Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I wanted to be an elementary school teacher.  I taught preschool, I managed construction crews (a job I found strikingly similar to teaching preschool), and crowds of unruly heathens did not faze me, (regardless of whether their overalls were Osh Kosh B'Gosh or Carhaart).  Somewhere over the years, I lost that, and in recent years have often found myself overwhelmed by even small unruly groups, particularly the young ones.  Last Friday, I mentioned I was looking forward to today's Gathering of the ArtGirls (my three eight and nine year-old students who usually come individually for art lessons on Mondays)with a degree of trepidation.

Silly me.

They were already at high speed before we even got started.  Remember when you had this much energy and enthusiasm on a Monday?

I almost caused today to end with a fatigue headache, and a good-but-exhausted grade for the day.  Oh me, oh my, brave DM, yadda, yadda, yadda.  I caught myself this morning setting the stage for doom, suggesting in an email to my women's business group that positive thought for my sanity might be in order. Honestly, after a morning of baking cupcakes and cleaning house while dancing to everything from "March of the Scottish Bagpipes" to the soundtrack to "Footloose" (I love that you can get music at the library!), I was looking forward to the party.  So I left the whine in the email, but followed it with "Okay, truth:  I get to spend my Monday afternoon at work, playing with my buddies and eating junk food, nya nya nya nya nya-nya!"

...and that's just what I did.

Kadence, Jensen and Faithie, after making party hats and decorating the dining room with streamers and balloons, decorated cupcakes

In an attempt to keep things calm as possible, I suggested we not eat the cupcakes until later.  Fine.  They just ate large quantities of frosting, instead.  Caught you, Faith!

They arrived hopped up, without any sugar, and I reined them in enough to focus on making hats, putting up streamers and balloons, frosting cupcakes, and making and playing a game.  In between, because my house is a Victorian maze of rooms, with multiple doors in and out of each, they spent a huge amount of time chasing each other in circles, shrieking and laughing exactly like my friends and I did, at their age.  It was really fun.  Was I on Valium?  No.  Did I do 20 rounds of EFT/meridian tapping in advance?  No.  I just decided I was going to have fun with my friends.

I filled their champagne flutes with cream soda, and taught them to give toasts.  We toasted artgirls, dogs, owls, love, parties, and burps.  Yes, burps...it's the age.

Now of course, having had an Alaskan Malamute for 13 years, I'm not in the habit of leaving anything breakable within tail wagging range, so very few treasures were in danger of being shattered.  Bear in mind, too that I don't have a typical lifestyle, and my whole house is pretty much on standby to be used as artspace, when the need arises, so I don't have precious carpets and lots of silk pillows that would cause me to worry about soda pop spills.   Also, although the girls know the rules in my house are nearly non-existent, they are all very well mannered and respectful, and will stop immediately if asked.  I only had to slow them down a couple of times.

We each chose a favorite animal, and then took turns drawing one part of our animal to create a creature that turned out to be a mix of German sheppard, cat, owl and rabbit.  Activities like this keep budding artists from comparing themselves to eachother, and just focused on the fun of it.

By the time their mothers picked them up, we had consumed a large quantity of mocha frosting, along with a small amount of cake, several cans of cream soda, a few bites of pizza, and my penny candy stash was looking pretty depleted.  The girls didn't seem any more hopped up than when they arrived, and I was kind of in shock, but not so much of the frazzled variety but of the "wow, that was it?" variety.

Art Girls Forever! 

We tell ourselves stories about our abilities, our personality, our limits, and we create a smaller life so many times, because of it.  I started the day expecting to be wiped out by 6:00 p.m., but I changed my story, and thus my expectation, and I had a really fine time.  "You get what you expect".  I say it, I know it, and still I keep relearning it. 

Of course, now I'm so hopped up on sugar and happy vibes that I might have to get one of you to come scrape me off of the ceiling...except it's midnight, and those of you who are awake to read this as it's posted are half way around the world.  Uh-oh, now I'm battling a fear of the cream soda hang-over that's looming on the eastern horizon (you know you are getting old when junk food gives you a hang-over)!  Have a good week, and let the challenges be fun, if you can.