Homework project 100,000 and counting

As I hid from Elliot during one of our hide and seek games (he is always the seeker), I found myself staring at a display of insects that Darcy had to do as a project for middle school. I haven't thrown the project out because it is in a nice shadow box that I feel I could use for something and so the entire display sits on a cabinet in my front entrance way. I noticed that some of the description tags were fading, and as I stared at it I thought about how hard we had worked to put that thing together. She and her friend Sarina caused a lot of stress on that project that they left to complete until the last minute. I went through the whole day of searching for bugs, typing up descriptions, buying that shadow box. That got me thinking how nice it was that those days of scrambling around town frantic to help my children score well on a project were done. No more shouting about getting things done in a timely manner. No more having to do so much of the work myself just to get it done on time. It was a nice feeling.

That lasted until I picked up Darcy and Sarina who informed me that they had to go to our house to complete a history project due the next day. It was as if they had read my mind earlier that day and laughed. "That poor, poor woman. Who said she was done?" The project was one that Madison had done in her sophomore year where she had to find a famous historical photo to recreate. She and her friends had recreated the picture of the Kennedy's and the governor and his wife in the motorcade in Dallas before Kennedy was shot. Madison was Governor Connally. I didn't really think much about the girls statement as Darcy had talked about the project during spring break and I thought she had the picture already picked out.

I was wrong. Suddenly it was déjà vu. I was looking up pictures on my phone in the living room while the two girls were looking up pictures on their devices in the bedroom. We wasted over an hour trying to find a picture with just two people in it, let along with girls or women. Sarina and I finally both found the same picture and we all decided it was the best one.

The picture was from the civil rights movement in 1962 and showed two women sitting at a lunch counter in a  New York City restaurant. It was taken by Bruce Davidson. Seemed easy enough until we began looking at everything that needed to be recreated. The scrambling began. 1. We started with Sarina. She pulled back her hair to make it shorter and Darcy found a top and a dress that had stripes and a collar. Her outfit was harder. She had a collared, sleeveless shirt, but it wasn't checked. We came up with the idea to use tape to checker it. Off to the neighbor's house they went to get masking tape as the masking tape we owned had the name of the store embossed all over it.

2. While Darcy worked on her shirt I studied the photo. We needed cups and after I looked at it some more I remembered that my parents had a shot glass in just that shape. I sat awhile and thought about that shot glass. I was sure my mother had kept that glass and that it was at The Condo in her kitchen cabinet. The thought of driving thirty minutes to The Condo had my blood boiling until I casually looked over my shoulder into my dining room and saw that low and behold I had brought that thing home with me.

Darcy found some coned cups that she had for her slurpee maker and we made a glass. One down, two more to go. I got some duct tape and attempted to make another shot glass and when I realized I couldn't do it I enlisted Madison from her studying. She joined in and created two more glasses from duct tape. 3. Darcy's top was finished by now and she went to work finishing her character with pearl earrings and a necklace taken from our Pretty Pretty Princess Game. Sarina found rings for her fingers and used one of the game necklaces in her hair. 4. We gathered everything and got into the car where we headed to the Dollar Store for a sugar container. 5. Darcy was sure that Steak n' Shake would have the napkin holders, but I thought that McDonald's might have them, and I knew they had accessible counter tops so we went there first. I dropped off the three girls and while they did take a photo there was no napkin container. I vetoed that photo and we went to Steak n'Shake. The place was packed and there was no napkin container. By now the shouting from me was happening.

Me: "Why did you two leave this until the last moment? This was not a hard project. You had all of spring break to get this stupid photo taken! I don't remember Madison having this much trouble."

Madison: "We did ours in like five minutes."

Darcy: "Not helping Madison."

I texted a friend for help in finding the napkin holder. She gave us some ideas, but by now Madison had remembered that Firehouse Subs had some containers that were similar. We left Steak n' Shake and I drove to Firehouse. As we walked toward the restaurant we could see napkin containers, not quite the same size, sitting on a counter in the window. I told them this was it and to get the job done while I ordered dinner. Kill two birds with one stone I figured.

6. The girls had to ask to use the end of the counter where the employees worked. They cleaned off an area for the girls who pulled up chairs and went to work recreating. Madison went around the counter to take the photo. We had to do several shots to get it close to the original. I tried to stay out of the way, sitting off to the side eating a bag of Funyans, but I did insist on okaying the final product.

It wasn't perfect, but we thought it was a darn good attempt. Especially at the last minute. We gathered our dinner and headed back home. 7. Darcy and Sarina had to cite the photo and write a brief summary before sending the finished product to Walgreens' one hour photo. At 9:00 that night I drove them to pick it up, dropped off Sarina, and collapsed at home. Four hours of scrambling. I told both of my girls that that was it. That was my last time of that nonsense. From now on they are on their own.

Who am I kidding?