The first day of school is like the Anti-Christmas in our house. Or the anti-Halloween. And for sure the anti-First-Day-of-Summer. With Christmas, there is excitement on Christmas Eve. What will we get? Christmas is awesome with gifts and food, and the day after is great because you still have cool gifts to play with and there are plenty of awesome leftovers to eat. It is a three day stretch of wonderfulness.
The start of school is the opposite. The days before are filled with dread, the actual day is okay but filled with angst and the days after is when the work kicks in. This is the opposite of wonderfulness. Sure there are friends and sports and clubs, but they don't outweigh the freedom of summer.
Instead of happy anticipation, both kids were on edge the day before, crabby and quick to bicker. Thankfully, a friend planned a pre-first night of school picnic, which the Boy happily attended without his parents. I was glad to have him out of the house with something other to do than sulk, and he was glad to be out with his friends.
The first day was "fine," but the Boy came home exhausted. Claire Adele has a bunch of activities so her transition back to school is easier. He has a tough schedule, including a brutal biology teacher from what I've heard. I've warned him that most kids flunk this woman's class for the first few tests, and he seems eager to give it a good try. Although today, he forgot his biology homework--a dead bug, a flower and a piece of onion samples to examine under a microscope--on his desk, beautifully packed but not in his backpack. I have a friend who says the homework isn't done until it is the backpack. How true. But I have been forgetful, too. I took the Light Rail downtown and I forgot to "tap out" my Orca card at my end stop. I have no idea what happens. The light rail probably thinks I am still on the train going to the airport. Oh well. I'll have to tell the Boy. Maybe he could relate. Claire Adele will tell him that grades in middle school don't matter, but I think he needs to get into the practice of getting his act together before high school. One of the seniors at my daughter's school wrote in the school newspaper that she wished she got good grades her freshman and sophomore year before the class work really got hard. By then, it was harder to pull her GPA up.
Tonight he is going out with friends and tomorrow he has a soccer game. Hopefully this will bring a happy end to the Anti-Christmas week.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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