Let’s drag this out a bit more

You may know that I’m in charge of the PTA Reflections contest for our school. If you didn’t know that, well then you haven’t been paying attention around here. For the past two weeks, I’ve had 151 entries here at my house, and I’ve been in charge of getting entries judged, tally the scores, calling businesses and collecting freebies. About a week and a half ago I ordered medals. I found a company online with good prices. Plus I could order from the comfort of my own home instead of driving around town to order and pick up. Because basically I’m tired of driving all over for this PTA job. I’m getting tired of my PTA job, and maybe, just maybe a little bit burned out.

So, when my medals arrived on Thursday, I rejoiced (hooray! They came in time) and glanced at them (Cool!) and set them aside until after my dinner party on Thursday (Lots of fun!). On Friday, I took another look at them and realized I had to hook all the ribbons on to the medals. I enlisted the help of my lovely daughter, Megan. As I’m struggling to clip the ribbons on (Ouch! These things are killing my fingers!), Megan looks at the one she’s doing and says, “Gross.”

What? What is gross? What’s wrong? I come to see, and I see the medals, and don’t see anything wrong.

Upon closer examination, I realize that the bas relief-ness of the art medal may present a problem.

I’ve tried to blow this little picture up a bit so that it’s more of it’s actual size. Do you see anything that might present a problem? It’s art, right? There’s an artist’s palette, the Parthenon, The Venus De Milo. Art things. Oh! I just realized that giving these awards, which are in 3D, may be a problem for your average 5th grade boy. Or girl. Oh, the titillation. Since this realization that this may be a big mistake hit me on Friday night, and I don’t have the phone number of the principal at home, I got to stew about it all weekend. I mean, the assembly is TUESDAY, as in Tomorrow, people.

This morning I went in to the school to run it by the principal, and he laughed and said we would be better off if we got different medals. “I can just hear the phone calls already.”

So, we get to drag this ordeal that is reflections out just a bit LONGER and have our assembly NEXT week instead. Which is fine. The only reason I scheduled it before Thanksgiving was to get it over with. I called the medal people, and yes, they can replace them with a more appropriate, although pretty generic medal. They will of course charge me a 15% restocking fee and I’ll have to pay the return shipping and more shipping on the new stuff. Ka-ching. That will eat up the extra I had in the budget, but it seems worth it, don’t you think?

My supportive husband, Ryan, had really gotten a kick out of this whole thing. He laughs that I’m distributing soft p*rn to the kids at school, and suggested that he grind all the Venuses off with a grinder. Or we could draw little t-shirts on them all with a sharpie. Because that won’t draw attention to it at ALL. Ha, Ha. Really funny.