School looms

I suppose this post title would make more sense next Sunday, when the first day of school is less than a week away. But with Picture Day/Check-in Day arriving tomorrow, school really does feel like it's looming. I don't know why they do Picture Day so long before the first day of school. The kids receive their IDs on the spot -- it's not like they need several days to process them or anything. 

Parents don't have to go this year, when the kids are sophomores and know the drill. I guess parents didn't have to go last year either, but Rocket Boy and I did. It was fun. The kids were so cute. But this year I'll probably let them go on their own. They don't need me to explain to them how to take the bus. They don't need me to show them where to get off. 

Maybe I'll see if I can go along anyway. They'll probably say no, stay home. OK, I asked, they said no.

It doesn't seem as though school is READY to start. The kids don't have their schedules yet (they're promised for "a week before school starts"). The school website is full of holes. The lunch menu calendars haven't even been posted. Ever since the kids were in Kindergarten, the school district has provided a lunch menu calendar for the whole year. I post it in the kitchen where we can look at it while we eat breakfast. I also use the spaces to write what type of laundry I do that day. This is important, because I am so old that I cannot remember what type of laundry needs doing unless I can look at a list of what I did the past few weeks.

In elementary school, the calendars came home in the kids' Friday folders. In middle school, finding one was more challenging. During the pandemic I think there was one year where there wasn't a calendar, and one year I had to ask the food service department to mail one to me. Last year, in high school, I thought we'd had our last calendar, but then Teen B found a stack of them in the cafeteria and brought one home to me. But even if I can't get an actual calendar, I should be able to print off the pages from the food service website -- except that this year they aren't there. The menus for last year are still up there. The menus for August are there, but not in printable form.

Maybe this week they'll post them.

I can't get over the fact that we have so few "first days of school" left. After this one, only two more years. There's college, but I suspect only one of my boys will be going, and anyway, college is different. After this year, only two more first days of public school, real school. Only two more years of BVSD. Well, OK, this year hasn't even started yet. Only THREE more years of BVSD. Sophomore, Junior, Senior. That's it. We've been doing this for 10 years and there are only 3 years left.

It must be different for people with children of different ages. It's a longer stretch from first year to last year. My parents had children in public schools from 1949 until 1980, and all but one or two of those years were with the Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD). Then, in 1986, my oldest sister moved back home with her two kids, so then once again my parents were looking after kids in PAUSD. By the time my nephew graduated in 1996, my mother was probably heartily tired of it all (my father had died in 1989). The kids weren't living with her anymore by then, but she was still deeply involved in their lives.

***

Summer Update

1. Summer movies: Teen B and I saw "Haunted Mansion" yesterday (Teen A didn't want to go). It's gotten mixed reviews, and I can see why. The acting is great -- I really liked the guy who played the main character, Ben, his name is LaKeith Stanfield and I'm going to try to remember him. Jamie Lee Curtis was funny, Danny DeVito was funny, Owen Wilson was funny, Tiffany Haddish was funny, Winona Ryder was funny... but the movie was still really bad, because it was just a re-creation of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. Teen B has no memory of going on that ride at Disneyland when he was 5, so he enjoyed the movie more than I did.
   
   
2. Ice cream: We went to Coldstone Creamery on Friday night, kind of boring. That's not my favorite ice cream place, but we'd already done the other major ones, and I didn't feel like going to the mall. Next week we'll brave Pearl Street.
   
   
3. Driving: We went out a few times, but only a few. Maybe today we'll do some more.
   
   
4. Yard work: Teen A skipped this week again. I pruned along, dispiritedly. In front, I did some more work on the junipers that are overgrowing the sidewalk -- which is not fun, because I have to bend down low -- and the junipers that have completely overgrown the path around the side of the house -- which is not fun, because I have to reach up high. In back, I continued cutting back the junipers that have overgrown their boundaries, and also started cutting back the dead stuff that we accidentally uncovered when we cut back the juniper that was blocking the way to the clothesline.
   
   
5. Teen B's PE class: We finished! And by doing some make-up assignments on the last day, we got his grade up to a 90.46 -- which is an A! Yeah for A's! Boo for summer school!
   

We did one other summery thing yesterday: we went to the new Voodoo Donuts store after the movie and bought a Voodoo Dozen. OMG. The doughnuts are so huge and gooey and dripping with frosting and filling and general yuckiness. I've had three so far and each one has made me not feel so good. I don't think this is going to be our favorite donut store, but we'll see. 

I was amused by one thing: the store was crowded, and by and large, the clientele was large. For Boulder, I mean. For practically anywhere else in the country, the clientele would have been considered normal-sized, but Boulderites are skinny. I could only figure that people are coming to the store from Lafayette, Westminster, Berthoud... somewhere other than Boulder. 

***

I was thinking of taking a hike today, but I don't know. It's very gloomy out. Misty and drippy, and oh, now it's actually raining. Like it is in the Pacific Northwest most of the time, but quite unusual for Boulder. Might be a better day to stay inside and read about Theodore Roosevelt. Or Russia.

Last night I finished reading Heaven to Betsy by Maud Hart Lovelace to the kids. It's about Betsy's freshman year of high school (in 1906-07), and I thought they might find it entertaining after reading about Laura Ingalls Wilder's school days in the 1880s. They did, sort of. There's a lot of stuff in there about Betsy falling in love with Tony that I don't think they enjoyed. But they did seem mildly amused by her stories of high school 100+ years ago. Every time Betsy complained about algebra, Teen B would say "hear, hear" or something like that.

I found the experience of re-reading the book a little shocking. For instance, the topic of the Essay Contest (which Betsy fails to prepare for) is "The Philippines: Their Present and Future Value." Having just read Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines , and having read William McKinley and his America earlier this year and currently reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, I now have a lot more context for understanding why that might have been the topic of an essay contest in 1907! And when Betsy dreams about Aguinaldo the night before the contest and her father "said he was glad to hear that she knew there was such a person," -- well, I finally understand what that means.

There are also lines in there, and phrases, that I simply don't ever remember reading before. When you read aloud, you can't skim. 

What really blew my mind, though, was when Betsy realizes how important writing is to her (after spending the year going to parties and not preparing for the Essay Contest). 

    She looked back over the crowded winter. She did not regret it. But she should not have let its fun, its troubles, its excitements squeeze her writing out.
    "If I treat my writing like that," she told herself, "it may go away entirely."
    The thought appalled her. What would life be like without her writing? Writing filled her life with beauty and mystery, gave it purpose...and promise.

How is it possible that I have spent my whole life repeating Betsy's words to myself? But it's true, I have. This, this book, is where I got my ideas about writing being important, about having something special for yourself that you devote your life to. I mean, of course I haven't devoted my life to writing, and I've set it aside lots of times. But I always come back to it, and I'm quite sure that my core belief in its importance can be traced back to Heaven to Betsy.

Well, there are worse things to base your life on.

I don't know what we're going to read next. I haven't been to the Bookworm in a while -- my stack of choices is getting kind of small. Maybe I'll go to the library.