More Drama! More Suffering! More Girl Scouts!

Our weekly meeting was so... hmm.
How about this:

The weekly Girl Scout meeting, with few exceptions and bright spots, was disappointing and a real pain in the ass.

It started with us doing our job in the sanctuary. Each week, we clean the pews and recycle all the stuff from the Sunday bulletin, make sure the pencils are sharpened, stock the little pockets with offering envelopes and make sure all the hymnals are facing the right direction. Not a difficult job, but one we do as a way of giving back. The church does not ask us for money or to do anything, we volunteered to help. I think it's the right thing to do.

We've been doing it for years. It's not hard. But our two newest members just can't seem to get the hang of the job. For the last two weeks,they half-ass their pews, then sit and make noise or do gymnastics (Please sit on the pew instead of swinging on it. We need to be respectful in the sanctuary, please. Thank you.) while everyone else checks their work and fixes it. What should take about 10 minutes took 34.

Effing ridiculous.

So, starting next week, we are assigning pews. When it's not done right, I'll be able to say with certainty who screwed up. (As if I don't already know. Just because they don't own up doesn't mean it wasn't them, ya know?) That person will be helped and helped and helped by me personally until it IS done correctly. The other girls can go back into the meeting area until the job is done. It's not fair for the others to have to take up the slack.

Yesterday, three of the girls brought their projects, (which I assigned three weeks ago) but five girls brought nothing. Two of the three who brought their projects understood what I had asked for and did a great job. It seems that they had a good time with it.

We saw a Yurt, an adobe house, and the Eiffel Tower.

The girl who did the yurt also gave a great report. It was obvious that she'd done a lot of reading.

I got a huge kick out of the adobe house.. they made it from cardboard and painted it. It had a hot tub on the roof. :-)

Three girls were not in attendance, so who knows if they would have participated? The odds don't look favorable, do they?

The idea was for everyone to bring their projects and tell us about them. You know... for the meeting. To take up time. To inspire discussion. For fun. For the badge work they asked me for.

Imagine how excited I am right now. I had a couple games planned, so we didn't sit and do nothing, but damn.

Lyssa waited until Sunday afternoon to start on her project, and it didn't go well. She got mad and tossed it all within half an hour of starting. Pitched a fit. Got all emotional and angst-y. I'd really prefer that she did nothing at all than being all pissy. It ain't pretty. And because she'd had three weeks to work on it, I wasn't all that sympathetic about the time crunch.

Our lovely nuisance showed up.
Oh boy oh boy.

I had a 'helper' though. Every time Nuisance stepped the tiniest bit out of line, my daughter decided to point it out. Loudly. Obnoxiously.

When Alyssa yelled at Nuisance unnecessarily, I reached over (we were sitting next to each other playing a game) and sort of patted her on the leg, in preparation to say, "Thank you, I'll handle it." I had planned to whisper that into her ear, actually.

She said, loudly, "Don't hit me!!" as if I'd hauled off and whacked the hell out of her. Which of course made me WANT to haul off and whack her... just to show the difference, of course.

I'm aggravated, discouraged, tired, and burned out right now.
Leaning more and more toward giving up.

In response to the idea of having a troop with just the older girls... I'd love to. I just don't know how to kick the others to the curb without hurting anyone's feelings. And, to make that idea less feasible, there are two 'younger' girls who would do fine with the older group.

The real problem in the troop right now are our two newest girls. I keep hoping they will decide to quit and solve all my problems for me.