I am supposed to be waiting for David to put the baby down so we can watch a movie, but I am afraid he fell asleep, too. Poor guy. He gets up so early to exercise and get ready for work. I don't blame him for being so tired. I, on the other hand, made the mistake of drinking real coffee this morning, instead of decaf. Big mistake. I have not been drinking as much caffeine lately so I am incredibly sensitive to it. That's why I am up right now. It's almost midnight and I should be sleeping like everyone else in this household, but no. Here I am.
Today was the first bake sale of the semester at David's school. I work with a group of ladies to get it going. It is so much fun! There is this one lady, E, who has 10 children and she's only 37. She is an amazing worker. She is also one smart lady. Today, after the bake sale, we were counting the money. Usually the ladies want me to count it first and then they count it and write down the amounts. I had all these quarters lined up in rows and I asked E to count them. She looked at the stack for less than a second and said, "There's 31 quarters. That's $7.75." How the heck did she do that so fast? I mean it was instantaneous! This is a person who has NEVER gone to school. NEVER EVER. Is that not amazing? I mean it was like a Rain Man thing. It was awesome.
Then last month, I helped get a group of ladies together to be the set up crew for our first-ever Scholastic book fair. Our job was to set up the library like a bookstore. I started them off by asking them to wrap boxes in colorful butcher paper. Then I asked them to arrange the tables in a nice pattern and put colorful tablecloths on them. At that point we were ready to start arranging the books for the sale. The ladies kept putting them in large stacks and I would have to come over and ask them to rearrange them "so they look attractive to the customer." I said to them, "You know, like you see in a bookstore. Pretend the library is going to be a bookstore for the next few days. How would you arrange the books so they will sell?" They seem stumped. I couldn't believe it. These ladies are smart. What's was going on here?
Finally, they asked me to set up a table so they could see what I was talking about. I placed two wrapped boxes on the table that had already been covered with a table cloth. I put the sign that described the books on a pedestal between the two boxes and arranged the books attractively around the bottom of the boxes and then I put a few books standing up on the actual boxes. The ladies were all oohing and aahing about how good it looked. Then they went off and arranged their own tables. The place looked phenomenal after we were done.
At that point, we all had time to actually look at the books. The ladies were especially interested in the Spanish books. They also enjoyed all the cookbooks. They couldn't believe there were so many kinds of books. Finally, one tells me: "You know, you kept asking us to arrange the books like at a bookstore but none of us have ever been to a bookstore. We were just too embarrassed to tell you." Wow. And these were the same ladies that had just given up six hours of their lives to set up this book fair. I was so moved by that. They want to do what it takes to help their own children succeed academically and they are doing it. I just love that. I love that my kids go to that school. I love that their kids go to that school. I love those ladies.
TTYL...
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