned topics to the girls and they went home and did research and returned with the research (typed in 24 point type for the presentation board) and photos. We arranged the board and they stapled the research on the board on Wednesday. Our country this year, selected by them, was Colombia. I think they picked it because one of the girls had parents who graduated from Columbia University. They were shocked to hear about the drug traffic. Well, this is what we did: we had coffee beans for the kids to touch and smell and a big bag of 100% Colombian coffee (yes, with Juan Valdez on it) from Wally-World. It was in a basket from Morocco but no one asked me about that. I decorated the table with a .50 cent Valentine's Day plastic tablecloth (got to Wally-World yesterday just as the V-Day stuff went to 75% off!!!) and with some yellow fleece left over from Amelia's cloak (I am washing and repurposing this for DI or other things tonight because some little urchin got some kind of sticky food on it at Thinking Day, oh joy). We had our presentation board (the same one I've used for four years) draped with black fabric stapled on (from Perth, only about $4.50 for some nice black cotton poplin). Guess what--the kids decided during DI to make a backdrop out of this same fabric, which I had just removed from said presentation board and put back in my fabric bin. It has a few staple holes but who cares? Then we had a number of rainforest type animals and turtles (since they are on the ocean in Colombia, or at least I think they are). We had photos printed out of the Colombian bird (Andean condor, ugliest bird you ever saw), Colombian orchid, and other rainforest animals. On our board we covered the flag, crest, schools, people and how they dress, houses, countryside, food (did you know they eat roasted ants and guinea pigs? They also eat plenty of normal food, soups, meats, vegetables and breads of course).

Fun facts about Colombia: They have a lovely archaeological park filled with hundreds of Pre-Columbian sculptures (a picture of one was with our SWAP of coffee beans in a bag). They have five kinds of bananas (we served banana chips on gold plastic trays for our food). They love soccer (our stamp was a soccer ball and some of our kids dressed as soccer players). They wear Western clothes and some traditional peasant skirts and head scarves (Amelia, myself and one other girl dressed this way and many of the girls wore old soccer outfits). They also love bike riding (Miranda dressed as a bike rider but took off her helmet and gloves and went as a tourist for part of the day, with water bottle and camera). So went spent Zero on costumes this year. We didn't match, but who cares? We had a peace sweatahirt on the table because many people in Colombia are disgusted with the drug traffiking and violence and wear the peace sign to symbolize "Peace in Colombia" and to show that they do not support the drug lords or their activities. We had two kids who were presenters and one to do the swaps, one do to the soccer ball stamps on the passports, and one to hand out the food. The girls switched half way so that they could go visit some other countries, and the ones working didn't really want to give up their jobs!! They loved presenting. It was hard to hear and it was hard to do all the presenting in only three minutes per country (the organizer of this event is rather non-intellectual so she doesn't want it to be too much work for her and her troop, so she keeps cutting our minutes--we used to have FIVE minutes but no longer). Anyway, we also had the Trefoils Around the World book from the 1950's that I had gotten for $5 from Amazon used books. It had old pictures of the old Colombian uniforms and the promise in Spanish and English, and information about the Girl Guide levels (which we were required to have this year). So it was REALLY cool. I would love to have taken my megaphone, earned for supurlative cookie sales, but that would have been really annoying and they would have shut me down.

It was AWESOME! Our kids went out to breakfast with the two main leaders and I went and set up. Then they got there, we practiced our roles, and we were ready to go. I told the two main leaders, who were going around with them, when to switch everyone out and insured everyone went to the restroom because we weren't getting ANY break until near the end (and group 1 did NOT get any break). They showed up about 9:45 and we were ready to go! They were very appreciative of all my hard work but the main thing I did was assign topics and gather stuff for the table, plus set it up while they were at breakfast.

The people in my service unit who run it really don't like me. They can't figure me out. I am an overachiever and I am not terribly fond of them either (I call them the Service Unit Nazi's, actually). It's not that they don't mean well or that they are bad leaders, far from it. It's just that (1) they always take the easy way out of everything; (2) they throw money at everything instead of thinking about the most economical solution sometimes (3) they are extremely rigid and never think of the out of the box solution. It's not that I am really smarter than they are (well, maybe so but I don't want to sound conceited--many of these ladies are highly educated and have responsible jobs, and they really aren't bad gals--they just treat me like dirt, most of them). In fact, when I got there at 8:45 several of them were already setting up and I asked if I could come in. The SU president said, well I don't know--you need to check with the organizer. I saw one of the TWO organizers (the other one, who I used to be in a troop with, doesn't speak to me, long story). Anyway, Leah said I could come in because I said, You know, my husband is helping me drop things off and he has other things he needs to be doing. So they let me in and R could unload the stuff with me and go on his way to the Saturday errands. So I set up by myself, not a big deal (with not a word from ANYONE except one gal that I do really like, whose daughter is on the DI team). Anyway, a few ladies who don't know my history with this group came by and talked to me, and I went around and discretely took pictures of others' booths while no one was there (because otherwise the kids are there and you can't see what's on the table and I am the Thinking Day Queen--always looking to improve our table or our presentation).

Sometimes I hate this kind of stuff in Scouts. They are all so snobby. You know, I am a really nice person and I am just devoted to my girls, and to making sure that OTHER girls enjoy the Scouting experience and learn something (even the daughters of the particularly bitchy ladies). But I just absolutely despise the way some of the adults behave. It's like being in high school or a sorority or something. I literally told the president of the service unit that I was getting out of the Scouting leadership role and the service unit this year, because the meetings conflict with the Steppes business meeting. You know, those folks in the SCA, they don't always agree with me or love everything I do either, but they are extremely appreciative of my efforts in the MOC area, even the ones who absolutely despise children (in fact, some of those folks are my biggest fans!) I have to say that I would do ANYTHING for those SCA people because they know how to treat someone who is working hard and trying to do a good job. They don't criticize; they don't always let me do what I want or put me where I want, but we work it out and it's fine. And the main thing is that I feel like my efforts are noticed and appreciated, and at the end of the day, isn't that all a person wants? A feeling of validation? A feeling that one's efforts are not in vain, and that if you dropped dead tomorrow, someone might actually miss you?

Someone told me I needed to be careful about what I said about the SCA on this site and I said, "WHY?" Because seriously, while no organization is perfect, I can't say enough about how wonderful, in general, the SCA people are. Of course there are conflicts from time to time and not everything is hunky dory for everyone, and sometimes people fight or are extremely eccentric about some issue or another, but that's OK. It's really a family. My friend who died, Rise Sheridan Peters (known in the SCA as Caitlyn Cheanledir in Atlantia, probably not spelling the last name correctly), anyway, she said it was like her family and I understand why. I haven't been in very long, less than three years, and I don't universally love or understand everyone but I DO understand that it does become a family, especially for a Virginia transplant like me who has very little family even in the state, much less in town (and anyone in state is my husband's family, not mine, and distant aunts and cousins at that).

So God Bless the SCA (or whatever deity you pray to), and God Bless Thinking Day, my absolutely favorite girl scout event. I can ignore the one-upmanship by the moms and I can ignore the snubs and just do it for the girls. They all had a blast, and that's the most important thing.

Of course, you all probably know the REAL reason I can't deal in the Scouts universe: no or very few MEN. I do much better in situations with MEN involved. I like men. No bullshit, or a different kind anyway. I even liked DI better when there were boys on the team. It's not that I'm man hungry or sexually overcharged or lookin for love in all the wrong places--I just get along better in organizations when there are men, and very smart women, involved. That's why I liked law school; that's why I like the SCA; that's why I liked my friends in high school; that's why I really like (not just love) my own husband. Men are cool. Men don't play the same games as women, and I can usually see through their games a lot sooner. Women are bitchy, and groups of all women are bitchier still. I'm sorry, but female
attorneys--the worst!!! Smart AND bitchy. But put them in a room with some men and they are OK. They tone it down for the men and they behave themselves.

So please, no more organizations for me that are all women. I learned this lesson in college in my sorority, and I am staying out of Scouts unless they need me to do something or I need to do something to keep my girls in it and earning their awards and so forth for their college applications. Give me a co-ed team, organization, or whatever every time. I'm not intimidated by those men and they won't condescend to me. And if they do I have a few little tricks for shutting them down, or at least ignoring them the way they ignore their own wives sometimes. Passive aggressive-just ignore them and do whatever the hell you want! It's actually not a bad trick and I learned it from--you guessed it, men.

Pleasant Valley Mom, exhausted, and ready to go watch the ice skating now

February Madness, Destination Imagination Style

We don't have March Madness around my house even though I do like college basketball. This is a holdover from a previous relationship. I used to be able to do those pools at work and end up in or close to in the money every time, but I have let me knowledge slip away and now I am not nearly as familiar with the coaches (the key to college basketball) as I once was.

But we do indeed have February Madness, also known as Destination Imagination. This program used to be called Odyssey of the Mind for those of you old-timers. The kids on the team pick a challenge in the fall and spend all year working toward the goal of doing an 8 minute presentation at tournament. You would think that this wouldn't take very long to prepare for, but you would be wrong. The kids are supposed to do ALL the work; the coach or Team Manager is just a facilitator. I even took various ones of them shopping with me when we had to buy materials, although I drew the line at taking them to Perth Street where the discount fabric stores are located (I did get them some $1 a yard fabric though!) The parents out here wouldn't like it if I took their little darlings down there, since it's off of Harry Hines. This is kind of like the Red Light District in the DFW area, and most people who live out here in Pleasant Valley have never been there, so they are scared of it. I guess they think someone is going to steal their Rolexes or something if they go down there, but since the only Rolex I ever owned was a Hong Kong knockoff, it doesn't scare me much. They are more than welcome to the less than $20 in my purse, and if they can figure out a way to get money out of those debit cards, more power to them. I have a scrapbooking friend who quilts but she refuses to go down there with me, even though the fabric stores are only open during the day, but she would be amazed at the deals.

Although some of the Destination Imagination challenges are more scientific and technical (for example, requiring the kids to build a device that sends hacky sacks over a wall for points, or a robot), our group usually picks the theatre arts related challenge. They are an excellent improv group but they never pick the improv challenge because they want to MAKE stuff!!! This year with all the cold weather and the garage being a mess (never got it fully cleaned up after Harvest Fest because the weather got nasty--got the camping gear reorganized but there's still SCA crap out there in piles)--well anyway, it has been a challenge this year. They had to make a puppet and they decided on a large one. I can't say what yet because the tournament is March 6, but after Tournament I will share all of our secrets. They also have to do a live art form on stage that relates to the character flip or change in point of view that has to be in their story. They have come up with a great idea for a story and a decent script, after much research and angst. I thought we were going to have to paint our backdrop outside yesterday but they even decided on their own to use markers and scraps of felt and craft foam to decorate it, and they did one of the backdrops from a picture that one of the girls had drawn. I am going to attach her picture to my tournament forms because these little fourth grade girls (not my two but two others on my team) can draw better than I can. I am not very good at drawing and these kids could kick my butt at it--I could never have drawn what they did yesterday, not in a million years. My own kids worked on the technical and decorative aspects of the puppet, and the script yesterday. They have inherited our brains and creativity but unfortunately they have also inherited our lack of drawing talent.

We also have to practice instant challenges. For an instant challenge, the kids are taken to a room where appraisers read them a challenge. They generally have 4-5 minutes to use some random materials (like straws, paper clips, etc) to build something and plan a performance around it, then about 2 minutes to actually perform. Sometimes our team is awesome at this and sometimes they don't get it and it's a big mess. This is worth up to 100 points at tournament so it is important to practice and practice and practice, but at this time of year there is so much to do! I don't let them start building and making stuff until January because I don't want my house torn up at Christmas, but now all bets are off.

We have a backdrop sitting in my foyer on a lovely piece of warped plywood. It's propped up by a table where I am trying to make clay Viking brooches (and I am finding out that carving Viking designs in clay is not really something that I am particularly good at! Maybe I'll get the fourth graders to do it.) Plus Gulf War fabric all over the living room, with the feast gear and period games and embroidery stuff and calligraphy stuff and Ministry of Children stuff and God knows what else. I will say again, if you want to visit me, I need 30 days notice. Really.

The dining room table still has the good china on it from our brief Valentine's dinner. The china has been there since New Years so I think it is probably time to put it away now. I don't think I am going to leave it out until April (R's birthday), and we have precious little to celebrate after that as all family birthdays will then be done until the following January.

Every year I say in January that i am going to take a cake decorating class, but then by April, the desire passes into the wind like bad gas. I make the girls a coconut cake based on Grandma's recipe (I have to refrigerate this cake and I have the Tupperwear cake taker just for this purpose). I don't make myself a cake and I didn't even get one this year because we had Twelfth Night that day and no one like my husband thought about getting me a cake, and I refused to buy my own, so no birthday cake for me this year. I didn't really care that much but it would have been nice. I did make a boar's head out of rice krispy treats and frosted it so I guess I really did make my own cake, but we didn't eat this. The frosting was gray and I used some old black food coloring to achieve this, so I really didn't want to eat it. We sliced some of it up at DI the following Tuesday and we all said, "Yuk!!" and threw it all away. If you think blue and magenta cakes are nasty, just wait until you try a 4 day old gray Boar's Head rice krispy treat cake. I will probably just buy R a cake because I don't think he will care one way or the other whether I make one from a mix or not (I don't usually do scratch and even grandma's cake starts with a mix). I can do a cake from scratch, but we don't need a lot of extra desserts around here so my dessert skills are rather weak. My cookie sheets are shot (probably because I keep using them for trays for rain boots and crafts, not cookie sheets), so even my Christmas cookies suck. Every year about November I think about getting some new cookie sheets with Martha Stewarteque sillipat mats (rubber mats that aid in baking and don't melt in the oven), but that desire always passes, again like bad gas, by New Year's. Well, maybe this year. I haven't been to Williams Sonoma since I quit working full time but we did get married more than 15 years ago and maybe it is time for some new fancy WS or Pampered Chef gear. In my dreams!

Well, seems like I am just rambling today. Last year for DI the kids made a tree using girl scout cookie boxes and chicken wire and paper mache. They did bark out of brown paper and painted it, and made a hole in it for the Featured Creature using cardboard and duct tape. Miranda was the featured creature and had feathered wings (fortunately she got sick the week of the tournament and I made her sit there with a fever and glue her wings together, feather by feather, but we got a great score on her costume!) This year we are trying to focus on the key elements of the challenge and on the instant challenges so we don't do too much extra work that doesn't get graded, but we will see what happens. It is a hell of a lot of work for 8 minutes, but DI isn't really about the tournament or even winning (the scoring is extremely subjective even on things that could be seen as objective, so you really can't predict how you are going to do). DI is more about the Process of Learning how to do things and learning teamwork. And our whole house is more Process than Product right now, let me tell you!!

I did get my Valentine's Cards and the Birthday Card made at 3 am on Valentine's Day (couldn't sleep again so I got up and did these things since I was too tired right when we got home from Kingdom A & S). I dropped my Dotto adhesive and broke it though (broke the wheel off the whole container somehow), and now I need more in order to put together the damn snowmen. One of my new Cricut cartriges has lots of snowmen on it, kind of like snowmen paper dolls. I thought it would be fun but it's a nightmare putting these suckers together!! I can see why it's Limited Edition cartridge--it's damned hard to do, and by the time everyone figures it out, they will be all sold and off the market. I have snowmen pieces all over my scrapbook table (and they have been there since I returned from my scrapbook retreat almost a month agao). The plan was: put these snowmen together in about an hour the day after returning from retreat, and get back into the Christmas scrapbooking. Well, a month later it still looks like a terrorist attack on a colony of snowpeople on my scrapbooking table, and I just keep shunting it aside. I am about ready to put the whole damn mess in a baggie and move on with my life. Especially now that I broke my dotto adhesive, and my acid free gluestick is all dried out for some reason, and my glue pen isn't working (and I hate those anyway), so I really don't know how in the hell I am supposed to glue these tiny pieces together.

So, at Kingdom A & S the other day there was pewter casting, wood working, weaving, sewing (a whole dress and all four layers, even undergarments, made totally by hand), basketry, medicine (cough syrup), calligraphy and illumination, middle eastern cooking, blacksmithing, a variety of sewing and jewelry projects, etc. etc. There were over 50 entrants and it was AWESOME!!! Maybe I cn actually do something for it one day if I can ever figure out how to get the snowmen and my dreadful attempts at Viking Brooches off my work table.

Well, a mysterious alarm is going off somewhere in the house (I think it's the DI stopwatch) so I hope I haven't bored everyone to death today. This is the time of year when I get really serious about DI so I'm just not feeling very funny today. Plus I know I have to go to the dentist this morning, and have the DI kids this afternoon, and we are almost out of Crown after Valentine's Day, so that sort of stinks. That stuff is now about $25 a bottle and I feel like I just bought one, but I may be hitting the liquor store again on Friday. After all, it's just across the street from the girl scout store, and I'm sure there's some reason I need to go there (oh, yes, to sign up to rent a COOKIE Costume for our booth sale March 8!!!)

By the way, Girl Scout cookies will be here Wednesday so if anyone is interested, please know. I have to pay for them March 10th and we are selling some at All Con, but that's not until March 13th. I would really like to be able to pay for them on time so I will be selling them as fast as I can. They freeze well (at least I have told my husband this because he doesn't fully know how many he is buying yet). This year we made it almost all year with cookies--used the last box of Thin Mints up about 2 weeks ago. So I am ready for more! I don't buy any other cookies year round except for a few Oreos now and then--we just eat Girl Scout cookies all year. So that's why I don't have to learn to make desserts!

Pleasant Valley Mom, mired in Destination Imagination and other obnoxious projects