Can You Say Overachiever?

Bug came home with a project assignment from her 3rd grade teacher last night. As part of their unit in nutrition, they had to design a balanced meal, then create it artistically using a paper plate as the background. As Bug solemnly explained to me, it was acceptable to just draw on the plate, but her teacher said that the more unique it was, the better the grade would be. Oh, and she needed to turn it in tomorrow. Plus she had math homework.

Fabulous.

The timing could not have been worse. I was smack in the middle of preparing for a book club meeting that evening. I already had the tablecloth ready to go on the table, the nice serving dishes out ready to be filled with appetizers, and I was frosting a cake.

We swept all of that aside and gathered glue, paper, markers, and the stapler. For an hour and a half, we cut curls of paper for spaghetti, wadded little strips of green paper into peas, cut out chicken nuggets, and watermelon, and rolled paper into a cylinder to make a glass of milk. Then Bug painstakingly glued everything to the plate and decorated the edge with markers. It was lovely, time-consuming, but lovely.

I swept the bits of paper off the kitchen floor and scrubbed the table free of glue, with barely enough time to get ready for book club.

This morning, as she carefully laid her project in a plastic bag, Bug said to me, "Mrs. M. will be so proud of me for getting this in early!"

Wait. What?

"I thought you told me it was due today," I said slowly.

"No, it's due in a week, but Mrs. M. said she'd really appreciate it if we could get it in during the week," Bug said casually, "I bet I'm the first one to turn it in!"

Type A, anyone?