Big & Scary Mama

There is a parent/visitor parking lot at M’s school. The curbs along the inside are designed for a pull-through student drop-off. It’s kinda like McDonald’s. You don’t go park your car in the drive-thru and go inside to order your french fries. That would be pretty silly and, well, pretty annoying to everyone else! That’s just not how it’s done. M.W. Elementary is not McDonald’s, but the concept is obviously the same. Well, obvious to me at least. It’s probably obvious to most of those other mothers, too, but being a little selfish and lazy, they park and leave cars there anyway. (And it is NOT out of desperation due to a full parking lot… there are plenty of open spaces.) I’ve been observing (and enduring) all of this for a few months now. With a carload of kids, it’s nice to be able to let M out the car door and onto the sidewalk that goes right to the front of the school and right to her classroom.

Yes, that WOULD be nice. Unfortunately many moms who take their kids all the way to the classrooms every morning choose to park in the drop-off lane rather than in a parking space (which would add like, what?, ten feet to their walks?!). This is quite frustrating for the rest of us. It only takes about 8 lazy mamas to block all the curb space… and that doesn’t leave much room to maneuver—in any car but especially in a Suburban. Plus the parking lot is designed for counter-clockwise flow only, so when the cars are parked in the spaces along the curve and cars are parked along the curb, there is no getting through… and you’re pretty much stuck there until one of those parked cars moves.

Several weeks ago, I called the school and let them know what was happening. The next morning I arrived to find they’d put out a couple orange cones and “student drop-off only” sandwich boards (Let me not forget to mention that the curbs are already marked NO PARKING). The problem maybe wasn’t quite as bad, but most of the lazy, selfish mamas just parked around the cones and did their same ol’ routine. I waited another week or two, and then I called the school again. They added a few more cones. Nope, those die-hard lazy ladies keep on parking. It’s the same ones every morning. Since the school has not decided to hire a parking lot monitor, I decided to volunteer my services! …Of course, I’m doing it Robin Hood style. You know, undercover and anonymous!!

I got on the computer last night and printed up my you-are-parked-in-a-no-parking-zone notices. We got out of the house a few minutes early this morning, parked in the parking lot, and began our covert surveillance operation. After M headed to class, I stayed around and watched the cars. And then I waited until the mamas were off at a distance, and I stuck my notes on the windshields. As this was a secret operation (and certainly had not been approved by school personnel), I was very sneaky. There is one lady who is…. well, one big, scary mama. Let me stress that—BIG and SCARY. Not wanting to still be in the parking lot when these lazy, selfish mamas returned to their cars (because at this point, I figured they’d be lazy, selfish, and DISGRUNTLED mamas), I pulled out and parked along the street so I could observe the aftermath. The only one I could see very clearly was Big&Scary, and I was glad to have left the parking lot! She read the note, turned towards the parking spaces, looked around, and then held it up in the air and ripped it into pieces… you know, mad-doggin’ that person in the parking lot who dared leave the note. (Now, did I mention that this was a big and scary mama??) Maybe I should just put on my “official” parking lot monitor orange safety vest...“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

Well, moving on…

Last night was the Awana awards ceremony. M finished her first year of Sparks and L her second year of Cubbies. Next year, they will be in Sparks together, and B will be a Cubbie! Of course, B already has his weekly Cubbies night with Moma and Daddy, so when the girls got their vests on, he got one for himself—a silver poofy winter vest he found in the coat closet. He let us know that he was on the gray team, and this was his uniform. (During the pledge, he was singing "We're Awana Cubbies!") After the girls had been recognized, we snuck out and went to Dairy Queen. Too “long” of a ceremony for our other restless little’uns. (At one point during the program, I gave S a pen and paper so she could scribble. She did that for a while, and it really worked to distract her. She got really quiet as she concentrated on her artwork. Then I realized that she wasn’t coloring the paper anymore, but she was coloring all over her body. She was definitely entertained.) I had a buy one-get one Dairy Queen blizzard coupon, so we got two blizzards and split them up among the six of us. (T just smiled and kicked as he watched the rest of us eating.) They all really enjoyed the m&m blizzard, though M was initially sad because she wanted an ice cream cone like Ainsley had. A is her fellow-Sparky buddy who was also at DQ having an after-ceremony celebration with her family. (N & I shared a cappuccino-Heath blizzard (minus the Heath) and it was mmm-mm tasty!) At one point, we looked over and saw that B and S had put water into their blizzards… they were making milkshakes, they said. Ew! Luckily we noticed before they stirred them, and we were able to pour off the water.

When we got home the kids went upstairs to do the bedtime routine. Except S. She snuck off into the kitchen to play in the sink… where I caught her brushing her teeth with the cleaning-the-muck-off-the-dirty-dishes brush. Double Ew... and definitely an “ew” in a completely different category than the watery milkshake “ew”!!!

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