...To whose mom all kids apparently look the same. (and who gets angry. WHAT!?)

So, The Girl sings in her choir.  This is apparently not her mother's kind of school choir.  This is serious stuff.  Like STANDARDIZED TESTING serious stuff.  Apparently, VA is divided into districts (hilariously, we're District 12) and tested.  I chaperoned the trip for assessments yesterday.  The kids did great, The Girl's section (Women's Chorale) scoring 1s (Superior) and 2s  (Excellent) across the board - I don't know what the overall was though.

Anyway, so, I'm given a list of girls for whom I'm responsible.  I can only say that apparently I need to be more involved in activities at the school where I'm NOT responsible for them, and can get to know their names and faces (like I did with her elementary school), because WOW 7th grade girls all dressed in a long black dress with a red sash ALL LOOK ALIKE.  I felt SO bad every time I forgot one of their names, or couldn't look at their face and know the name that went with it.  Hopefully I didn't permanently traumatize any of them, because I know I would have been upset if a chaperone couldn't remember my name at that age.

I'd like to be able to say that I can pick them all out in this picture, but I can only find 5.
I refuse to believe that 4 of the 5 girls the Director covers were all in my group - it's just not likely.  

Thank god, three of the nine I had (one of whom was mine, and another I know on sight because she went to elementary with mine) left early, so instead of  having to keep track of 7 faces that didn't know, it went down to 4.   Of course they all knew what I liked like, and would wander off then come back, but GAH!

Thankfully also, I did not have to survive the bus trip back to school (the bus got lost, on the way there-we were unable to get to the other side of the school - and I nearly vomited).  I got to hand off my 5 girls to the Vice Principal for the trip home, and The Girl and I stayed and watched our Advanced Women's Choir perform.  Matt was a carpool driver, so we'd been assigned to the van to go home.  :)

I also feel bad for the choir director and the lady who helped him organize the parents, because wow.  Just wow.  The carpool had been set up, the girls divided up into the cars a week or two ago.  Then more parents decided that they were coming to the performance and would take other girls home too.  We went from 11 kids to 9 kids to take home across two days of reorganizing.  THEN, when it was time to get in the cars to go, we ended up with only 3 girls, one of whom had actually been assigned to a different carpool.  So, in actuality, The girl and I did not need to stay, and Matt could simply have driven the more fuel efficient car into Arlington to get them.  So, thank you other parents, thank you.  How's about you pay us a little bit of gas money since you selfish ***** couldn't be bothered to TELL anyone you were taking your own kid and two of her friends home?  Hmm?

Yeah.

So the day ended with the two of us walking home after her chiropractic appointment. We looked like a couple of pep rally refugees, her in a long black dress with red sash, red ribbon braided through her hair, carrying a bag of pantyhose and hair (fake long ponytail) and cookies, me in capris with red and black striped knee socks and long red hanky-hem cardigan.

Nice weather for it though...