I guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue

April 17, 2008

Once again, we are in the heart of Destination Imagination season, with the state competition only a few days away.

And once again, I am trying to remember why I ever thought this was a good idea. Managing a team is rather like being in labor. You have reached a point in the process, where there is nothing you can do to stop the progress and get your life back to normal. You just have to grit your teeth, and get through. And the only way you will ever do it again is if your brain goes numb, to make you forget what you just went through.

We have an exceptionally large house. Not large in the modern, McMansion sense. Large in the old-fashioned, to hell with heating costs, let’s put a six bedroom house in the middle of nowhere and don’t spare the uninsulated windows, sort of way. We have a big kitchen, next to a big dinging room, opening into a huge living room (through French doors), flanked by a large office, with a long front hall in the middle.

But right now, we have a DI project, pushing all four walls to the breaking point. The dam has become a permanent fixture in the dining room, and because it is sitting in a kiddie pool, we’ve moved the dining table back against the wall. Which means someone is always hitting their head against the chandelier.

In the living room, there is a fake TV set, made of PVC pipe, chase lights, and fabric, that is blocking the real TV, and most of the furniture. The electric guitar is in there as well.

ME: Do we really need an electric guitar?
Team: Yes, we do. If we’re singing the blues…

The hell with the team. My husband is singing the blues. The, “When are these kids going to go home, so I can sit on the couch?” blues.

In the kitchen, there is a balsa wood structure, in the oven. Just don’t ask.

And the fold-up, cardboard canoe, that looks suspiciously like a penis when in its un-deployed state, (if a penis had a rubber chicken for a figurehead) is sitting in the hall. The cats have to jump over it, to get to their food dishes. Today, I caught Mohawk the cat, drinking from the dog dish.

Normally, that would be good for a chasin’, or at least some enthusiastic barking. But the dog lay there, watching him, too depressed to get up and run him off. Kaiju has been locked up in the kitchen during meetings, because leg-humping teenagers has not earned him a position as team mascot.

Fluffer the cat, is fuming on the front porch. Yesterday, during a display of youthful high spirits, she was drafted to play Simba in an impromptu performance of The Circle of Life, from Lion King.

If Simba was fat, middle-aged, and really angry? She would have been a dead ringer.

4 responses to “I guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue”

  1. Anonymous says:

    That penis was in my living room for over a month, and that figurehead was rescued from a mutt’s mouth more than once.

    See you Saturday!

  2. Anonymous says:

    That penis was in my living room for over a month, and that figurehead was rescued from a mutt’s mouth more than once.

    See you Saturday!

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