Keeping it in Perspective

Teresa of Technicalities reminded me of this in her comment today under my irritation with high maintenance Moms post. She said about the book Cheaper by the Dozen,

“There is this tremendously funny scene where another mother is complaining that she just doesn't have the time to help out at some function, because she has 3 boys. The mother of 12 says - I have 6 boys and 6 girls... Needless to say, the other mother ended up helping.”

This reminded me. Did I tell y’all how I actually ended up Treasurer of our school? There is a Mom who works at the school. She runs our cafeteria and she’s very active with her kids. I LOVE this woman. She is just awesome. She has six kids. Her youngest is the same age as Son#1 and her eldest is out of college and has become a teacher. This woman lost her husband to an unexpected massive heart attack 4 years ago. Here she is with 6 kids and her husband dies. At the time, I think her kids ranged in age from 5-17. She got them all immediately into counseling and they’re doing great. She attends all their sporting events, helps out at the school, and works. She doesn’t date. As she said to me once, “Oh yeah, I’m not exactly a man magnet with 6 kids.”

So this lovely woman came up to me last year, being on the school board nominating committee, and asked me if I would take Treasurer. Now y’all have heard me gripe that being a mathematician in the engineering field DOES NOT equate to accounting. At. All. But what am I supposed to say to this woman? I’m staring at her and I think I can’t possibly say I have too many kids. She has 6. I can’t say I’m too busy. She does EVERYTHING for all her kids with no help from a spouse. I can’t say my degree isn’t in accounting… she has no degree. She’s winging her life with a degree from the world of hard knocks and I’m going to not take a little Treasurers job because “I don’t know bookkeeping”? So I said yes.

I joke with her about it now and we laugh.

Oh, and the latest with the Treasurer's job... I'm hanging in there. The software is starting to make logical sense.