Back to School, Special
I always have mixed feelings about this time of year. On the one hand, I love having my babies around and I enjoy missing out on the homework hour from Hell. Plus, this is my first year after several that I have no one to homeschool. What the heck will I do with all that time? On the other hand, I can't wait to get them out from underfoot. The messy rooms strewn pillar to post with questionable scientific experiments, the occasional whining to go to this place or that, the pressure to squeeze in as much entertainment as humanly possible into those 10-12 weeks. I pant as we speak. I'll have to say, I've never seen the kids more excited about starting school before. The two boys start 8th and 11th at a charter school, new to both of them. The youngest girl starts middle school. No more elementary school dioramas and macaroni artwork. I asked Annika if she was alittle nervous about starting 6th, and she claims not. But when I tucked her in the night before the first school day, she was sound asleep, clutching onto her favorite stuffed horse, Flicka. She's had it since she was two, as anyone could tell from its appearance (it looks like it's been dragged through a McCormick Reaper, a wood chipper, a mine field, and then attacked by a swarm of rabid moths.) She hasn't paid much attention to Flicka for the last couple of years, having apparently shed all things childish in her old age, but she obviously saw the need to pull it out from her disaster area closet, dust it off, and cling it to her chest THAT night. The oldest girl graduated from college this summer and is now preparing for the med school admissions test, the MCAT. We see her wakling around in a zombie trance every once in awhile, all pale with bloodshot eyes, but we try to steer clear lest those eyes shoot daggers at us. Kinda cranky lately. The next oldest girl is still enjoying her summer before starting back to college in the next couple of weeks. She's had the thankless task of mulching our front and back yard--no picnic in this 98 degree 300% humidity weather, but I can't say she's been very diligent about it. Sure, it's a challenge picking that small window of opportunity between the peak scorch factor and the nightly mosquito block party, but her social life takes the front seat. The other day, she was all dressed up to go out and, with purse slung across her shoulder, picking her way through flowerbeds in 4 inch heels, she was shoveling a few wheelbarrows of mulch into place. Today, she finally finished. I'm sure the neighbors are grateful not to have to weave and bob around a mountain of mulch anymore.