So, I will just let you know now that I happen to be President of my children's school PTA at this time. I had never intended to join the PTA and actually veered away from their volunteer sign-up tables. I was totally content to just help in my kids classes. 2yrs ago I was no longer able to dodge the PTA. I would like to tell you all that I was tricked into joining or that perhaps I really wanted to help in some way and joined for a good reason. I would be lying. I joined the PTA to see if they, all the moms, were a bunch of bitches like I'd heard they (all PTA moms everywhere) were. I joined for the wrong reason but I decided that I was going to do my best in my new position.

So, myself and 3 other newbies were recruited to be on the following year's "board". I was a Co-Vice President with another friend that I recruited (actually, I tricked her a little) to be my buddy. ( wanted an ally on the board. We vowed to get through the year together. There was still one board member who was on the board from the previous year and she looked at us like there was an inside joke to our enthusiasm for making great strides during our future "rule." We all thought it a bit daunting but were all very excited to see what we could do for the school.

Before I go any further I want to give names to the ladies I've worked with but they will be aliases. For the 2007/2008 school year the following ladies were the board:

• Bree - President
• Lynette - ME -
• Susan - my Co-VP
• Gabrielle - Treasurer
• Edie - Secretary

If you don't realize already, I love desperate housewives. The character are in no way any reflection on the personalities of my board partners . Anywho...

Bree is not only our fearless President, she is an attorney. I owned my own national legal staffing business and worked from home. Susan worked part-time at another school. Gabrielle was in PR and Edie actually is a Realtor - but this Edie is happily married!

Now that you have everyone's basic history I can get back to my story.

While we were voted into our new positions by the "old" board, we really had no idea what our "jobs" were and what they consisted of. None of us newbies had any idea how much time the PTA would take out of lives nor did we think that it would be too complex. We just put together some PTA Fun Nights, did some fundraising for some of the schools programs and had meetings. None of us had a clue...

Bree, Gabrielle and I took our first foray into the world of the PTA by going to a conference prior to our "terms" starting (April 2007). The convention is where you go to like an Embassy Suites and go from conference room to conference room learning about topics such as "PTA and the Law" and "Money Matters." We found all of it fascinating and a bit daunting. During breaks we went into a huge conference room where we were given bags of goodies, information on fundraising ideas, playground equipment dealers, reading programs, etc. In this room our goal was to get as much stuff as we could...even going so far as to make second trips to get multiple items of each really cool thing. Gabrielle and I were pumped because one of the goodie bags had some Harry Potter Journals and some other cool stuff that we knew our daughter's would love. Over lunch, Gabrielle mentioned this to Bree. To our utter dismay, Bree told us that she believed that none of these goodies were ours to keep. Since our fees were paid for by the PTA and we were here to represent our PTA it was our duty to bring all materials received to be used for door prizes, giveaways, etc. Gabrielle was crushed and I was a bit disappointed myself. Actually, Gabrielle was pretty irritated because she didn't get why we couldn't keep the items...it didn't make sense to her, or I for that matter. Bree said she would ask the trainer in our next class "Money Matters" who the goodies belonged too.

In Class, Bree raised her hand during the proper section and asked who the goodies belonged to. The trainer smiled and said, "they belong to the PTA." I will tell you now that 95% of the people in that audience hated Bree at that moment. It never occurred to most of us that this stuff wasn't ours to keep. In fact, now that it was made clear to us who it belonged to we would be stealing from the PTA if we kept it. Needless to say, there were a lot of disappointed ladies in that room...a few disappointed men as well.

(to be continued...)