I Must Be Insane

At least I come by it honestly.  Genetically, in fact.

This is a spectacularly beautiful afternoon.  Clear, sunny, 68 degrees, soft breeze.  Where am I spending it??  In my office, making a poster board of volunteer signup opportunities for Thing One's class because I am his homeroom mom this year and Back To School Night is tonight.  There is definitely something wrong with this picture.  At the very least, I need to move the printer outside!

Himself spends a great deal of time telling me not to agree to do this kind of thing.  I've been informed on more than one occasion (tongue mostly in cheek) that our marriage will be in jeopardy if I take one more big thing on--usually something like organizing the massive PTA auction that benefits the school or some such.   To which "opportunity" I would say hell no anyway, because I do have some sense...it's the smaller things that I agree to do precisely because they are smaller and I think I can fit them in that end up biting me in the butt.  See e.g. today.

Himself was raised by parents who are not at all active in their community.  They are wonderful people, but they did not help at their church or volunteer at their kids' schools or coach a sports team or anything else as far as I know.  (They both worked, in fairness, but a lot of the parents who volunteer around here work as well.)  They have their friends, whom they have known since slightly after the earth cooled, and they spend their free time with these friends and doing their sports activities.  That's just how it is with them.  This is the example Himself grew up with.

My parents, on the other hand, are an entirely different sort.  They helped with everything, always.  Class parent, CCD teacher, school board member, parish council treasurer, cupcake baker, school volunteer, Rotary member.  You name it, one or the other of them did it.  Even now that both of us kids are long gone, Dad is a volunteer chaplain at their local hospital and Mom does remedial reading with disadvantaged kids.  That's just who they are, and the example they set for me.

After all these years of marriage, Himself and I are approaching a detente, anyway.  He coaches all three kids' soccer teams, and I am actively trying to cut back on the things I get involved with, because I become a lunatic (even more of a lunatic?) when I say "yes" too often.  I am going to assume that there is a happy medium somewhere between doing so much that you become a nutjob and doing nothing at all.  Maybe we will even find it sometime!