August musings

August was a different month when I was a kid. It wasn't as hot, for one thing, because I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the ocean breezes cool things off. 

Also, August was still summer. School didn't start until the day after Labor Day -- when it was REALLY hot. I remember wearing my new school clothes on the first day: a plaid wool skirt and a sweater vest over some sort of blouse. Maybe tights, too, I don't know. It was probably 100 degrees and there I am in a plaid wool skirt and a sweater vest. The sweater vest was yellow, not a color I look good in, maybe especially not when my face is red and dripping sweat. I looked just now to see if I have a photograph of myself wearing that, but no. I'm not sure what year that would have been. Maybe even high school, which is embarrassing.

I would have gone shopping for that outfit in August, with my mother, so August wasn't just summer, it was also getting ready for school. But not until the end of the month, I think. Most of August was summer -- maybe we went camping, or to the beach for the day. My older sister's birthday (August 18th) wasn't on the first day of school, as it often is now.

We don't shop for back-to-school clothes anymore. The twins wear the same clothes to school that they've been wearing around the house all summer. When it gets cold, they'll switch from shorts to long pants and they'll wear their hoodies over their t-shirts. But they refuse to wear long-sleeved shirts, so the shirts are the same, summer and winter and fall and spring. Mostly black and gray. Teen B (right side) does have a few in other colors, and he has some shirts with words and pictures on them. Teen A (left side) only has one shirt that he's willing to wear with a picture on it: a white outline of a cat (on a black background).

Classes start at the University of Colorado tomorrow, Monday. If I were still teaching that would be extremely important to me, but even now it's a notable date, because that means 36,000 students will be trying to get to class on Monday, crowding the buses and the roads. The twins take the same bus I used to take to teach at CU. That bus goes down Broadway, which is also the main road to campus. 

We are going to Target this afternoon to get some more folders (and whatnot) (probably mostly whatnot). I expect it will be hard to find a parking place.

***

OK, we're back. Target is quite the place to be on the Sunday before CU starts. In addition to folders for school, and some cat food and chips, I bought Teen A a pair of new (gray) shorts, much to his displeasure. They're too big, XL when he's in between M and L depending on the cut. But there weren't any M's or L's, and there's a drawstring, and anyway, they're just backup, for emergencies. He only has four pairs of shorts right now, and since I do the kids' laundry every 3 days, that's cutting it close. Both boys think it's disgusting to wear a clothing item more than once without washing it, except for hoodies. I think this is weird -- I wear pants and nightgowns multiple times between washings -- but that's how they feel. So we needed a backup pair of shorts.

I'm trying to think of emergencies that might happen while I'm in San Diego next weekend, and running out of laundry is definitely one of those.

Yes, I am going to San Diego! Have I mentioned that already? Rocket Boy flies in on Thursday afternoon and I leave on Friday afternoon to go to San Diego to spend three days with my little sis (who is flying in from San Jose). We will see the Giants play the Padres three times, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and I am going to have lunch with my friend Betty on Saturday. I am planning to get a lot of sleep, have fun with my sister, and not worry about (a) the twins (b) the cats (c) Rocket Boy doing something wrong (d) the rental house and its yard, and (e) anything else that I normally worry about. 

Teen B has already been thinking (worrying) about some of the things that might go wrong while I am gone. For example, the Sunday Starbucks run. Dad has never quite gotten with the whole Starbucks thing, and he always asks for items they don't carry, like decaf Chai. Also, sometimes he forgets his wallet. Also, I will be leaving him detailed cat-feeding instructions, but I think it's pretty much guaranteed that he will do that wrong, give them the wrong food or the wrong amounts of food. Teen A thinks he will probably leave the door to the desk room open, which will allow Baby Kitty to come running out to the dining room before Sillers is done eating. 

I will miss all of that. Can you see me smiling?

No, seriously, he's a good dad, and he's perfectly capable of doing everything that needs to be done, including laundry. He'll just do it a little differently from how I would, and that's fine. It will be very good for him to run the household for a few days. Then he's going to stay the rest of the week, flying back to St. Louis on Saturday the 9th. I'm going to try to drag him to "Oppenheimer," if it's still in our theater that week. It could be Date Night, except that it would be during the day while the kids are at school.

***

It was a bit of a rough week, this first full week of school. We of course got off schedule over the summer, and I had been waking up around 8:30 or 9 most mornings. Now I have to get up at 7. The hard part is going to bed early enough in the evenings. I do best if I get 7.5 hours of sleep, which means lights off no later than 11:30. But at 11:30 I've often barely made it to my bedroom. Sometimes I still need to take my shower. And I like to read before I turn off my light -- in fact, between 11:30 pm and 1:00 am is when I do most of my reading. Not anymore. I'll have to start reading more during the day.

The twins, being teenagers, do not want to go to bed early and they do not want to get up early. I wish I could reinstate our former policy of no electronic devices after dinner (except as needed to do homework). I let that slide this past year and now Teen A will be bashing away at computer games at 10 pm. At least we still have the rule of no electronic devices in the bedroom when they go to bed. The phones and iPads charge in the kitchen; the computers charge in the desk room. 

Another thing slowing us down in the evening is showers. Both boys take a shower almost every night, but they don't like to take a shower right after the other boy has taken a shower. So maybe one will take a shower at 9:00 and the other will take a shower at 9:45 pm. Maybe by 10:15 they're in bed, and then I read a chapter of our latest book, and then Teen B wants me to fill up his water bottle and Teen A wants me to get him a glass of water, and then someone has to use the bathroom.

And then I still have to finish the dishes and take my shower and start the dishwasher. Then it might be 11:30 or so and I crawl into bed to read -- but I really need to turn my light off right that minute.

Anyway, it was a sleepy week. Hard to get things done when you're desperately tired every day. But I made it to Back to School Night, with Teen B's help, and met a lot of their teachers, got a sense of what the year will be like. We've started doing homework (they've already both turned things in late, sigh). I'm also starting to think about MY fall schedule, when I'm going to write and when I'm going to do yardwork and when I'm going to clean.

One thing in place already is driving: we are going to drive on Saturdays. That will be our version of Family Fun Day (according to FlyLady). Yesterday I took both boys out, one at a time, and we drove to the Starbucks that's near the Walmart in Lafayette. In Teen B's case, I first drove us to the church on South Boulder Road that has the big parking lot and he practiced a little there before driving on to Starbucks (and he asked me to drive us home). In Teen A's case, he drove us there and back. So Teen B got maybe 17 minutes and Teen A got a little over 40 minutes driving time. Both boys received a "Back in the Saddle" Badge from the app that I use, RoadReady, acknowledging that they hadn't driven in a couple of weeks.

Driving to Starbucks is not a great idea, because then you go into the Starbucks and spend money. But oh, whatever. With Teen B, I had a Pumpkin Spice Latte IN AUGUST, which shouldn't be legal, but it was fun. He had one too.

And then with Teen A, I had a lemon loaf and he had a Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino. The barrista recognized me from an hour earlier, although thank goodness he didn't remember my name. The barrista at the Starbucks that we go to on Sundays knows my name.

Someday the twins will be grown and gone and then I probably won't go to Starbucks much. Rocket Boy doesn't like it, and honestly, I'd just as soon have tea and cereal at home on Sunday mornings, followed by a nice hike if the weather's good or some quiet reading time if it isn't. 

That's the future. For now, while the twins are teenagers, I don't mind basically living at Starbucks. I know it's temporary.

That's how I think about everything these days. Last night, Teen B and I took a walk around 8:30 pm, and as we walked through their old elementary school's playground, I had this flash of what my walks would be like after the twins grow up and leave: just me alone. No more twins. A part of me thinks, oh, they probably won't leave home for a while. Maybe they'll never leave home. I can kind of imagine Teen B having some trouble "launching." But what if we do manage to get them launched -- which is, of course, the goal. Then it'll just be Rocket Boy and me and the cats. How do parents DO that? How do you say goodbye to your kids and start over with a new life alone? I mean, it must be do-able. It's what parents do. But how terrifying to contemplate.