California Cookie

For the last day of school, Em's teacher asked the kids to bring in a California Cookie. They've been studying California all year (let's not even get into the fact that this is the first year they're doing serious Social Studies, and they START with California history, instead of US or World history. US comes next year, World is the sixth grade curriculum. Isn't that just totally ass-backwards?) and have made several topographical maps, including a clay version of California. Don't ask me where I found the energy and give-a-shit-ness to whip up a batch of cookie dough and then brainstorm ways to make mountains (candy hearts left over from Valentines Day, turned upside down--those are supposed to be the Sierra Nevadas up there, but they got nibbled on before I took the photo, so they're not quite a full range), deserts (white frosting with yellow food coloring), valleys (white frosting sprinkled with green mint candies left over from Christmas, smashed up with a mortar and pestle...and did Em ever have fun doing that!), and smaller mountain ranges (white frosting sprinkled with red mint candy-cane-like candies also left over from Christmas and smashed less completely withe mortar and pestle) and such. (I know; there's too much desert. Sue me. I didn't have the energy to come up with a different way to denote beach or to intersperse desert and valleys and such, so it's...well...a vague approximation of California topography. A vague and incorrect approximation.)

If staying up until 10 last night with Em finishing this did-I-mention-it-was-totally-optional project doesn't get me a Mom of the Month award, following that up by spending the entire day in N's kindergarten class pulling artwork off the walls and distributing it to the kids (with occasional forays down to Em's fourth grade class to help out with some last-minute report-card distribution and copy-machine runs during their end-of-year party) should clinch it for me. Well, it should either clinch Mom of the Month or a prescription for some pretty serious psychopharmaceuticals, since anyone who does all of that and then shows up for a three-hour general membership meeting at her synagogue that night (I had to be there; I'm PTA president for next year, did I mention that?) must be thoroughly insane. Which I am. So there you go.

(Psst. Don't tell anyone. But making that cookie was the most fun I've had in weeks.)

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For the record: When they announced N's name for his Teacher's Choice Award ("And for finding the courage inside of him...N Confused...") he grabbed my hand and said, "NO! I'm too scared!" Baroy had to walk/drag him up there, and then--just as he'd done back in February (I think it was) when he got the Student of the Month award for his class--he stood in line and hid behind the certificate until all the names had been called. (I'll post both photos as soon as I get them from Baroy; no danger of any pedophile id'ing him from a photo of his shirt sticking out underneath an award certificate!) Watching him, I leaned over to his teacher, next to whom I was standing, and said, "You shouldn't have given him an award for courage. You should have given him an award for being able to physically define the word 'irony' in an academic setting."

She laughed very hard.