Art Class, Take Two

I'm tired. Today I put in an 8 hour workday. I'm usually only a part-time employee so this was a particularly long day. Keep in mind that I always take my kids to work with me. It was a long day for everyone. It wasn't in my plans to do so much today but while I was on the elliptical this afternoon at 2:15, I got a frantic call from my boss who needed a last-minute substitute for an art class that started at 3:45pm. I was reluctant to say yes because you may recall that last time I subbed for art class Duet nearly a. bludgeoned herself to death and b. choked do death. That's right, both of those. It was a busy, stressful, life-threatening 45 minutes. With my boss on the phone awaiting my response, I weighed my options carefully. I could agree to sub and in the process a. make my boss very pleased with me, b. earn some extra much-needed cash and c. potentially endanger the life of my child, or I could decline and a. disappoint my boss, b. forgo the increased paycheck, and c. keep Duet safe from dangerous art supplies. I guess I was in a gambling sort of mood because before I knew it, amid the panting (I was on the elliptical, you know) I managed to say yes.
As you know, I'm not an art teacher and at this point in the day I didn't have the faintest idea what I would be creating with the elementary school students in less than 2 hours. I only knew that if I wanted my child to survive the afternoon I needed to come up with a project that avoided the use of the art supplies that nearly led to her demise last time: scissors and small beads. For the remainder of my workout I toyed with some ideas, but it wasn't easy to come up with a craft that didn't require the use of scissors. In the end we made mobiles out of plastic tubes, yarn, cardboard tubes of various sizes, pompoms, and pipe cleaners. It was nothing Alexander Calder would be proud to call his own, but then again I'm sure Alexander Calder had the option of using scissors whenever he felt like it. In the end no one died or was even mildly injured, so I consider the class a huge success.

Did I declutter? The answer is yes. Despite my hectic work schedule today I did manage to spend 10 minutes going through some of our many toys and weeded a few out for immediate disposal.