School 2015

I always kind of dread when my kids going back to school. I miss them and they miss me. Also, here in Indiana, school is a total money dump. There are supplies which we are expected to buy, new school clothes (which are not always a must, but sometimes kinda if we don't want to get signed up for Santa Shop handouts later). And new clothes were an absolute must for Mark who would be needing uniforms and Emma who was the proud owner of approximately two shirts, having worn princess dresses for most the duration of her life. Then there are the PTA fees and the little gym, agenda book, teacher fees, and it all adds up. And then there's always the friendly neighborhood book rental fee, which isn't going away anytime soon, so I should stop complaining about it, except that it totals up to hundreds of dollars for my family of four kids, and to me forking out $600 for books is just not a free public education. Sorry, but it's not. So, yeah, the beginning of the school year and I don't always get along. Add to that the fact that my oldest was starting junior high and my baby was going to kindergarten made for this upsy-downsy me--half ecstatic at the extra free time that I hadn't had for the last 13 years, and half train-wrecked. This year, however, about a week before school began I realized that summer had officially hit the point where it was in need of some routine. My kids were acting like crazy, lazy, unpleasant lunatics. Even if we hadn't been going back to school, I would have needed to get my kids on some kind of schedule. This made me not quite dread it as much as I usually do.

Haha. Joke's on me because that first week of school was sheer misery. Mark had to transition to wake up at 6 am. He's not a morning person at all every anyway, and 6 when you're used to sleeping till 9 just isn't fun. He liked his classes/teachers okay, but they changed his locker and the new one wouldn't work and then one night he went to this musical reveal party for choir. There was an after school bus to bring him home. How great.  I expected him home 6:00-ish. Yeah, he got home after 7 that night. I was freaking out. I know it doesn't sound much later than 6, but the party ended at 5:00 and I could not get a hold of anyone. I called the school, the bus, his teacher. I was pretty sure he was just being driven all over Evansville with 700 other kids (which was the case and is plenty awful in and of itself), but that tiny part of me thought, "My kid could be kidnapped and I would have no freaking idea." Seriously, when 7:00 rolled around, I was like, "At what point do I call the police" because it was two hours after his party was done. He came home exhausted, starving, and frustrated (and also not interested in this year's musical so it was a total loss).

Then there was Emma. Emma enjoyed the first three days of kindergarten and then got a yellow apple (as opposed to a green apple--this is a reward's system if you're over 50 and have no idea what I'm talking about) and then was a wreck of wrecks, crying about school in the mornings, crying at school during recess, crying at bedtime about being afraid (which she was doing several weeks before school started too, but school made it worse). It was so awful.I felt sad for her, but also super annoyed, like that she was totally working the system to get as much attention and snuggles and extra bedtime time as possible. Not consciously maybe, but working it nonetheless. She got way better when Kip got off his shift and that helped me in so many ways because she was happier and Kip handled her better than I did when she wasn't happy. She is still up and down--kind of hating school in the morning, but happy when she gets home. The good news is that she learned to ride her bike. All my kids bike to the bus stop. But Emma hadn't learned to ride her two-wheeler yet, so i would run with her as she biked. It only took about 3 days and she was doing it on her own. I have still been running with her because, while biking, she is slightly completely oblivious to everything in the world including cars, ditches, and small animals. I've found it kind of refreshing though to have to get dressed and then to get my blood pumping each morning as I jog to the bus stop with the kids.

The middle girls, heaven bless them, got through the week without having traumatic incidents like yellow apples.

The worst part of that first week for me, though, was me. I expected I'd be a little bi-polar--happy/sad. I knew I'd miss the kids, but I was looking forward to some free time and I was planning to spend several hours a day writing in the hope that I would be able to sell my finished book and finish my unfinished book. It would be some time to work on a little dream that I hoped (and hope) will eventually generate actual money. But I was just a wreck. I spent the whole week cleaning our disastrous house, shopping for groceries, shopping for all the school supplies/clothes/everythings I had missed the first time around, filling out forms, and I don't even know what else. That first week, I didn't have any more time for myself than I had when my kids had been home. All the rest of my time had been consumed by necessary, but mundane and unfulfilling tasks--tasks that I hadn't minded and had even found fulfillment in when I had my kids with me at home, but which seemed really empty when I was just scrubbing a toilet without a cute little child playing Barbie at my side. I was like, "Oh my gosh. Now I'm not an at-home Mom. I'm just a maid." And I really really didn't want to be just a maid, or at least not an un-paid one:). So instead of feeling like my me bucket was full when the kids got home, I was like, "I just spent my day doing 14 loads of laundry." It was depressing. Plus I needed to go to bed an hour earlier because I was getting up at 6 am with Mark, which sucked another me-time hour out of my day. First world problems. Blah.

Eventually, however, we mostly sorted ourselves out. Mark mastered his locker (are all junior high lockers possessed by demons; is that, like, a coming of age thing). Emma learned to ride her bike and likes her teacher and sometimes still cries at recess, but is otherwise cheerful. I, well, I just decided that my house would pretty much always need cleaning, so after a perfunctory 20 minutes of cleaning, I exercise and get to writing. I'm trying to grocery shop when Kip is home so we can do it together (which makes it more fun and gives us time to talk and connect over produce and what not). Also, Kip keeps those shopping trips short, while I'm kind of a meanderer when left to myself. And now this is getting boring, so I'll stop.

Special shout out though to all my friends who listened to me complain about this already. You guys made it better and your listening ears helped me sort myself out.