OK, September

It's Labor Day weekend, September for sure. We've changed all the calendars, I printed out my "Fall 2022 Plans" to give myself a longer view of the season, and today at Starbucks, Teen B ordered a pumpkin spice latte. That's usually my favorite drink, but I feel that the hottest weekend of the year is the wrong time to order it. I generally wait until October. 

These days, of course, I mostly don't order anything when we attend the Church of Starbucks on Sunday mornings, because it's gotten so darn expensive. I let the kids get their fancy drinks and eats (Teen A likes the sandwiches, while Teen B is partial to cake pops -- today he got an owl), and then we go home and I have tea and cereal. In some ways I feel as though this sends the wrong message -- that the kids get all the treats and the parents make do with the crumbs. But I like tea and cereal and I don't like spending money unnecessarily. The kids love Starbucks, whereas every time I go in one, I think about Ann Arbor and how it had all those wonderful different coffee shops, each with its own special treats. In October, I'll let myself have a few pumpkin spice lattes, and maybe at Christmas I'll have one or two caramel brule lattes, and the rest of the time I'm good with tea and cereal.

So, September! Time to make some plans. This is not my favorite month. In northern climes, it is perhaps still the month when the cold weather begins -- Michigan used to start getting chilly in early September, wonder whether it still does. But in Colorado, not really. In the mountains, sure, but not down here. Maybe by the end of the month. Right now we're hot -- not like it is in California this weekend, but we're supposed to be 93 today, 97 tomorrow. It doesn't feel like fall.

As far as September plans go, I need to read another presidential biography before the third quarter of the year ends. Grover Cleveland is the man, and Grover Cleveland: A Study in Character by Alyn Brodsky is the book that I just requested from Prospector. We have all those home improvement projects coming up in October (bathroom wall, kitchen floor), so I have to get busy and choose the tile for the shower. I also should find out what happened to the guy who was going to work on our backyard. Maybe he'll show up some time this month.

I've got the book for the book group (Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, which looks better than the last few books we've read) and I may start it tonight. I only have two books left to read for the Classics Challenge this year, so no rush there. I've read 79 books so far in 2022, so I'm sure I'll get to 100 again.

There are lots of little things on my calendar: dentist, orthodontist, support group, the book group, a zoom call with old friends, the neighborhood pancake breakfast. I'm sure more things will come up. Mostly I'm going to try to get the house back in order, get back into all my FlyLady routines. And maybe apply for a job. I'm so nervous about that! We'll see.

I guess the theme for September is Back to School/End of Summer, although that was also August's theme. September definitely feels like the Back to School month, though. As for a color, I've always thought of the color of September as yellow or gold, meaning dry, dying plants. Our weedy side yard epitomizes the color of September.

But I'm trying to reorient myself to think of September as a purple month, purple as in ripe fruit -- most of which is actually yellow or orange or red, but still. Some fruit is purple. Plums! I should buy some plums. I've been focusing on peaches, but there are lots of plums in the stores. Next time I go, I'll get some plums.

It's hard to get excited about September, but it is to be sure a wonderful month for stone fruit. I should think of something to do with stone fruit every week this month. Last week I made a peach pie, but it wasn't very popular with the twins. Teen A eventually finished it off, but I don't think Teen B had a single slice. Rocket Boy would have eaten it.

Rocket Boy is back in St. Louis, going in to the office, visiting museums on the weekends, all of that. He asked me what we were doing this weekend. Uh, relaxing? He makes me feel so slothful when we talk. But then, he isn't managing the lives of two teenagers.

This was a busy, stressful week. It was the second full week of school, so lots of homework, lots of adjustments. We're figuring out the bus thing. Every morning my alarm goes off at about 7:08 (I want it to go off at 7:00, but I can't seem to get it set right). I get up, go to the bathroom, come back to my room and get dressed, and make the bed. Then it's about 7:30 (sometimes there's time for Wordle, too), and I go wake up the twins. I open their curtain and turn on the light, and then I leave them and go start the tea. Ten minutes later, at 8:40, I wake them up again, and this time it's serious. One or both of them is up by then, usually, so it's OK.

They get dressed and wander out to the living room and I offer breakfast, but I'm not fussy about it. Sometimes Teen A fixes himself a gigantic bowl of cereal, sometimes he wants me to make him a piece of cinnamon toast. Teen B often doesn't want anything. Sometimes he'll have a cup of tea. It's all fine. They're 14, I think they can make their own decisions about breakfast. 

At 7:40 I also pull up "Next Ride" on my phone and start tracking the buses. A Skip usually gets here around 7:50, 7:55, maybe 8:00, and then nothing until 8:15 or 8:20 or so, and that's cutting it a little close. So we have to watch the early bus on the app. I've gotten pretty good at estimating when it will arrive, but sometimes it catches me up. Then I'll start screaming, "The bus is going to be here any minute! Get your stuff! Hurry!" They've figured out that they need to have their backpacks packed ahead of time, because Mom's scream could come at any moment. So usually they can get out the door in a minute or two. The slowdowns are Teen A's shoes (Teen B is still wearing flip flops every day), and whether someone needs to use the bathroom. 

It only takes them a minute or two to get to the bus stop, so we haven't missed a bus yet. If there is some question about whether they caught it, I'll text Teen B a few minutes later: "Are you on the bus?" He's patient with me: "Yes." 

The bus went back to charging people on September 1st (it was free for all of August), so on August 31st I bravely drove downtown to the bus depot and picked up two "MyRide" passes for the boys to use. I put $10 on each pass and then at home I registered them and attached my credit card to them and put another $6 on. So we have $26 on the two passes (it costs them $1.10 each time they ride) and I thought we were all set. Unfortunately, RTD (aka Reason To Drive) doesn't have enough staff, so the buses haven't all been upgraded with new card readers yet, so the boys' passes don't work. The bus drivers have been letting them ride anyway, but apparently they aren't very nice about it. I called RTD and the nice woman assured me that it would all be worked out by the end of September.

Meanwhile, the twins are like, "Why don't you drive us?" and I'm like, "No."

La la la.

Wednesday was Back to School night at the high school, and that was interesting. Teen B went with me. First we sat in the auditorium for, like, an hour, and listened to boring talks about this and that. After each person spoke, the assistant principal running the show would say, "Let's have another big hand for so-and-so," and the parents would politely clap some more. I really think they could have cut that down to half an hour without losing any meaningful content. Maybe next year.

At 7 pm it was time to start running around to the classes. We had 10 minutes in each class and 5 minutes to get from class to class. Their high school is three stories, with a courtyard in the middle, and some of the classrooms can only be reached by the stairs in the courtyard. Up and down and around we rushed, along with all the other parents. I was definitely on the old side, and the fat side, tottering up and down the staircases, gripping the railings for dear life. Teen B rushed ahead of me and then looked back, laughing. Evil child.

I went to two of Teen A's classes, four of Teen B's, and one that they share (they share the teacher, but not the same period). It was the best I could do. I really missed Rocket Boy that night.

Later that night the cat problems began. I was woken multiple times by the sound of a cat vomiting, and by morning it was clear that Sillers was in trouble. There was vomit everywhere -- great piles of it, but also smaller spots. In some cases I wasn't sure whether it was vomit or something else. After the kids went to school, I fed both cats, but of course she wouldn't eat. "Why did I do that?" I asked myself. I put her food up on a high shelf and tried to keep an eye on her, but she kept getting on things and vomiting (or something) on them. Teen A's bed. My bed.

Finally I just put her outside on the back patio. I was feeling really angry, unreasonably angry. I had all this extra laundry to do all of a sudden and I was tired from the night before. We just got this problem fixed in July! (I assumed it had something to do with her gastrointestinal system.) True, I had been skipping her laxative some days, and true, I'd only been giving her Miralax, not Laxatone. But could she really be blocked again so quickly? 

Sillers did not like being outside. I put a bowl of water out there with her, and made a soft bed in a milk crate, but she chose to hide in some leaves near the lawnmower instead, and mewed at me. "Why don't you just die?" I said to her, and then felt terribly guilty. But I don't want to have another sick cat! It's bad enough that Baby Kitty has FLUTD, like Chester did. The anniversary of Chester's death is in a couple of weeks (September 19th). I don't want another sick cat!

Fortunately, Sillers had no intention of dying. At 1:45 I pulled myself together and called the vet. Miraculously, they had space to bring her in that afternoon. I put Sillers in the cat carrier, where she immediately began leaking on the towel. At the vet, they did an x-ray. Sure enough, another poop blockage. I left her there for a couple of hours while they cleaned her out. Picked her up at 5 pm to the tune of $400. Her tail was wrapped in blue this time and we had to keep it like that for 24 hours. I promised to give her a laxative twice every day from now on.

I washed Teen A's sheets. Washed the cat blanket we keep on top of our bed. Set the comforter aside to take to a laundromat. Washed towels.

On Saturday, I was sitting on my bed with a cup of tea, stewing over the problem of Sillers, and she jumped up on the bed, one foot landing in my cup. She is very uncoordinated and could not have done that if she'd tried. Tea went everywhere, soaking the blanket, sheets, mattress pad. What's a little more laundry? Eventually I tried putting the comforter in the washer too, and it fit, so I didn't have to go to a laundromat. And now I have a really clean bed -- I don't usually wash the mattress pad when I wash the sheets, and the comforter hadn't been washed in probably a year.

So, OK, that was our week. Tomorrow is a holiday, so we get to take it easy for one more day. We'll probably focus on homework. I need to set up a system for checking on their assignments. I learned last year that I can't just leave it up to them. I wish I could, but my kids aren't me (at age 14). They need help. So I'll try to give it to them.

Meanwhile, welcome (purple and gold) September.