Next year I will have children in just three different schools (this year it is four). The Girl Scout troop has evolved into two girls working independently on their Silver and Gold awards and I am no longer involved in the Children’s Mental Health Week events. I am extremely busy, but I feel isolated, alone, lost, unfocused, out-of-sorts. I don’t go anywhere or do anything. So, I am putting my name all over the PTA volunteer lists for next year.

When Tommy first started school, I was very active in the PTA. I was in charge of the monthly skating rink fund raiser, label collections and a silent auction that raised just over 13K for the school playground. I ignored the fact that I was a jeans and Birks mom in a sea of tennis mini-skirted, yummy mummies. I couldn’t ignore the end-of-the-year gathering during which the other women all chimed in about how much they hated having the special ed classroom at their school. The things they said about the children in that classroom stung like wasp stings. I quietly left the party and never participated again.

Still, it doesn’t really matter how much I volunteer. PTA is where the high school mean girls continue their hierarchy of social worthiness. I will be allowed to do the things that the manicured, Hilton Head condo owning beautiful people don’t want to do. Maybe I need something else to get out of my funk. Time will tell and then, of course, I’ll tell.

I wanted to use a quote from one of Nina and Dahlia’s conversations on The Riches, but there don’t seem to be any posted yet. Am I the only person watching this show?