School begins

Whew. We got through the first day of school -- and the second, which was also stressful -- and the third, which had issues too. I was so tired by Friday afternoon! It's hard to get used to getting up early, after sleeping late all summer. It didn't help that my allergies are terrible right now, so I'm popping antihistamines. Saturday I wanted to sleep until noon, but the twins had haircuts at 10 and 10:30. Today I stayed in bed until 9, but tomorrow it's back to 7 am.

I'm debating how much to talk about the first few days of school. More than ever I feel as though I'm invading the twins' privacy by writing about them. They're in high school now. More and more their life is their story, not mine. I think I will stop posting photos of them, unless it's from the back. That will please them. And I'll try not to tell stories that are exclusively theirs, only those we share.

The biggest challenge this week from my standpoint was transportation. I had thought it would be really easy for them to get to school on the city bus, because the Skip runs (almost) right past our house. I used to take the Skip when I taught at CU and it worked well. 

There's an app that shows you where the buses are at any particular moment, so you'll know when one is coming (since they don't seem to follow the official schedule). I never used this app when I was teaching, but I used it this week. It mostly told us that there wasn't a Skip coming, that a Skip would never come, that a Skip would come only after it was too late to take it.

On Wednesday they were at the bus stop by 7:53 and a Skip finally came at 8:11. It takes about 10 minutes to get to their stop and then they have a 5-minute walk, and school started at 8:25 that day, so they might have been a little late, but it was OK. On Thursday I had to drive Teen A to school early so that he could exchange his Chromebook (long, irritating story that I won't bore you with), so Teen B took the bus alone. He was at the bus stop by 8:00 but a Skip was pulling out just as he arrived. Fortunately another one came at 8:15 or so, and school started at 8:35 that day, so he was OK. On Friday there was no sign of any Skip at any time when they might have caught it, so I drove them.

At least coming home is easy. Though on Thursday Teen A called me to say he'd just missed the bus and could I come pick him up. I said no, wait for the next one. Eventually he made it home.

The bus is free for the whole month of August, but starting in September we will have to figure out a way to pay for it. I'm not sure whether a bus pass or a MyRide account would be better. I might have to phone RTD Customer Service to discuss this.

***

We're still "getting ready" for school in a lot of ways. We've been shopping for school supplies all weekend, off and on. We've been to Target, Staples, and today I made a special trip to Office Depot to find new calculators for each of them.

Shopping for school supplies with Teen A is challenging because he doesn't like color. Pastels and girly colors like pink, purple, teal, etc., are right out, but he also doesn't like traditional boy colors like blue. Red is a little too strong, brown is ugly, and forget green because we always dressed him in green when he was little. That leaves black, gray, and white. He dresses almost exclusively in black and gray, and he wanted black and gray binders, notebooks, folders, etc. He compromised on white because there weren't any gray notebooks and I argued that three black notebooks would be too confusing when he is trying to pull the right one out of his backpack.

Teen B is a little more flexible. He'll accept blue, orange, sometimes red -- but he likes black and gray too. He ended up with a black binder and a navy binder, and a black notebook, a blue notebook, and a black notebook with gold polka dots on it. Also a plastic Spiderman case full of different-colored highlighters which Teen A ridiculed extensively.

When I think of the ecstasies I used to go into when choosing folder and notebook colors for my classes -- both when I was a grad student and when I was teaching -- oh, that perfect shade of eggplant goes so well with this lemon yellow, but look at this periwinkle blue with the forest green... Oh well. I'm not them, they're not me.

Tonight we assembled all the binders and notebooks (I put labels on everything so they'd remember which class each thing is for). We put ruled paper in the binders, and tabs (but didn't fill out the tabs because we don't know what they're supposed to say). We put the new pencils and pens and highlighters in the front pockets of their backpacks. 

They're all ready for Week 2, starting tomorrow.

***

This was probably Rocket Boy's last weekend with us, and in some ways I'm ready for him to leave and in other ways I'm so sad! His boss wants him back in St. Louis for September, so he'll probably drive back August 27-28. He's a little worried about whether he's up to it -- and of course, I can't help him. I suggested he take three days to make the drive, instead of two, and he's considering it. That would mean about 290 miles a day instead of 440. I think he could do that.

I'm ready for him to leave because I want my house back -- I simply can't seem to keep it clean when he's here. What am I going to do when he's back permanently? I don't know. I'll figure it out then. Actually, what I think is that if I can make more progress with FlyLady, the house will get easier to keep clean, and then maybe it won't be such a problem. Right now, when I still have a million things to declutter and clean, I need to be able to focus and not have him telling me I'm doing it wrong, or whatever.

But I also don't want him to go! I'm worried about him, even though he takes good care of himself. Alone in St. Louis, he exercises regularly and cooks healthy food -- fish and lots of veggies. I haven't been able to look closely at his various wounds without gagging, but he carefully tends to them, washes them and rebandages them. So he'll be fine without me, but what if he needs to go to the emergency room? I worry about that all the time.

Also, I just enjoy his company. I like having him to talk to about things, bounce things off of. He's always willing to listen to me. We go for walks in the evenings. And he's braver than I am. I put off so many things due to anxiety. When I tell him I'm having trouble with something, he either volunteers to do it for me, or we do it together.

On the other hand, he can be very critical, of both me and the twins. He has rather fixed ideas about when dinner should be, what dinner should be, what someone shouldn't eat within two or three hours of dinner... I'm a little more low-key about all that, despite having grown up in a household where dinner was on the table at 6 pm sharp every evening -- or maybe because of that. 

I'm starting to feel sad about him leaving. I know I'll be OK within a day or two of his departure, but the week before he goes is always hard. Last night I had a series of sad dreams. By the time I woke up fully, I'd mostly forgotten them, just knew they were sad, but I do remember one. In the dream, I'd just finished school (probably grad school) and my apartment lease was expiring and my fellowship was ending. I didn't know where to go and I felt like the bottom was dropping out of my life. I've had that dream before.

I realized that I never did a "welcome to August" post, and now here it is August 21st. That's OK. August didn't need a theme -- it's always "end of summer" and "back to school" and "run around frantically" month. Two weeks from now I'll do a "welcome to September" post and that will be enough.