When I was a kid I had this fantasy that I would grow up to be the best homeroom mommy ever. I’d bring treats for every holiday, arrange all class parties, and everyone would adore me for my spider cookies made out of Nilla wafers and licorice whips. I was going to be like my own mommy, times five! The bestest of the best of the very bestest! Ever.

The trouble with this dream, along with my fantasy of having an entire room of my house filled with one hundred hamsters and those massive toob cages all connected throughout, is that it’s just plain impractical. Those hamsters would stink like crazy and those toob cages are wicked hard to sanitize. Likewise, trying to pair my personality with a room filled with four year olds is just a tad on the crazy side.

Today, for the first time, I volunteered at Jonas’ preschool. Now, we are expected to volunteer a few hours each month, but with Chris’ schedule being unpredictable and the fact that I have a one year old who naps at the same time as school, it hasn’t been happening. Today I found a few minutes and decided to give it a go. Let me give you a brief summation of what happened:

A: Ten minutes after arriving I got chewed out by one of the teachers for not having had my TB shot, which I didn’t know I needed. When asked when my last one was I answered, “Uhh, I think I was twelve?” They kept me only because they were seriously understaffed.

B: Twenty minutes in, I get my period, and the cramps and bloating hit hard and fast.

C: Thirty minutes in I sit down at a table for lunch and had every seat at my table filled with a trouble maker, including my own kid. The other teachers looked on in horror at the impending doom, and learned very quickly (as I’m sure these kids picked up on radar the second I walked in the door) that Miss Lou is not an authority figure, even when she’s wearing the khaki teacher apron.

D: One hour into the game my head begins to throb. The children, though given constant reminder to use their inside voice, never reach that level.

E: fifteen minutes later, the family advocate pulls me into her office and makes me go through a bunch of paper work, tries to corral me into hard and fast volunteer hours (unsuccesful), and makes me tell her my personal goals (uhh, publish more of my scrapbook pages? Survive the next three hours here?) I leave with a cookbook because after refusing all of the resources she is paid to dispense, I’ve taken nothing, so she foists it upon me so she can say she did something for me in her records.

F: Hour and a half in I’m manning the sponge painting table, and thinking I’m doing well until I notice that there is a chair full of paint, and who knows how many kids running around with paint on their bums.

G: Two hours in, while making a star of the week crown, I play an integral part in flooding the clean up center sink. They have to call housekeeping staff because there is SO. MUCH. WATER.

H: Two and a half hours in I make a child cry because he as bickering with another kid over a toy and I took the toy away.

I: Three hours in, I have a serious migraine, and nausea is kicking in, on top of severe cramps.

J: Three hours twenty-five minutes in Jonas hits someone for the second time and gets in big trouble.

K: Three hours and forty minutes in, Jonas is being such a pill, I opt to take him home and end everyone’s misery. I get home and literally have to lay down in a quiet, dark room for twenty minutes.

So, uhhh, it was a success because I lived to tell the tale?