I attended 4 years of early morning seminary growing up. Well, I guess it depends on how you define “attended.” 40% of my attendance came in the form of “make up work” done furiously before submitting my application to BYU. 60% of my attendance came via the following routine:
5:15am: Alarm sounds, Carrie turns it off
5:20am: Dad comes in “Carrie wake up”
5:25am: Dad comes in “Carrie WAKE UP”
5:30am: Dad comes in, turns on the lights, takes my blankets, walks out the door with blankets in hand
5:35am: Carrie crawls into the bathroom, turns on the shower, falls asleep on the carpet next to the heater
5:55am: Dad bangs on the door “You can’t possibly still be in the shower – WAKE UP!”
6:19am: Carrie arrives at seminary 19 minutes late, 1 minute before she will be counted absent
As you can see, seminary and I did not mesh well. Thus you can imagine the sheer HORROR I experienced when my bishop asked me to be an early morning seminary teacher. I wanted to say no – but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. That darn primary brainwashing!
Things have gone fairly well – and I must admit I love my 3 kids. In fact, I’m not sure they are real kids…but maybe aliens or robots of some sort. They are always on time, 6am on the dot if not 5:56am which totally throws me off b/c I really count on those last 4 minutes of preparation time. In addition, 2 of my kids have only missed 3 times this year. All 3 times they either called to apologize for over-sleeping, or warned me in advance they would not be able to make it. Let us not forget I, their fearless leader, have accidentally slept through twice this year…so my 16 year olds have only missed seminary 1 day more than me!
So miracle of miracles I have survived 7 months of classes and have only 37 lessons left to prepare. But, I have hit a serious brick wall. I have used up every game, object lesson, and “church” video I can think of. We have even watched the work & the glory DVDs which burned through 6 glorious days. Does Napoleon Dynamite count as a church video? What on earth can I do for 37 more days? Please! Someone help me! Today I was so burned out from preparing my Monday-Thursday lessons that I could not bring myself to prepare another. Instead we took a field trip to Albertsons to blow our $2.01 student activity fund. I kid you not – that was the total amount I was allocated for winter semester. And to add insult to injury they listed all these things I could use the money for like: “food items, paper goods such as plates, utensils, napkins, etc.” So in an effort to “stick it to the man,” I thought it would be fun to see how much we could buy with the $2.01 – and send in separate receipts for each item. This morning we were able to get the following:
Friskies turkey & giblets cat food - $0.29 cents
Top Ramen, beef flavor - $0.12 cents
Kuner whole canned tomatoes - $0.44 cents
Beech Nut baby food, pineapple glazed ham flavor - $0.32 cents
Bubbles - $0.50 cents
Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar - $0.34 cents
Grand Total = $2.07 cents
With our purchase we also got a free coupon for Fancy Feast gourmet cat food which I think I'll go ahead and throw in the reiumbursement envelope. Man – I’ve got to be the worst seminary teacher ever, teaching my kids to “stick it to the man” which let us not forget, in this scenario, is actually the church. HELP! Am I the only one with church calling woes?
6 comments:
Sad cruel world being called as an early morning seminary teacher. One of ours made omelets for us on Fridays. Romney?! Is that right Sara?
yeah, it was romney. he was such a nice guy. remember he was in law school with a new baby while teaching us? how in the world did he do it?
carrie, this is pretty much exactly how dad woke me up. except since he had to walk all the way downstairs to do it, he eliminated several steps. he'd walk in, flip on the overhead light, and rip off my covers. then bark, "GET UP NOW!!!" harsh, i know.
how in the world are we going to get up to take our kids to seminary? i'm going to die.
such a great post. i love sticking it to the man, even when the man is the church!
Last night we had the 1st counselor in my bishop rick over for dinner...aka my brother in law. He gave me a heads up "don't be suprised if you get invited to teach again next year." NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Just say NO! You would think with a brother-in-law in the bishop rick you could be getting nice callings like birthday coordinator!
Maybe you should start teaching false doctrine--that would probably get you released or take them to Albertsons to buy cigarettes.
i love how he used the word "invited". like you're getting an invitation to a super party or something.
I love the cigarette plan. Better yet each night I'll text them the message "another snow day!" for the my last 37 days. That takes care of next year and the remainder of this year too.
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