Pre-School Applications

Hell, yes, we're ready for pre-school! Can we bring our bottles and our mommy?

It's been so long you probably thought I mistakenly crockpotted myself and my family unwittingly ate me for dinner. No, the last 10 days have been much worse than being slow roasted while drowning in barbecue sauce.

Here in the greater Chicago metro area it is pre-school application time. Whereas I don't think Chicago is as ridiculous or competitive as stories you hear about Manhattan, it's a pain in the ass nonetheless. Especially when the deadline for the school you want your children to attend is February 1 and you go to pick up the application on February 1 and learn you have a snowball's chance in hell unless you join the affiliated church (pun intended!!!). Plus, I just don't like forms. Forms upset me. Back when I worked I'd wait months to hand in expense accounts just because a form was involved. Who invented forms? Let's kill them.

I called my husband as I bit my nails sitting on the school steps. What if I go over to the rectory and they grill me, like asking what the meaning of Easter is (the meaning that has nothing to do with candy-touting bunnies), how Jesus turned water into wine (I wish I knew!) and whether in fact I've technically been confirmed (I have not, not even untechnically). I was also not married in the church, instead choosing this man to marry me (NO I AM NOT THE BRIDE IN THE PHOTO) after finding his web site rentarev.com rather clever. Something tells me the church wouldn't find it as entertaining as I do.

Plus, don't you think the church people compare data with the school people and get a little suspicious when one joins the church ON THE SAME EXACT DAY the school applications are due? If I were on the admissions committee (first order of business -- designing a much more thorough school application with questions like "How many tv theme songs can your children recite?") I'd be on to people like me.

But I do love this pre-school, and everyone we know whose kids attend are fun, nice and normal. Fun, nice and normal go a long way with me. And, perhaps most important, it's the only program that will allow children to start in the fall if they turn 3 after September 1, which my kids do. And people, I ain't waitin' til 2011 to rid myself of them two days a week for a couple of hours.

So over to the church I marched, filled out a very straightforward form with not even one trick question and I guess I'm currently the proud member of a church. Now we just have to wait for a month to hear if the girls got in. I'm guessing if not, it has little to do with our church affiliation and more to do with my answers on the application.

What should we know about your children? The skinny orange twin thinks carrots are crack cocaine. The chubby one will gnaw off your arm for a bite of ice cream. Also, they still drink milk from a bottle, insist I hold it and I don't see that changing in the next 8 months. Are bottles and mommies allowed to come to school with them?

Why do you want your children to attend this school? It's really close and I'm really lazy.

Okay, I didn't really say that. They did ask if we applied to other schools. I said no, partly because we didn't and partly because I hope they take pity on us for being so naive as to apply to only one pre-school.

In all seriousness, it's been a rough couple of weeks. The girls have been sick, I was sick, and this cold weather is killing me. I feel like Jack Nicholson in that movie where the creepy kid keeps screaming "Red Rum!" over and over and co-stars that Olive Oil chick. Please God I hope the groundhog saw his shadow or whatever means spring is coming. I've lost my sense of humor and I think only good weather can bring it back. That or a good romp with Daniel Craig. (Can I still say things like that now that I am an official church member?)

PS -- After reading this I realize I came across as a complete heathen. We were planning on joining this church at some point. The pre-school deal just made it that much more urgent... (Read here I'm afraid someone on the admissions committee reads my blog.)