How I Became the Traveling US Embassy

Since I am, unfortunately, a “yes” person, I am on the Board of Directors at Ollie and Henry’s school.

Pre-school, that is. A fancy {READ: FAAAAYN-seee} one that requires a Board to “Direct” it.

This year I have been working with Fundraising which is not my forte. But we’ve gotten to plan several events {and that borders around my forte}, so it has been fun.

Every year our pre-school has a Multi-Cultural Festival. Montessori is a method of teaching used all over the world {and teaches learning about other cultures}, so we have several families that are from all over the world. It’s a nice little hodge podge mesh of cute, little kiddos. This festival highlights different foods, dances, crafts, etc. from different cultures. Thus the name.

Yours truly, who hasn’t lived outside the red clay of Alabama, has been on the planning committee. You see they were obviously lacking in volunteers. Thankfully, there are also several people on the committee who have been doing this for years, so impending doom is not CERTAIN- just possible.

I have been in charge of general décor at the entrance, so I called my friend Kat who still works here {where I used to work and where Jason and I met}. I knew she had tons of flags from around the world and thought it would be cool to have those outside the entrance.

Wednesday, I went over to her office and loaded up the flags, 8 foot flag poles and stands in the rain in my global warmer SUV car. Then I went to start said vehicle and it would not start. Apparently, the battery was dying and a nice man jumped me off {the car off- why does that sound bad?} and then I was on my way.

When I got to the school to pick up the kiddos, I {left the car running} and then only got 3 stands inside before I heard talk of possible canceling the festival. WHAT? I am currently the traveling US Embassy and my car looks like this {please note the rain}:

We will be having this dang festival!

So Thursday, after I had my neighbor jump my car off, I decided that it might possibly need a new battery. I dropped the kids off at pre-school, {left the car running} then hopped back in to go get the new battery.

There is a neat little device that the guy installing the battery tried to put in my charger so that the computer wouldn’t erase the clock and the saved radio stations, etc, when they replaced the battery.
But he couldn’t get to it because I still had 12 EIGHT FOOT POLES in my car.

It was around that time, when the weather forecast looked like this: that we officially decided to postpone the planned OUTDOOR festival {to a weekend when I’ll be out of town!}.

I didn’t want to unload the flags and heavy poles if Kat needed them back, so I left her a message begging for the STUPID flags. At this point, I hate every country represented and am planning an Olympic boycott of most of them- just for being stuck in my car.

Then last night I went to see Motherload {hilarious- I would highly recommend} with a group of girls. We met for dinner and then my friend Dana hopped in the car with me.

And the flag pole collection.

My WORD! I have got to get these things out of here.

After she snorted laughing at me, she said that she would just “use them as an armrest”.

Eventually, I got the things out of my car this morning. I heard from Kat who graciously said to keep them, so I unloaded them in our administrator’s office. Poor thing.

Maybe I can wedge my children into their car seats now.

And, at least, the represented countries of the world will have someplace nice to hang out without the possibilities of juice stains, red clay from muddy shoes or dying car parts. That's all of the Olympic spirit I can muster right now.