Stupid guilt

Last night was the Blue and Gold banquet.  I'll spare you my rant about cub scouting.  And especially my rant about the Blue and Gold, which, after being the primary president, is especially long, drawn out, and just plain childish.  Although I'm still strangely proud of the series of biting comments* it caused me to make in ward council, which I'm sure I'll have to answer for at judgment day.  Although I'm not sure if it's the comments I'll have to answer for or the pride.  Probably both.  Anyhoo,  if you can't tell, I don't particularly like cub scouts (although I do fully support my boys participating in scouts to the extent that THEY are willing to put forth the effort to at least match...my effort).  Also, I detest the Blue and Gold. 

Back on track.  Last night was the Blue and Gold.  For you non-scouters (lucky!), it's a dinner in celebration of the founding of scouting.  A massive birthday party, if you will.  (Wahoo?)  Our stake does scouting at the stake level because we don't have many boys (a good call), so obviously the BnG was also a stake event.  And, to control the number of bodies getting a free meal at the expense of the stake (also a good call), the BnG was for scouts ONLY and their parents.  Which is the way it's supposed to be.  Go, my stake!  The bummer was that this meant that non-scout siblings couldn't come.  Do you see my dilemma? Poor Elijah missed it by a month and all his friends got to go.

Enter Jon.

I'll spare you the details and just say that we all ended up going.  And because we were breaking da rulez, I was so riddled by guilt that I could barely choke down my baked potato and chili and cheese, let alone enjoy it.  Although that was probably more due to the fact that it was mostly uncooked...but hey, it was free, and rule-breaking freeloaders can't complain, that's what I say.  I kept waiting for the cub master to come over and, in her most stern voice, reprimand us for having our 7.9-year-old son there.  You know how vicious people in canary yellow shirts festooned with too many patches can be.  It leads to a power trip, I tell ya! Just look at the Pinewood Derby!   (Actually, I really like Bonnie.  She's got wisdom and experience, so she gets the job done without being one of those Crazy Scouting People.)

And yet another story of guilt and an inability to break small rules (the big rules are, sadly, another story):  one of my favorite blogs to read is Navel Gazing at its Finest.  I've been webstalking Sue ever since Elise sent me a link to her hysterical pregnancy posts.  Well, today I un-stalked myself, although I'm not proud of the reason.  Apparently, despite my recent rants that We Have Way Too Much Garbage Around Here, I really want to win a free laptop.  And one of the ways to increase your odds of winning from "negligible" to "slightly better than negligible" is to mention her in a blog.  So here goes:

You should read Sue's blog.  She's really funny.  And, yes, I do realize that I could have just made the comment that I blogged about her without actually blogging and no one would have ever known, but I don't need ANOTHER helping of guilt after last night's BnG.  Besides, she really is funny.  Not to mention reassuringly neurotic.  I'm doing you a favor by recommending her.  Really.

*I may or may not have told the High Priest Group leader that I wouldn't have a problem doing a big BnG on the condition that all the retirees be crammed into the itty bitty primary room and forced to stay there all night, even if their parents wanted to get them out.  Believe me, if you knew the back story, this would make sense.  And be reasonable.  And you'd think that he got off easy.  Please see previous post about my temper.