I have to deal with my procrastination problem, but I'll do it later.

Every year, I promise myself one thing.
Actually, there's several, but for the purposes of this post, one thing.
I promise myself that I won't be that mom- not again-, standing before a near empty shelf, at ten pm on February 13th looking for Valentines for my daughters class, trying to convince her that Thomas the Tank Engine could be for girls, too.

But alas, this year, there I was.

Actually, I thought I had the jump on it. On Saturday I went to Superstore to get the Valentines, I brought Payton with me. "What kind should we get?" I asked, thinking that there would still be tons of possibilities.
But we couldn't seem to find any.
So I asked someone working in the cards section. "Where are the Valentines cards for kids?"
"Like, in the boxes you mean?"
She looked kind of baffled. I nodded.
"We sold out of those. Like last weekend," she said.
"What? Really?" I asked.
My daughter looked disappointed, but hopeful. "Maybe we could make them!"
I groaned. It's not that I didn't want to, but...
OK it is that I didn't want to.
There are twenty six kids in her class, which has to be against the law I think, or against something.
I just couldn't imagine cutting and pasting and coloring twenty six valentines.
It was bad enough just helping her write the kids names on it. You would think it would be easy, but this itself is a long, slow process. Especially when we lost the class list, and had to brainstorm all the names ourselves.

"Maybe we'll try Wal Mart," I said. "I'm sure they'll have them."
"But what if they don't?" she asked.
"Well- then we'll try another store. They've got to have them somewhere," I told her, but I wasn't sure myself.
"OK, let's go," she said.
"We'll go tomorrow," I told her. Because one crazy busy store was enough for me in one day.
So the next day found me at Wal Mart. Luckily they still had a reasonable selection. I remember one year when I went the day before and all they had left was The Wiggles, and my son was in about Grade four he was kind of humiliated, but it was all I could do.
Besides, what are they doing exchanging Valentines in Grade 4? I mean, really. Grade 4!!
Grow up already.


Then there was the 100th day of school. I read something about it, somewhere, made a mental note of it and forgot the whole thing.
And then on Thursday night, I tucked Payton into bed. "But tomorrow's the 100th day of school!" she said. "We were supposed to make a poster with a hundred things on it!"
"What? That's tomorrow?" I asked, panicked.
She nodded. "Are you sure?" I asked her. "It can't be," I said. "I thought that was next week."
"It's tomorrow!" she said, nearly shouting. "My teacher said it is because there were 100 Teddy bears in the jar and today when we took one out and there was only one left so that means the party's tomorrow! And we're supposed to bring a poster of 100 things." I groaned. Honestly, I didn't really understand the whole teddy bears in the jar thing, it sounded kind of out there, but there was enough urgency in her voice that I believed her.
And so there I was, at nine pm on Thursday night, buying poster board.
Sometimes I feel bad for my kids that they have such a scatter brained mom.
But then again- all's well that ends well. The Valentines went out this morning. And we even got pencils and erasers to put in them, so this made her happy.
She had a project for the 100th day of school. It wasn't exactly what they were supposed to have. We ended up making a necklace with a hundred Cheerios, because it was late and I was really too tired to tackle the poster anyways.
But still. It was fine.
And I will deal with my procrastination problem.
Just, you know- later.