Not that its absence has kept me away from the Internet. No. Much to the chagrin of Sixth Grader, I have spent the past few evenings basically hogging the brand spanking new iMac that I bought for the girls to share a few months ago. Admittedly, I have spent most of my Internet time on Facebook - I know, I know. I go through spurts. A week or two sometimes passes without so much as a glance, and then I become quite regimented about updating my "friends" on my doings. Except that I pay for my indifference, and that cost turns out to be the cumulative indifference of these same friends. Then I get a little cranky about being ignored, which eventually morphs into an attempt to woo my friends' attention back by generously sprinkling comments on their walls. Eventually they pay attention again, and I reach what can be reasonably considered equilibrium, and the whole cycle starts all over again. Just a big circle of feeling inadequate, that Facebook.
Anyway. School started today. The girls managed to get up on time, and get to the bus stop a full five minutes early. More than enough time for them to pose for a few pictures for me. Those eager, shiny faces with their summer-kissed smiles, and bright new first day of school clothes, and clean, bulging backpacks not yet scuffed or lousy with unruly papers and crumbling granola bars hastily half-eaten on the way up the driveway because they didn't get up on time and couldn't manage any actual breakfast. Yep, I got it all on record. Then I sent them off on the bus, rushed into the house to upload their pretty pictures to Facebook - seriously, I am in the throes of the obsession stage right now - and drove to the school for the big First Day Celebration.
First Day Celebration used to mean that the parents got to go into the kids' classrooms and help them settle in, stay for the pledge of allegiance, and then have coffee and donuts in the cafeteria. Now we are not allowed to enter the building. Now we basically gather around the front door of the school while our kids line up behind their new teachers, and we stand there while the principal plays Kool and the Gang on a boom box and announces each teacher's class, prompting them to begin marching into the building with their students looking really not as celebratory as the name would have you believe. Then we are dismissed. That's it. So I drove like a bat out of hell to get to the school in the opposite direction of my job to stand there for five minutes and watch kids walk into a building.
Now that they are home, I am riddled with papers to read and forms to fill out and decisions to make about how much I would like to volunteer this year. I'm thinking I would like to volunteer quite a bit more than I have in the past, so I have some choices to consider. Library assistant? Book Fair? Chaperone? I'm leaning toward Room Parent. Room Parent for Sixth Grader. Oh, she'll love that.
Seems she's also going to have to love homework, because it is, in fact, back in her life this year. According to her teacher's "Hi, I'm new here and I don't know why I chose sixth grade for my first year of teaching, holy crap there is going to be a lot of drama" letter, she can plan on 60 - 72 minutes per night. Per. Freaking. Night.
And Fourth Grader, now in the ranks of the upper grades, gets to enjoy book reports, science projects, the spelling bee, band, student council - um, I think it's time for a nice evening cocktail, don't you? Yes. I gotta go...
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