May 15, 2012
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Lingering Headache
I have a weird headache that keeps making me think that I should take my glasses off the top of my head — but they’re not there. It also kind of feels like glasses are pressing down too hard on my nose….but my glasses are on the table next to me. I guess this is the lingering effect of the two 40 minute school bus rides I took earlier today with a gaggle of 8 year olds. They were well behaved, but it’s noisy on a bus even under the best circumstances – especially when it is hot and humid outside and you’re riding on the interstate with the windows open.
The weather forecast was for rain, so I was wearing jeans tucked into some black rain boots, with a rain jacket tied around my waist. This turned out to be not the best wardrobe for a sunny, humid day – but how was I to be sure the weather forecasters would get it wrong again?
The kids mostly kept busy on the bus by reading books, which was admirable and kept the noise level down. (Except for the boy behind me who kept trying to lick his seat mates - which included my own child - in between pages of his Pokemon book and therefore caused a lot of squealing and squirming.) I kept pretty busy reading things on my phone, including Xanga blogs. On the ride home, I tired of the tiny phone screen and asked my son if I could read his school journal, which he had brought along on the bus. Reading his letters to Rick Riordan and J.K. Rowling (his favorite authors) and his principal (“When classes go on a field trip do you have to tell the owners of the place that they are coming?”), along with his poetry and similes (“I wish I was as smart as an ape.”), was so enjoyable that I tried to continue even when I began to get nauseous.
Don’t worry, I didn’t yack on the bus. But it did take a good hour to feel normal again after getting back on solid ground. Whew!
We visited one of the first British settlements in Virginia, a place we had visited before as a family. Some, but not all, of the tour guides were in period costumes and personas. It was kind of weird to be handed off from the very authentically corporal Sergeant at Arms in the settlers village to the hippy-esque girl with ribbons in her hair wearing a rocker t-shirt in the Indian village, but the kids didn’t seem to notice. They loved being barked at by the Sergeant, and didn’t listen quite as well to the girl who started every sentence with, “Guys!” They came dangerously close to crashing from too-early-snack-time while trying to listen to a long presentation in a settler household, and then nearly uncaged the farm animals when they were finally let loose from the confined primitive kitchen space.
All in all, it was a nice day and I’m glad I got to chaperone. I only had 6 kids to keep tabs on and we traveled in a bigger pack that included 2 other parents and 2 teachers. Easy peasy. Not like the 1st grade trip to the zoo I did 3 years ago, where the 6 kids ran frantically in 6 directions from one habitat to the other, spilling cups of animal feed. I was sure I would lose a kid on that trip. Thankfully, I was able to follow the trails of animal food before anyone got too lost.
Field trip season is over for this year – on to the next round of events…..music recitals – drums, piano, and recorder (my personal favorite
). Think that weird ghost-glasses-on-the-head headache will go away anytime soon?!?
Comments (13)
oh, damn, I completely forgot about recorder concert. MAN!!! Thanks for reminding me!! ah, field trip fun. I had a bad headache yesterday but I’m nearly recovered.
I still have two field trips to make it through! My day was all about talent show dress rehersal… Oy. I hope your head feels better soon.
@angi1972 - !!!! That video of the song was absolutely precious! He is so adorable and I love how his voice gets all gravelly in the right parts. Too bad he had to switch songs, but the new one will be awesome, too, I’m sure. Our talent show is in the winter, so we have that out of the way already. Good luck!
I do not miss the field trips! The zoo trip I chaperoned included on kid being pecked by an emu and one falling into the koi pond… talk about a mess! Sounds like your trip was just as much fun but without the fish stink on the trip home. hehehehe! We are all suffering with sinus headaches here. It will be better when it rains and gets it over with!
After turning to Google, it probably is a sinus problem. @both the headache and nose pressure.
@ordinarybutloud - Two words: RECORDER CONCERT????
I think I would like to read your son’s school journal.
P.S. I hope your headache has gone away.
Is your headache gone? Mine seems to have just begun. I am a little ball of stress this morning but hopefully as I put various tasks away I can ignore them and go back to blissful less-stressness. Today’s job is to get all the bookkeeping done (DONE!) and then back up the computer because I have to send my laptop off somewhere to get the keyboard repaired while it’s still under warrantee because the keyboard SUCKS. The S key has been giving me trouble and that’s a bad key to misbehave. Oh, and make 5 phone calls. Which means I must bid you adieu – have a wonderful day! May the phantom glasses be gone!!
@madhousewife - Yes. Recorder “concert”. In T minus 2.5 hours. GULP. Thankfully, the headache is gone.
@miss_order - I hope your stress goes away quickly, and I can’t help but giggle about how you can’t even type “stress” without getting more stressed over your broken “S” key. Hee hee.
@turningreen - Just two more words: RECORDER CONCERT????
@madhousewife - We survived. It wasn’t nearly as painful as anticipated.
@turningreen - I’m going to regale you with a parallel anecdote you have probably heard before because it is my only recorder anecdote and I know I’ve shared it in some other recorder-related post somewhere, but after enduring a recorder concert I don’t think a repeat recorder anecdote will seem so bad. Anyway: When I was growing up, my dad bought a recorder and a book called “YES, YOU CAN (Learn To Play the Recorder).” (Some speculate that this may have been where Pres. Obama got the idea for his 2008 campaign. But when was the last time you saw Pres. Obama with a recorder? I digress.) He used to stay up late in bed practicing his recorder. Drove my mother up a wall, as you can imagine. Of course we could hear it all over the house. Many a night I fell asleep to the soothing sounds of my father’s recorder playing John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I think it is the only song he ever learned to play. YES, HE COULD. Sadly, he never had the opportunity to perform in a recorder concert. And for the rest of her life my mother couldn’t hear that song without experiencing a touch of PTSD.