This is my second year of having both kids in school all day, so why am I so surprised to hardly have time to think now that the school year has begun? I already went through this last fall...
Yes, the kids are back in school, and that's great. Enthusio has two teachers who team-teach and about whom I have only heard great things. So far he's doing okay, although he did have a bit of a breakdown on the first day during lunch recess, when he evidently thought one of his best little friends from last year didn't like him anymore. She found him and straightened things out, happily. Mermaid has a teacher who has been great so far -- very responsive to my concerns about smoothing out the homework process, so I'm very pleased. Mermaid also has her same aide from last year. I was really pissed when I found out that our school was getting yet another new Full Inclusion Specialist this year -- we've had a new one each of the 5 years the school has been open now. The new one is very nice but I'm not getting attached! Anyway, I decided I'd rather have a new FIS and the same aide from last year than vice versa, for Mermaid's sake. She also started swim practice on Monday and seems to understand that's going to limit her time and she has to do homework when we ask her to. We are planning to get her a tutor to help homework time work better, and I'm meeting with her teacher and the FIS to talk about homework concerns next week.
She also has decided she wants to play saxophone in the the school band. I'm not sure how that's going to go, but I've always liked the idea of her playing an instrument in the school band. I warned her that she will have to practice! Anyway, that would mean each kid has one in-school activity and two after-school activities. Mermaid will play in the band (if that works out), plus swim and Girl Scouts, and Enthusio will have his Spanish class, plus he wants to do a musical at the art center and to try Tae Kwon Do. That all is more than enough to keep us very busy and I just wonder how families where kids have more activities than that can function!
As for me, I'm proud of myself for having gone to the gym 5 of the last 6 days, and riding my bike a lot. I'm riding back and forth to school with the kids in anticipation of them going by themselves, and today was actually the first day that I only went to accompany Enthusio and allowed Mermaid to ride home alone when she got out of school half an hour later. She's having trouble mastering the whole bike-lock end of things but as far as going back and forth, she's quite independent -- she even rode to the school and back to pick up a book she forgot yesterday afternoon. I'm quite proud of her, and happy we're all on bikes more and in the car less. I think by the time Enthusio's Spanish class starts in a couple of weeks, making it so they get out of school at the same time every day, they will be handling both directions together well enough for me to no longer be making two daily trips to school -- at least until it starts raining.
On a completely unrelated note, Reasonable Man and I went to the movies this weekend and saw "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." I thought it looked pretty stupid so it was a pleasant surprise when I got hooked within the first 30 seconds and laughed my way through the whole movie. It was full or profanity and crude sex talk, no question there, but I wasn't expecting it to all be kind of sweet. It would have been easy to make the main character into a pathetic, oblivious, desperate doofus, but instead, he had a certain amount of dignity and in some ways he was more of a grown-up than the guy friends who give him advice on how to get some throughout the movie. And I definitely didn't expect it to turn into a well-done romantic comedy involving a couple whose happiness together I actually cared about. It's not for everyone, but if you don't mind some raunchy, rude talk and you like to laugh, definitely check it out.
Remember my laptop that is already held together with velcro and duct tape? Well, last weekend I managed to vacuum up the power cord so that some of the plastic ripped off, exposing the wires inside. Yeah, brilliant, huh? This sent me to Fry's (a.k.a. the Hellmouth, as far as I'm concerned) for a replacement. The charming fellow (NOT) at the Parts desk took one look at it, said they didn't have it and I would have to order directly from the manufacturer, and then explained to me how it wasn't in stock because customers kept stealing the heads off the cords. HUH? I managed to refrain from telling him how ordering direct from the manufacturer was the only option less appealing to me than coming to Fry's, or congratulate him on managing to blame the customers for the fact that something wasn't in stock. Give me a break. Came home and looked up the part online -- I can get the off-brand version for $99. Yeah, I COULD do that -- but come on, you know me, you can probably figure out what I did. No? Two words: duct tape. Unless that sucker starts actually giving me problems, there will be no purchase of a $99 power cord.
In other minor disasters, I decided to color my own hair this week. My regular hairdresser is out of town, taking care of her sick mom, and having failed to make an appointment with any of her salon-mates to take care of the increasingly visible silver hairs in my part, I figured I could just as well buy something at Rite Aid and do it myself. I picked a color called "Natural Light Golden Brown." Close your eyes and picture that color in your head. Now imagine something about 3 shades darker than that. Yep, this week I'm a brunette. It also left purplish stains on my forehead and temples that wouldn't come off with baby wipes, astringent, rubbing alcohol, or nail polish remover. They'd faded away by this morning, but still. I think my hair will fade as well, but for the time being, I'm not so pleased with it.
I think that's about it...
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