Grease Monkey

It was fun, crawling under the car and stuffing big gobs of grease into the outer CV joint of the left front wheel on the Subaru, hoping that the car will make it to the shop in the morning without locking up the bearings. Yes, it's a strange kind of fun, but oddly satisfying.

It's nice to have just a little satisfaction in an otherwise exhausting day.

We went to a joyous wedding yesterday, a wedding which brought together a lovely young lady who not only teaches and guides young children at a day care, but also at church; and a nice young man who has much experience in leading the older youth. Such marriages are rare but wonderful. One can only imagine the possibilities of such a team!

Since the lovely young lady was not going to be around to teach the children this morning, owing to some bizarre custom called a "honey-moon", it fell on me (actually, I leaped at the opportunity) to take over her Sunday morning class. This is the same class where I normally provide assistance, so it wasn't a great leap to take over the primary duties, but, as usual, I went way overboard in doing things my way.

The class is held in a small gymnasium, and normally the kids run around for the first fifteen minutes or so while we're waiting for all the kids to show up. (Some parents are notoriously late in dropping off their kids.) Which, at times, becomes dangerous, owing to the large difference in mass between kid A, who is 10, and kid B, who is 5, especially when kid A is travelling at 5 miles per hour and kid B is wandering aimlessly into the path of kid A. And the fact that the floor is linoleum-covered concrete doesn't help. The kids only bounce so much before serious injury is incurred.

So the number one rule for Today was: No Running! And in order to enforce this rule, I sub-divided the gymnasium using various rolling carts and bookshelves and toy shelves, covering them with various tablecloths and curtains and whatever else I could find. So we had cordoned-off sections for Reading, Singing, Art, Games, Worship, and Lesson. And there wasn't any clear space longer than twenty feet, which was not nearly enough for any of the older boys to build up sufficient speed to knock down any of the little kids.

It took me an hour - or was it two? - on Saturday night (after the wedding dinner) to get all this arranged, since first all the Day Care toys (which are normally left in the gym) have to be stuffed into an unused classroom; then all the items needed for the class on Sunday had to be scavenged from various parts of the building. Which then meant that it would take as much time (if not more) to clean it all up and put things away on Sunday afternoon.

As luck or fate or whatever would have it, my brain started really pounding Sunday afternoon so I took a 3-hour nap instead of going back to the church to clean up, and then by the time I got there - dropping the boys off for their Senior High Youth Group at the same time - the gym had already been cleaned up.

Sorta.

Seems the college student who was in charge of games for the evening decided to use the gym to play some really cool games (centipede dodge ball, which, if you've never played, you've simply got to try it!), and he went down there at some point in the afternoon and put away all the things I'd pulled out. Here, the term "put away" is interpreted as "pushed up against the wall so as to leave a clear space in the middle of the room." This was unsatisfactory to me, so in the half-hour or so that the Youth Group was gathering - before they came down to the gym to play games - I hurriedly put away all the things that were still in there. So by the time they came down to play their game, the gym was really empty.

Well, that's all fine and dandy, but the hitch is that I still had to put back all the Day Care toys so that everything is in place on Monday morning, which meant that I had to wait until the games were done before then pulling all the Day Care toys from the "storage" room.

It was an exhausting evening.

And it wasn't done yet.

Because after the boys and I got home from Youth Group, it was time to have our Family Meeting (to go over the week's activities and plans and schedules) and then I had to go out to the garage and pack the CV joint with grease.

And then look over my work email to see what's coming up for tomorrow.

Thanks to Cheryl and her penchant for baking goodies, there were some yummy chocolate treats to provide me with a much-needed energy boost - just enough to finish up the car, say good-night to the kids, check my work email, and head to bed.