We are a Baptist family currently attending a Methodist church. We visited all the baptist churches in town and have, for now, veered off the familiar path to worship with the Methodists. If there’s anything the Methodists love, it’s a special service for everything. We haven’t experienced many of these services at baptist churches so we don’t have a good grasp on what several of them are for. The day before Good Friday, Christopher and Annabelle attended the Maundy Thursday service. Sesame asked me what it would be about but I wasn’t sure. When I got home from the baby shower I was at that night, she was bursting to give me a report. “MOM! You won’t believe it. Jesus is about to be crucified and I have no idea what’s going to happen next in the Easter story. It’s a real cliffhanger!”

I’m so glad all our years of reading her the Bible and sending her to Sunday school are paying off. She’s really hiding those lessons in her heart. Everything she knows about Easter flew out her head once the choir started singing.

Opa came to celebrate Easter with us. We seldom have family for holidays so we didn’t take it for granted that he was there. AB was thrilled to have someone new to talk to and we all enjoy some quality visiting.

New topic that is in no way related to Easter or our risen Lord.

The PTO at AB’s school is in the midst of a reorganization. The two ladies in charge have all sorts of ideas for how to revive the organizations, bring i funds and make every single parent thrilled to volunteer all their free time. They threw around several ideas and asked for volunteers to fill the various positions. I ended up with the role of planning a teacher lunch every month. Everyone else looked at their drinks or off into the corners of the room and avoided eye contact with the director when she asked who wanted to head that up. I felt bad no one was speaking up so I said I’d do it. That’s how I end up in 92% of my volunteer positions. The feel bad portion of my brain takes over the ‘do I want/do I have time to do this” part of my brain and the next thing I know my mouth is offering to drive a homemade four-course meal to a stranger five states away in the midst of a tornado. Just last month my therapist was moving to a new office and said she had so much packing to do. Without any thought, I offered up my Saturday to help her pack, move and decorate the new place.

The lunch takes place on the third Thursday of each month and is called Third Thursday Lunch. It goes without saying that I didn’t give it such an uncreative name. I would have chosen a name with more pizzazz. I do pick a theme for each month because no partay of mine is without a theme. The lady who offered to help me showed up for our planning meeting and her face fell when she saw me. “You’re not who I was expecting. I thought I was doing this with someone else. I thought someone else was Sarah.” She said it several times over the course of the hour which did not start off our working relationship on a friendly foot. We did not gel that first meeting. She insisted we need to plan for 40 people. I said the secretary told me that it was closer to 30 teachers and faculty. She said the email announcement said 40. I wrote the email announcement so I know it said 30. We have very different ideas of how to plan and vastly different levels of confidence in parents’ common sense and their ability to donate food. She insisted we plan the menu down to the exact number of cheese and deli meat slices. She didn’t think I should put “jar of mustard” on the signup list. I needed to put “jar of mustard larger than 6oz but less than 24oz” and “loaf of bread with more than 8 slices.” Let’s give people a little credit. If we ask for a loaf of bread I think we can safely assume we will be given a whole loaf. There’s no need to specify that we aren’t given the bag from the pantry with two and a half slices left. That day I had a double ear infection, my stomach was hurting from the surgery, I had barely slept the night before and I had no patience for such nonsense. As we parted ways, I thank her for her help (“help”) and said, “Please don’t feel pressured to feel like you have to help next month.” As president of the Third Thursday Lunch committee, I thought it best to speak in a diplomatic fashion.

We pulled it together enough to host a successful first lunch in March and a second last week. It takes me weeks of planning and an entire school day to set up/decor and clean up for two half-hour lunches, but the teachers appreciate it. Some parents have gone off script and brought unsanctioned packages of desserts that were not on the signup sheet. You can guess how well that went over with my associate. Hint: like a lead balloon. She and I still have different methods but we’ve learned to work together and things run more smoothly than at our first meeting. Last week I had several parents sit with the younger classes so the teachers could eat in peace in another room. The principal was delighted with this new development. ‘It’s so great to see the parents in here!” It was nice of him to say that about my experiment and overlook the chaos and children clearly taking advantage of adults who didn’t know the lunchtime rules. We hit several bumps in the road the month but the teachers were fed and no parent volunteers lost students so I’m considering it a win. I haven’t seen any signs of the other new PTA initiatives so I think it’s safe to say that my run as TTL presidency has been the most successful. Perhaps I’ll promote myself from Third Thursday Lunch President to TTL Monarch.