Pink Sky at Night, Sailor's Delight

As we enter the final stretch of 2010, my yearbookies face the consequences of their own morality ~ and maturity.

Let me explain.

My little journalistas of the yearbook variety are up against a monthly deadline. Unlike the student newspaper, the yearbook ~ its pages, its photos, its stories, its captions ~ is pretty much an entity etched in stone. Because this annual publication is a book, after all, my cherubs have very little deadlne wiggle room

And herein lies the problema. Big-time.

Those of you familiar with kids ~ ranging in age from pre-school to high school seniors ~ know that while we're facing the most wonderful time of the year, we also face the most spazzy interlude in the public school calendar.

You'd think I'd fed them Skittles. Non-stop. 24/7.Or that I'd installed an old-fashioned soda fountain in Room 215 ~ as part of a mandatory sugar-loading program, for goodness' sake.

Bottom line, the natives are restless. Downright giddy. Christmas is coming, and they have some time off, just around the corner. So they'll fart around for the next three weeks, deadlines be damned.

As I told the kiddos today, "I've already been to high school. I put my time in. I graduated. This time around, it's not my yearbook, after all."

Except that it is my cross to bear, correctamundo? I signed a contract, after all. I put my John Hancock on the dotted line, guaranteeing a yearbook, come June or high water. But the fine print didn't say anything about quality.

Serenity now, as George's dad would say. I've got Christmas in my sights, too. And a trip to the OBX is under my tree.