Christmas stream o' consciousness

Okay...so the school is pretty much vacant and our offices are half full at best. I'm recording grades of the culinary students on my spread sheet and I'm bored out of my skull!!! I've got my headphones on and I'm listening to the "Mambo Kings" soundtrack...naturally, I'm bouncing on the ball. I suppose you could call that "doing the ball mambo" in the office. Sounds kinda dirty, but I assure you...it's not...just a little goofy.

So, we went to Goobs' preschool christmas party last night. Let me set the scene for you... about 150 people packed into a large room in a suburban community center. Over two thirds of the party attendees were preschool age or below (students and their small bro's and sisses ). Yes, moms and dads were there too, but their main purposes in the grand scheme of things were to herd kids, gather pizza, fuit, and cookies, stop kids from throwing said food articles, and make sure that nothing too monumentally disastrous occurred. The kids also put on a small music program and the guest of honor, Santa, showed up.

In a nutshell...there were way too many kinds of stimuli for the kids, and for a certain Samok Daddy...who just happens to suffer from adult ADD, to handle. Just getting pizza in line was a chore. The line crawled and kids chased in and out of it, making it even more of a pain in the backside. When we finally got situated to eat, the singing program started. Goobs rushed up front to join his kiddie cohorts, but got bored halfway through the second song and returned to our table. A couple of songs later, jingle bells were distributed to the kids who were singing...guess who didn't get a jingle bell because he left the group? He ran back up to join the choir again, but it was too late for a jingle bell...

After the singing finished, we waited for Santa. But of course, Goobs had to pee. J was next to him, so she decided she would take him to the bathroom. Timing has always been a problem with the Samok family, and this occasion was no exception for us. J and Goobs were gone an inordinately amount of time for what I deemed a simple "drop your drawers and do a pee pee." You can guess who came when they were off to the bathroom. Santa made his grand entrance. The Bun climbed on her chair and was saying "Hi Santa" and waving over and over again. Finally, J and Goobs returned. I volunteered to take Goobs up to see Santa, which I initially thought that he wanted to do...I turned out not to be the case. As we went up to Santa, hand in hand, Goobs tried to pull away and threw a major tantrum. He began screaming and stomping his feet...He made it clear he didn't want to see Santa...which was wierd, because he had never appeared to be bothered by Santa before. He was pretty tired and later went to bed right around 8:00, so I think that being a fatigued little boy could have been a big part of it.

Well, the Bun...that girl is like "night and day" as compared to her older brother. She wanted to get a piece of Santa. It was kind of odd though...she was in line and excited, but right before she got to Santa she decided to lay "face down" on the floor and didn't want to move. We finally got her on Santa's lap. By gosh...she was soooo cute on Santa's lap. I'll put a picture of it on the blog this weekend, so STAY TUNED!

I have to say that experiences like that tire both J and I out and we really were cranky with each other after the party. Only a few words were exchanged between us as we drove back home. You know...even if couples love each other very deeply, preschool Christmas parties can make happy pairs grumpy and growly. J sent me off to Target to get last minute gifts the moment we got home. That little time away did wonders and we were able to sit on a sofa together and watch Napoleon Dynamaite. I rubbed her feet and that was the evening...I still don't get Napoleon Dynamite. J says that it's not my type of movie...she said that I gravitate toward things like "Animal House." Okay, I like "Animal House" and I've seen it probably in the neighborhood of 60 times, but I'm not always "Mr. Lowbrow Neanderthal."

Okay...so that was my evening.