Sunday, March 22, 2009

Dying Almost Killed Me

What do you get when you mix 40 kids, 40 plain white undershirts, too many rubber bands, bottles of dye, and two over ambitious after school program workers? Tie Dye!!!! Yayeeewwwhhatwerewethinking?!

Two Fridays ago Friday the 13th to be exact (ominous? I think so.) My co-worker Miss Sarah rounded up materials very generously donated by Target and discounted by JoAnne's so that the students at our work could tie dye shirts with green in them to wear to the Shamrock Shindig we would be hosting the next Wednesday (yep, we know that Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day, but more kids come to our program on Wednesday so we held off!) Since I had all my previous Camp Keola and Pinedale Spirit Shirt tie-dying experience, I stayed inside to help the kids twist their shirts into different patterns and rubber band them all up. Then I sent them out to Miss Sarah who put the dye on where they pointed, (no...were not so crazy that we let the kids hold the dye) and then they came back in with their shirts dyed and bagged and ready to sit for 24 hours before being washed. When the kids tried to take their shirts I said "no, no, no, leave them here I think Miss Sarah is going to wash them all at once." Sooo the kids looked at me with their confused faces as their parents looked relieved and quickly encourage their children to indeed leave their shirts with us! Turned out Miss Sarah was house sitting and wasn't exactly able to take all those bags of dye loaded shirts home...soooo....Miss Jessica got the job! Yayeee! Oh, did I mention I was supposed to be heading out the door to pick up Luke in LA?

Yep! Luke was on his way to see me for his spring break! No time to argue I stuck those suckers into my trunk (luckily I was able to layer my Kids Day paper (still un-read) and some dirty towels still in my trunk from drying off my car after a car wash to protect the upholstery from any stray dye. Then I scooted off to LAX.

We interrupt this story for explanation:

Why am I carting all the way off to LA to pick up Luke? Even Sacramento has a main airport that's closer right? Well when Luke was purchasing his plane ticket, I was galavanting around San Francisco (on our Wicked Weekend) without my camera, and I had the clever idea that if he flew into LAX we could spend the weekend with my family in the LA area and then come home in time for school. How wrong was I, as soon as I got home I open my computer to put Luke's flight times into my calendar and realise that I have the CSET (a group of 3 very important test I have to take to get my teaching credential, and have already slept through once) the very next Saturday morning at 7am! EEEEEEEK!

And now back to our feature presentation:

So I pick Luke up from LAX, he crams his suitcase into my VW Beetles back seat, because my trunk is full of tie dye shirts, and we get right back on "the 5" for Fresno. We get home, I crash on the couch (Luke offered to take the couch since I had the test,but I was afraid that if I did I would fall into too deep of a sleep and wouldn't wake up in the morning.) And my mom AND Luke come out to make sure I wake up in time for my test. They take such good care of me. I take my test, manage to complete it and not fall asleep at my desk, and escape back home where Luke helps me rinse, wash, label with names, and fold ALL the tie dye shirts. What a man.
This is how my favorite ones turned out. At least the reward was some good color therapy? That and a reminder of how great Luke is! :D
Then we went for a nice bike ride and enjoyed the weather.

Wow. That was way longer than I meant it to be. The end.

Ps. When I finally took the towel and newspaper out of my car the special edition Kids Day Newspaper fell right open to the coupon page and I found the best buy one sandwich get one sandwich free at GREAT HARVEST (Fresno)! Good deal people! If you still have your paper go snag that coupon!

3 comments:

Live a Colorful Life said...

A very enteraining and COLORFUL story...

Jamie said...

OK tie-die expert! Auntie Christa gave Audrey a tie-die kit with some white t-shirts for her birthday last year and I was so scared to do it yet...and it's been 11 months! Yikes! Maybe you can come and help whatever day we decide to finally do it. I figure all the kids can make a shirt while we've got out the buckets and what-not. Right?

JHNickodemus said...

For sure! It really isnt that bad. The kids get to be really involved in banding up their shirt, and if you dont care if they have wicked witch hands for a week then the dying is kid friendly too! (We just do the dying on the grass.) Its pretty imposible to mess up tie-dye!