Another brick in the wall, part 1

I forgot how much getting up at 6 a.m. truly sucks ass. The days I worked this summer, I didn't have to pick up the sitter until 8:45, so got to sleep in for a while. But we had to leave for school today at 7:30. Homeschooling looks more attractive by the minute. Then we ended up parking so far away that we might as well have walked from home. Pigpen and I accompanied Beaker in to meet the teacher, and also to schlep along three bags of school supplies, a backpack, and lunch box. The schools here are nuts...they require the kids to bring very specific stuff, from notebook paper and markers, to Clorox wipes, Kleenex, and gallon sized Zip-loc bags. They are woefully underfunded, so if parents didn't bring it, the teachers would have to buy the supplies themselves. I got some "extra" stuff for the teacher that I know she'll need--dry erase markers, paper towels, hand sanitizer. Figure it can't hurt to suck up a little in advance.

The second grade teacher seems nice. She has gray hair and is a grandmotherly-looking person. Friendly but no-nonsense at the same time. I hope Beaker adapts...his first grade and kindy teachers were both young and very attractive, and more on the soft-spoken side. I didn't get to meet the classroom aide that he'll be sharing with another student this year. She got stuck on lunchroom breakfast duty this morning.

I also chaperoned a poor little lost kid to Beaker's class. He was standing outside the front door of the school in a panic, because he could not find his name on any of the class lists. I helped him find it and realized he was in the same class. So he walked there with us. He was a nice kid, chatty, neatly dressed. But I cannot understand how a parent could simply dump a seven year old child at the school on the first day, without even bothering to take five minutes and make sure the kid knew where his classroom was, or to meet the teacher briefly. I'm certainly never going to get nominated for Mother of the Year, but damn. That's pretty harsh.

So now I am home--briefly--and it is weird to have only one kid in the house. There's no fighting! It's far too quiet. We're going to meet friends for lunch at Chick-fil-a. It was the only place we could think of that has an indoor playground. The heat index this week has been about 110, so outdoor playgrounds are definitely out for a while.

Pigpen's preschool doesn't start until Monday, so I am in this limbo state right now. I suppose I should use the rest of the week to get the house cleaned and the laundry caught up. Yeah, right. It's more likely I will lunch with homeschooling friends, take naps, read, knit, and possibly loiter in Barnes & Noble, sucking down one of these:

Mini Va-cay and Back to School

I can't believe school is starting Wednesday. I'll never figure out this philosophy here in the deep south. "They" maintain that school needs to be over in late May, because it's "getting too hot." Of course, this means that school must resume in August. Apparently "they" have not figured out that it is waaaaay hotter in August than in May. Or that the schools have air conditioning [despite the public perception fueled by movies depicting the south as inadequately cooled only by lazily turning ceiling fans. But I digress.] When I was growing up, way back in the Paleolithic Age, school let out in June, and resumed after Labor Day, which still seems to me a much better way to do things.

So the familia decided to have a small break before school starts. We went to Nashville for a long weekend and took the kids here, which they really enjoyed. We also went to rubberneck and say "Goll-ee!" at the Opryland hotel, since we couldn't afford to rent a room there even by the hour. As it was a sales tax holiday weekend, we also did a little shopping. It was so nice to have a choice of several malls to shop at, and to visit some of the stores I usually can only access online. And we ate some yummy ribs--the dry rub ones are the best.

So now I have to listen to Beaker whine, "I don't want to go back to school!" every five minutes between now and Wednesday morning. Of course, this is the same kid who cried every day for a week because he missed school when it ended. The one who, after the last day of school and while having a friend over, began studying his math workbooks earnestly, "Because I have to get ready for the second grade, Mom!" At least two of his friends are in the same class this year, so he'll start out knowing someone. It's so hard for him when his routine changes.

So yeah, I was a total sloth and did not knit anything while we were gone. I read and zoned out staring at the TV and slept. I really need to take a pic of my FO (Finished Objects) for the year--all two of them, wow--and post. Maybe I'll actually get that done this week, in my "spare" time.