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.

If You Have a Boat or a Plane

Just a quick post this morning before I head off to work, but I simply had to share: an email request for auction donations for Si's elementary school noted that a "great hit" from auctions past included auctioning off a weekend in your vacation home...also, "if you have a boat or a plane," those make "very popular offerings."

I'm trying to imagine owning a Cessna, and then imagining letting someone else fly it around. "Just be sure to top off the tank when you bring it in! Oh, and be sure to pull up on the landing!" or whatever it is you have to do in order to land.

Or it's equally possible that they mean auctioning off a trip in your Lear jet. There are a sizable handful of parents for whom this isn't a joke. Sigh.

Perhaps we can auction off a chance to use our camping equipment ("bent forks and crappy knifes we stole from our college cafeteria included at no extra cost!").

The Countdown Begins

Summer's almost over: the days are cooler, I'm starting to get emails and phone reminders from the elementary school, the school bus drove through the neighborhood today, checking its routes. By this time next week the kids will be in school and I will be frantically readying for work.

Here's what I want to finish up before I start work:

1. Painting the kitchen and laundry room. People, the hardest thing about painting walls is the prep, and these rooms, with their windows, cabinets, shelves, appliances, et cetera et cetera and so on, have MASSIVE amounts of prep. To the point where I stand in front of the wall that will definitely be prepped today and start to get headachey just thinking about it.

2. Trimming up the bushes on the sides of the house. The folks we bought the house from basically stopped trimming bushes about five years ago. The house is being smothered.

3. Organizing the basement. Right now it's just heaps and heaps of stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else. Kitchen stuff, camping stuff, fishing stuff, Christmas stuff, boxes of happy meal toys I had secreted away, hoping to stealthily dispose of, and which the kids have found and have strewn about.

4. A thorough house-clean.

I also want to go for a hike, laze about, finish some writing projects, and who knows, perhaps invent a cure for cancer. Also organize the tupperware cabinet. Part of me knows it's silly to think that life as I know it will end when I go back to work--but part of me doesn't think it's silly at all. The last time I felt like I had to organize the tupperware cabinet was just before Helen was born, and that's a lot what I feel like now: like I'm nesting. Life will still go on, with beautiful sunrises (of which I will get to see QUITE A FEW during my morning commute) and good meals and whiny evenings--I'll just have a lot less energy to spare for upkeep. Also, I sort of want to have a home space that is restful, vs one that is nagging me to do something about that empty suitcase in the middle of the bedroom floor or the pile of papers on the sideboard.

How about you? Last time you started a job, what did you have to finish up/ square away?