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December 14, 2005
Happy Holidays Fred!
The seasonal shuffle continues! The tree has been trimmed (and re-trimmed whenever eager boys pull down sparkly ornaments,) more presents have been wrapped (still a couple to buy and a few to wrap,) snacks and serving dishes have been procured and delivered for the Board of Trustees sponsored “Faculty Treat Week” at my high school. I have baked Christmas cookies for the preschool holiday pageant, and then quickly bought a few more cookies when it was clear that I was too tired to bake any more. The Board meeting and pageant are now over, with just a big birthday bash for my Mom’s 60th left to plan and execute for Sunday. Overall, things are under control considering that holidays are meant to be hectic.
My day for “Faculty Treat Week” was yesterday. It was also a day for a Board meeting. Therefore, I ended up making the trek to my high school alma mater twice yesterday. It is over an hour away.
The morning commute to set up the snacks was an opportunity for the Cat to ride the commuter train. He had been excited about the trip for days, so it didn’t take any convincing to get out of the house yesterday morning. Carrying several serving dishes, a large bamboo bowl, two 3 pound bags of tortilla chips, eight bags of cut-up (the night before) pita bread, a jumbo jar of salsa, three containers of hummus, one jug of garlic-bacon dip, and four packets of guacamole while also pushing Spliggle’s stroller was a bit of a heavy challenge, but the Cat actually helped with the stroller pushing part.
Thankfully, the train wasn’t very crowded, so our bounty wasn’t a problem. Spliggle was quite squiggly, and ate all the food that I had packed for the entire trip just on the way to the school. Technically, food and drink isn’t allowed on the train, but I figured that I could monitor small pieces of food better than I could convince Splig not to cry, shriek, or run around the train.
Managing the elevator was a bit of a hassle because the platform level and street level are different than the ticket processing concourse. So I had to go from P to C, exit to process my ticket, and then return to the elevator to go from C to S. The elevator resets itself to the platform level. So even though I was gone less than ten seconds to process the ticket on C, the elevator had already reset itself. Entering and exiting the elevator quickly with my stash was tricky.
I pressed the elevator call button immediately after processing my ticket. A lady came up, pressed the call button again, then aggravated because the elevator wasn’t coming rapidly, pushed the agent-call button. Just then, the elevator arrived, she pushed her way past me and the boys, and she pressed the platform level! I entered and pressed the street level. Again, aggravated because the elevator wasn’t immediately moving, she pressed “P” again, and then “C” for concourse!
As a result, we rode from C to P to C, finally back up to S. I was pretty happy to finally emerge at street level!
Set up of the snacks in the faculty lounge was a breeze, though the Cat kept proclaiming, “I want to go home now!” to any faculty member who would listen. He was glad when I announced we would be going back to the train station for our return trip. I still feel funny when entering the faculty lounge since it was of course off limits to me as a student.
The return trip was fairly uneventful, although with no food left Splig was pretty spliggly and unhappy. The Cat was happy to be on a train, but Splig wasn’t in the mood to continue sitting in his stroller. He made one little shriek and a man yelled, “SHUT UP!” The train was rather empty, so I had hoped we wouldn’t have any difficulty with other passengers. However, this man yelled something else at us a few moments later, though I couldn’t understand his words over Splig’s bursts of alternating happy and sad sounds. Truthfully, his noises weren’t all that loud or frequent given the whole of the trip, but one five minute period was a bit troublesome. I was shocked that when we exited the train, the unhappy man walked out with a three year old. I guess either his son never made any noise, or he wasn’t around his son when he was a baby. Who knows? Maybe I misidentified the man.
A few hours later, I returned via the same train route to the Board of Trustees meeting. It was a nice dinner gathering, although the meeting ran late so I was doing quite a bit of yawning. On the return trip, a fellow trustee joined me on the commuter train. We made a bit of small talk waiting for the train, sat across from each other on the train, but then got out our respective reading material for the ride itself. When his stop arrived, I looked up from my magazine and called out, “Have a happy holiday, Fred!” but he didn’t turn around as he exited the train. The man sitting next to me looked at me funny and a couple people standing around the exit looked at me and back at the door to see to whom I was speaking.
My guess is that Fred was so tired that he forgot that I was there. Or he simply didn’t hear me. I don’t think it was an intentional snub; but what was amusing was the reaction of my fellow passengers. The man sitting next to me had been twisting a piece of wire over and over again, and frequently reaching into his bag to poke around without actually bringing anything out. I was a bit worried and thought he was shifty, but when I made my announcement to Fred, he looked at me like I was the odd one.
Today was no less hectic. I brought the baked cookies I had made, plus serving trays to preschool. After dropping off the Cat, Splig and I made a mad dash to the store in the half hour before the pageant was to begin. I bought some additional holiday cookies to add to those I had made myself. As always happens when one is in a rush, the traffic signals were against me, the “express” lane included people paying by an assortment of slow means, and the cashier wasn’t attentive to where one person’s purchases ended and another began (despite the plastic barriers that to me were pretty clear.) We made it back to preschool in time to snag a front row seat (as requested by the teacher since she anticipated the Cat would want to sit on my lap instead of up with his classmates) and to set up the cookies.
As expected, the Cat entered the room separately accompanied by his teacher. He sat next to me. Three minutes later, he said he wanted to enter with his class. I brought him back to his classroom. The class entered and lined up, but there was no Cat. He was apparently hanging outside.
He then walked in back of the audience to sit next to me. Once his classmates started to sing, he wanted to stand up front with them. He sang the majority of songs with his friends with the occasional dash back to the seat next to me. Surprisingly, he even gave his little solo line!
All in all, I was proud of the Cat’s performance. He was nervous, but overcame his concerns long enough to participate.
At the end of the pageant, Santa burst in! The Cat was initially nervous, but then begged to sit on his lap, when he asked for a “big green bridge” and lots of trains. He had asked for the same bridge when we saw mall Santa. He will be pretty disappointed if he doesn’t get a big green bridge now that Santa has been told twice of his wishes!
One little guy spouted rapid-fire a list of items he wanted. The first was “a big laser to cut everyone’s heads off.” Charming.
Treat Week and Pageant down, Mom’s 60th to go! (Oh yeah, and then Christmas Eve and Christmas. Heh!)
(Also, I finally uploaded the pictures from two weeks ago when the boys and I went to an "inflatable party zone" to run around while it was pouring outside.)
Posted by karianna at December 14, 2005 06:10 PM