End-of-summer blues

"I better start practicing carrying this," Si says, marching across the living room with his backpack on. "Pretty soon I'm going to be carrying it all the time!"

"Will I be able to ride my bike to kindergarten?" asks Helen, as she straps on her pink Barbie helmet and gets ready for her evening wobble around the neighborhood. (The answer, BTW, is Yes! Only we'll have to leave an hour before school starts because the only thing slower than walking at this point is biking).

"I'm going to take lunch three days a week and on Wednesdays, there's pizza day, so then I'll just get to choose one other lunch," says Silas, and then Helen repeats it, with big eyes, only she makes sure that I remember that she doesn't like pizza.

They're getting revved up for school to start, in other words. We've got piles of brand-new school supplies, we've looked online at the teacher teams for each of their grades, we've talked about the new bus stop, about which before-and-after-school activities we're going to do, and about the fall semester schedule. We've gone through their homework/artwork boxes and emptied them out so they're ready for the onslaught of school projects. We're, uh, going to figure out the back-to-school-clothes situation any day now. They're ready. We're ready. I'm ready.

Except I'm not. I am SAD, and for really no reason at all. I am sad that Helen's daycare/preschool is no longer a place we need to go. I am sad that the bedtime routine no longer involves getting Helen into a swimsuit and remembering to put her undies and towel into her swim bag (both my kids prefer to streamline the morning routine by putting their clean clothes on the night before). I am sad that Si's camps are done, even though they were really vast sinks of inconvenience and he didn't even like them all that much (except for archery. He LOVED archery). I am sad that the summer hourglass is down to its last few grains and we've only gone camping ONCE and hiking TWICE and haven't even made popsicles or used our ice cream maker. I am HEARTBROKEN that Silas is practically in middle school (fourth grade! it's crazy! every year a new grade!) I am sad, or perhaps a better word is sorry, that we didn't schedule our summer better. (For the record, next year we will concentrate on doing camp and swim lessons in June, trips in July, and maybe rely on parents and/or whatever late season camps we can find for August. The last few weeks before school starts are scheduling HELL.)

A lot of this sadness, though, is because we're between routines. As soon as school starts and we have our daily and weekly schedules figured out, life will go back to being predictable and calm.

Except, of course, for the renovation. Demo seems likely to begin NEXT WEEK--just in time for school.

Technically June 1 is summer don't even argue

I know, I know, midsummer and official summer are still three weeks off, blah blah blah. But after a LOVERLY weekend, involving swimming pools, a Rockies game, and getting to meet this fantastic lady, I have a sunburn, which means that in my accounting book, it's summer.

Plus, Helen's summer program ("We got two free swims!") started today, and while Si's school isn't officially out, he's totally ACTING like it's out, with the moping and the anxiety-about-change (which I so, so get and am trying to hide in myself so as not to provoke his any more than it is), so I say we just call it done so by the time summer does start he'll be relaxed and happy again. Or something.

Finally, what with all the sucktacious stuff happening around the internet (my heart is breaking for Katie Granju and her family, and I am also technically Scared Shitless about Si's teenage years) and elsewhere, we need us some summer.

Right, yeah? Let's go get us some pina coladas.

Better

This is mostly what's been making me feel bad: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/kentucky/obituary.aspx?n=kelly-jo-feinberg&pid=142854594. I met Kelly in grad school and while it would be a presumptuous lie to say that we were good friends, she was one of the lights of grad school. We shared an office during the first and only semester that I taught and I remember giggling with her about our insecurities and awkwardnesses and as I've awkwardly tried to write a condolence letter this week to her husband, I keep imagining that I'm going to be able to laugh with Kelly about it--and then remembered, oh. But she was younger and nicer than me and the whole unfairness of it all has been pissing me off.

Anyhow. I am feeling better. Helen had her much-anticipated Kindergarten Orientation last night, and it cheered me right up. I'd feel even better if *I* got to go to kindergarten in the fall, because it sounds so awesome, but luckily I'm good at vicariously living through my kids.

Happy Wednesday.

Sad

My mood this Monday morning is toeing the "bummed" line, wavering between actual local sadnesses and crises and occasionally veering out into "let's surf the internet and find out what WORSE things could be happening and then imagine them and weep." Occasionally I'm foraying into mad territory--sometimes life steps in and fucks up all your plans and there's nothing you can do about it! This sucks!--and then also into the more midlife crisis-y "so you wanted to be a ranger at Yellowstone National Park and raise your kids to happily roam the woods AND be fluent in Spanish AND physically close to all of the important relatives and look how things turned out instead"--which upon examination looks less like a "life interfered with my dreams" crisis and more of a "reality interfered with my dreams."

Which doesn't actually make the non-actualization of those dreams any less bitter. Plus, there are the actual local sadnesses and crises, none of which are new but which are kind of wearing me down right now.

Anyhow. Apparently it's Monday or something. (*signficant glance at sulking self*)