The Lunch Lady

Today's my first day as Lunch Lady at BabyGirl's school. I'm generally a pretty quiet person, I generally prefer quiet environments, and I generally prefer to be inside. So, of course, I had to sign up to be the Wednesday Lunch Lady because it made BabyGirl happy.

And what does this entail? Holding down the kid-induced chaos of two lunch periods (11:30-noon, noon-12:30) and outside play time with the entire school! Gee whiz, the things I'll do for that kid. The idea of all those little hooligans swirling around and yelling in the little lunch room, followed by outside time on this, our third rainy day in a row, is a little intimidating. But since I have BabyGirl convinced that I'm a Brave Momma, slayer of monsters and relocator of spiders, I'll go and find the joy in their abandon. Then I'll come home to my empty house and have a cup of tea in the silence.

Post Lunch Lady Update
What in the wide wide world of sports was I thinking? I'm sure I'll work into it but with the rain--that started the minute the little rugrats were supposed to go outside, mind you--it was an "inside recess" day. I was assigned to keep an eye on the kindergarten room into which about a zillion kids ran because the best toys are in there. One boy took off, then lost, his hearing aids (the better to not hear me, my Dears); a girl somehow managed to scrape her thigh and then hiked her pant leg up to her crotch to display the wound; a kindergarten boy wanted desperately to build stuff with the big guys but didn't know how to join them and had a little melt-down (hooray for the big guys who figured out the situation long before I did and invited him in); BabyGirl declared herself "the helper's helper" and didn't leave me. Ok, ok, I secretly dug the last part. It was good to see her in the middle of the day.

I was missing her so much yesterday that I got all teary at the grocery store yesterday when I saw a mom and her child tooling around the aisles while pushing the pint-sized kids' shopping cart. When the kid careened into my shopping cart, the mom apologized and I nearly burst into tears! She thought it was sweet.