Unbeknownst to me, yesterday was a bit of a tradition at The Dormouse's grade school: Kite Day. I thought maybe this was some little known holiday - Go Fly a Kite Day where the government had officially sanctioned it's celebration as a tongue in cheek wag of the finger to Texas as it tries to secede from the Union... but no, that's in June. This is just a local school tradition, I guess. No one seems to know how it got started. At any rate it was kind of a cute idea and we bought into it when the note from school came home. So we agreed to take her to buy a kite to take to school before The Big Day.

Of course you realize that a natural byproduct of telling The Dormouse anything that requires her to wait more than ten minutes to accomplish it is hearing, "Can we go get my kite now? Can we? Huh? Can we? How about now? Kite? Kite? Canwegetakite? Canwegetakite? Canwegetakite? Canwegetakite? Now? Kite? KITE! OK, I won't say 'kite' anymore, kite kite kite kite kite kite kite." for the entire space of time between when you say you will do it and when you actually do it. We were prepared for this and managed to ignore her for two days until the night before Kite Day.

We actually have a kite at home but this activity required that she bring it to school with her, pre-assembled, so the teachers wouldn't have to put together six hundred kites that day. There was also no helping them to launch the kites. And I can understand that. Really I can. That's just a little too much work for a group of adults who are already outnumbered and know if the building wasn't bolted to the ground, the children might run off with it and start their own society with the Lord of the Flies as the new principal. But the downside to that idea is that a large percentage of the kids - including my daughter - take the bus to school and would need to bring their pre-assembled, ready to fly kites to school on the bus then keep them somewhere in the classroom for much of the morning before they opened the doors and unleashed the children onto the playground to run back and forth as their kites bobbed and dragged and dug more divots into ground than a golfer with a 632 handicap.

Since the kite we already owned requires a masters degree in engineering to put together and someone taller than four feet to transport (this is what happens, ladies, when you let your husband purchase a kite unaided by your veto power), we decided that all things would be easier if we just went to Target and bought a cheap, normal sized, traditional kite. Here's what we didn't count on: not that many stores actually sell kites and they don't stock a whole lot of them. So when The KoH took The Dormouse out on Wednesday night to buy a kite, he had to go to three different places and then wrestle the very last Barbie kite out of another student's parent's hands. (It's a good thing he was bigger than her.) I'm sure the assault and battery charge is pending, but whatever, she had a kite. All was right with the world. She finally got on the bus with her pre-assembled kite and muscled into a seat between thirty other kites-with-little-kid-legs yesterday morning and headed off to school.

I happened to be at the school for a parent meeting yesterday morning and was able to snap this pic with my phone of some of the kids flying their kites. They wisely only let out a couple of grades at a time. Look! There are even one or two kites in the air.


It was cute and the kids had fun and I don't know what they learned but I'm sure it was something. Whatever, it was over. The Dormouse maybe got her kite up in the air once or twice, but listening to her retelling of the events, I'm not even sure that happened before she immediately broke and then lost her kite altogether. She came home without it that night is what I was sure of and I can't say as I was disappointed.

The problem here is the aftercare lady, who is pretty much always a day late and a dollar short. She liked Kite Day so much, she told the kids they could bring their kites back again today, which The Dormouse interpreted as, if I don't bring my kite back again today, the universe will implode and all that will be left of my life is a cold pathetic piece of black matter from which no light will emanate ever again and life will not be worth living anymore because it just doesn't matter if you don't have a kite. Even if I'd wanted to and believed vainly that there might be one or two kites left in the stores, I couldn't get out again to buy another kite last night. So finally, and I realize this is a rookie parenting mistake, I told her that she could bring the kite we had at home.

Fast forward to today when I had totally forgotten about this promise because when she went looking for the kite last night, she couldn't find it anyway. With ten minutes to go before the bus arrived, she managed to find the damn thing and then the kite assembly nightmare started all over again. Not only had the kite not been taken out of it's case since last year, but I had also never assembled it before. So I started trying to put it together with no promises and in a fit of "hurry up, the bus will be coming any minute now" and finally got it all in one piece only to realize that the kite was about four feet in diameter and there was No Way In Hell she was going to get that thing on the bus with her. I finally agreed to drive her to school and tried to put it in the back of the car, but surprise, surprise, it was too big for even the hatchback. I had to break the entire thing back down again in order to get it in. Then we loaded up and drove over to her school to reassemble the kite in the parking lot. The Dormouse picked up the kite that was now twice as big as she was and we waddled up to the door of the school avoiding cars and knocking over stray kiteless children, where the Assistant Principal was standing looking at us with horror-struck eyes because kite-day was over dammit! and she was probably more frightened by the possibility of a school full of students with kites for yet a second day than I was at at the thought having to put that thing together again.

"Look, I know what you're thinking...," I apologized, "but the aftercare woman told her she could bring a kite again today, and I'm working so I couldn't bring it later which is why she in aftercare in the first place and this is the only kite we have left since the other one broke yesterday and...... pleeeeeese let this be the only Kite Day you have this year."

And with a wave of the hand, she ushered me inside and said nothing else.

Kite Day can kiss my ass.