my friend pete

For the love of Pete!!

...as an aside, my college intramural volleyball team had a mascot named Pete, so we would always try to win for Pete's sake. Don't remember what our name was. (Mare?) In grad school (the New Jersey portion of it), my team was the Barking Geese. Didn't have a mascot, though. Certainly not Pete.


photo from here.

So again, as I was moaning, For the love of Pete!!

You know, I sometimes call myself an anal person - I'm really not, though. I'm not neat enough or orderly enough to be anal. What I really like is mostly order, and I like when things work out as expected. I like coming home to a clean house with a roast in the crock pot, and having that smell just totally suck me up into itself when I walk in. I like going to work and working my ass off all day until my shoulders ache and my eyeballs hurt and my brain is so tired that I smile. I like going to watch the kids play baseball and cheering their good plays, I like chatting with the other parents, I like bringing snacks on my assigned day and having Q tell me they were "perfect."

I like my life to move along the tracks, clickity clack, just as it should. I like working on the PTA board and helping earn money for the school and planning extra activities. I like tackling difficult tasks and working through them.

I do not, however, like stupid, petty bickering and personality clashes and misunderstandings and adults who suddenly turn from reasonable, dependable folks to sneaky, underhanded manipulators. Again, I say, For the love of Pete!!

Gah. I have worked on my school's PTA board for 4 years and never have I encountered such a nasty feeling doing so. To all of you eye-rolling judgemental people out there with nothing better to do than to complain: Those of us on PTA boards are volunteering for this stuff. That means we are not paid for the hours of work and worry. That means we are taking time away from hanging out with our precious kiddos because we believed (at some point) that this kind of work reached beyond our personal needs or the needs of our family and had an impact on a larger group of these amazing new young people we call students. In truth, most of the time we are doing these jobs because people like you didn't want to.

So I ask you to take your whining, your complaints, your pettiness, and eat them.
(stop laughing...I never claimed to be great in the insult department...give me some better ideas here.)

I am unhappy with our current PTA "ickiness (for lack of a better word)". Our president is a dear friend of mine who has taken on this most thankless task in the universe. The other board members are dear people who have also taken on thankless tasks. Instead of the smiles and the thanks yous and the flowers and champagne that should be flowing for these women, they are learning the need to put on enough emotional armor to withstand the attacks.

Absurd. You want the definition?
As a noun:

The condition or state in which humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe wherein people's lives have no purpose or meaning. Used chiefly with the.

Gah. Yep, THE absurd. This is where I am for a little bit.

But you know what? We really are touching lives of some amazing new young people. I know that sentiment sounds like touchy-feely fluff, but it's true. So in the big scheme of things, this awesome earth keeps turning around and the universe keeps expanding, and the fall air is sweet and cold and the leaves still crunch under my feet and the moon still fills up my soul. That doesn't leave much room for the stupid stuff. So it's all ok.