Impatiently waiting!!!

I am struggling to be patient right now.
It's the last week of school before break, as the other students of Cobb, Paulding, and Cherokee county schools know, and everyone is antsy, including this cool, calm collected chick who merely smiles on the last day of school. (Well, maybe just in the building. 'Tis tradition that I scream, "YES!!!" as I step off the bus, yearbook in hand.) We simply cannot contain our glee, even after most of us have shaken off the Santa fiasco. The teachers throw us death looks, but no one cares as we give each other special notes, presents, and noogies, all conveying the message, "Merry Christmas!" The adolescents are ballistic, and the teachers all decide that homework in this final stretch is too much trouble. Still, in the Advanced Content classrooms, final exams pop up right and left. Visions of sugarplums, not formulas and possessive pronouns, dance in the student body's collective head. The holidays are now taking their annual toll on parents and teachers, who must either house or teach the raging fireball, hyper on candy canes, that is the nation's children. Shopping, cooking, wrapping, and much blood, sweat, and tears are given from the adults, all to satisfy the younger generations apparent need for plastic toys and, as featured in Museum Tour's annual catalog, giant raspberry-like things that are, "designed for belly-bumping and belly laughing good times." The question is, how are you able to move through doorways? If it truly is designed for indoor/outdoor use, then wouldn't more things get broken by small flailing arms and legs, distraught children attempting to get back on their feet? I will never understand the consumer's idea of value. Wooden elephants the size of potatoes for $60? Absinthe kits? Model planes, trains, and automobiles for hundreds apiece that take 2 years to assemble? I now understand why more people of the younger generation are asking for never-fail gift cards--some peoples' "good taste in gift items" is slim to none. Besides, it's more fun to buy things yourself.