Tuesday morning. Patriot Day. Red, White, and Blue Day. Whatever you want to call it. My students and the Youngest Princess were to wear their chapel clothes. Hallelujah! The Young Prince wore his basketball warm ups which are conveniently red, white and blue, and the Oldest Princess wore her cheerleading uniform, as directed by her cheer coach. They would be cheering at the boys game that evening. I woke up not feeling well, and realized that I was battling a Kidney infection. (Homecoming week, short week, break in the middle of the week, special chapel day, kidney infection). I promise, I could not write a better story. We got ready much as we would on a pretty normal day, and then we headed out to school, with a cup full of cran-grape juice and a call in to the doctor's office.
School started with getting morning routines done quickly as chapel started at 8:15 that morning. Pledges were said, the national anthem was sung, a high school student read about the history of Veteran's Day, The Youngest Princess's class and a few other classes sang a special, the songs of each branch of the armed forces were played and we stood in honor of loved ones who served in each branch, and then the speaker was introduced. He did a wonderful job of speaking to all of the ages represented. And that is hard to do when you are talking about 2nd grade through 12th grade. He definitely did not have any trouble keeping everyone's attention - You just had to be there! But he did it and did it well. A group of middle school students were recognized for writing essays for an essay contest, and the winning essay was read. It was a beautiful chapel.
Then chapel was over and the madness began again. After chapel, we had about 10 minutes before we had to be at snack. After we got finished with snack, and back up to the room to get started on our school day. It was 9:45. We were working to get two days done in one, because we would be out of school the next day, so we were doing the bare bones of the lessons. No frills. Just hard work. Which was good, because the students were too busy to get into trouble. Then the door opened. Could they have the students who had paid to have their picture made with Patriot, our mascot? A fundraiser. Because Homecoming week is full of fundraising opportunities. We got that taken care of, and continued on. The students worked hard until it was time for them to go to Library. The Library teacher helped us out by letting them make cards for Veterans during her time. We were supposed to get it done earlier but had run out of time. It was a huge blessing for them to be able to get those done. Then it was time for lunch. During lunch my friend came and asked if she and two of her children could ride to the game with us that afternoon. We had plenty of room, so of course, we said they could. After lunch we were back to only having about 2 subjects covered and 6 more to go with 2 hours left in our day. But once again, we managed by sticking to the bare bones of the lessons. My students are troopers and did a great job.
After school, I had time to run home for just a minute while the Youngest Princess had cheer practice. I took some medicine, and changed clothes, and then it was time to head back to the school to pick up the Youngest Princess and our friend and her children. We piled in the car and headed about 1 hour and 45 minutes away to more ball games.
We skipped dinner in order to get our friend to her son's game, which was before The Young Prince's game. We bought snacks from their concession stand, and settled in to watch the game. It was exciting, and our JV boys won. (Game # 2 of the week)
Now it was time for our Varsity boys to do their thing. It was a good game, and our boys played hard. They were nervous with it being their first game of the season, and they are still working on playing together as a team. Meanwhile our girls were cheering them on. Overall, they did great. But the officials, well, that was another story. I am no basketball expert. I do not know a foul in most cases, unless it is blatant. I do not know how officials watch everything they are supposed to watch, and catch everything they are supposed to catch. I am not a parent who yells at officials. I have to trust that they know much more than I do. BUT, with all that said, our boys were getting called for fouls every time they turned around. And, I learned that they do not put the foul count on the scoreboard after the first ten fouls. We were to ten quickly. Most of our boys were at four fouls and only some of their boys had one or two. It really did appear that they were calling harder on us than they were on them. Yet still, the score stayed close. Near the end of the game we got the rebound after they missed a shot and were up 41 to 40. The other team got the ball with 4.5 seconds to go. They threw the ball in. The kid who got the ball shot from mid-court, and the ball went in their basket with a swoosh. No way!!! If I had not been there, I do not know that I would have believed it. For that matter, I was there, and I didn't want to believe it! It was a very sad loss for our boys. The Young Prince wanted a win badly. And it had looked like we were going to get it, despite some unfair calling by the officials. But it wasn't meant to be. (Game # 3)
We loaded up to head home. Just us, as our friend had met up with her family again. It was a quiet ride home. Everyone was tired and bummed. I had a horrible headache, probably from staying away from caffeine all day and not having dinner. We stopped at the only place that was open that late. A combo (always a bad sign), Kentucky Fried Chicken/Taco Bell/Gas Station (anytime food and gas stations are mixed is another bad sign if you ask me). Not to mention that it was about 30 minutes before their closing time. Never go into a fast food restaurant at 30 minutes before closing time. It is a bad, bad thing to do. The workers do not like you. They do not want to serve you quality food. They want to finish cleaning up and go home. They are mad at you before you even walk in the door. And they complain loudly the whole time that you are there that they are ready to go home. Or they completely ignore you. Or both. In our case, one complained loudly about how she wanted to go home, and another did everything she could to ignore us. The chicken nuggets came to us soggy and pretty much inedible. The tacos were ordered with meat and cheese only, but they had lettuce on them. One of us gave up and ordered nachos, because how hard can it be to mess those up? And the rest of us ate it anyway, thankful to have something to eat. It could be worse, and we were tired and hungry, and just wanted to be home.
I happened to remember that I did not get the information that I needed from C, one of the Oldest Princess's friends, for a project that the Youngest Princess needed to work on. I asked the Oldest Princess to text C and see if we could get with her sometime the next day to get that information. C text back that she could run it by to us, but I had already fallen asleep and did not get her message until we got home, and it was too late to text her back. I set an alarm on my phone so that I could remember to contact her the next morning. Early, before she got too busy to get together to get the information, but not so early as to wake her up on her day off.
Several of us fell asleep on the ride home, but not the driver thankfully, and when we got home and into bed at about 11:30, I was, for the first time, thankful for a day off in the middle of the week. We would need it. The rest of the week was quickly on its way.
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