I am officially one of those parents

Last week The Child’s school had their “Family Projects Fair” (aka school science fair).  I had weeks to prepare, but kept putting it off due to a number of flim-flam excuses. 

We searched on-line and found a fairly easy cool project where you took soil samples and extracted the little creatures that lived therein.  It was a good excuse for a trip to the hardware store where The Child was not kicking and screaming for once 😀 The directions were pretty straight forward and we had high hopes on producing something that made us look like one of those smart, involved families – yet was not just another baking soda volcano. 

The result?  Epic fail.  Apparently either our dirt is mite and nematode-free – or our scientific methods were seriously lacking.  (I’m putting my money on the latter.)  So as we’re waiting in line at Walgreen’s, contemplating our impending failure, I bemoan why we didn’t just do something “simple” like an illustration of the tidal zones….

EUREKA!  That was it!  All we had to do was get some construction paper, some pens, and – WOW! – lookie there!  Blo-pens are even on sale!  Ring it up!  This will be easy.

HA! 

Famous. 

Last. 

Words.

In an unprecedented cooperative effort, we got A LOT done in the 2.5 hours before Haley went to bed (yes, the night before it was due).  I tucked her in to bed thinking that I would just do the finishing touches and it would be done in another hour or two. 

I’m sure you can guess what happened next…  When I woke her up at 7a the following morning I had just started picking up some of the 10,000,000 little scraps of paper littering the entire living room.  Yes, I stayed up all night working on that bastard.  You would not believe how long it takes to cut out anemones, urchins, free-hand crabs and sea lettuce.  (Having a printer sure would have been a time-saver.  Ugh.)  I even channelled my inner UmberDove and painted (becuase cutting and glueing and measuring and drawing weren’t stressful enough… I needed to add paint to my perfectionist-A.R. insanity)!

I was pretty pleased with the result and sent Haley off to school with it.  Thankfully my life of leisure allowed me to crawl in to bed until it was time to go to the evening festivities.  Much to my surprise (and shock and dismay and – dare I say – delight) our project was the subject of much praise!  Haley’s 3rd grade teacher even asked if they could keep it to use during the upcoming Water Week at school!

So, now I’m officially one of those parents that stays up all night doing science projects.  *sigh*