We’ve all done it, waved the kids off to school on the first day back after the summer holidays, the door hitting them on the backside as they make their slow, feet-dragging, morose exit. But oh, it never gets old, does it?
I have been racing round like a headless chook ever since they left, figuring out what I’m doing to do this morning because there is so much I have been putting off. So far, I’ve kept calm. I’ve cleaned the loos and made a couple of futile attempts to tidy their rooms but then I got bored. Why should I spend the first few hours of freedom cleaning their infested rooms which have just gotten nastier and nastier over the holidays as computer games have been the only lord and master they will listen to.
Once the carpet woman has been, I tell you I am out of here. One of my many missions the next few months is to stop being such a wimp with the Bay Area motorways. I’m going out to Walnut Creek today, a good shopping district about half an hour away. To get there I need to take one of the friendlier freeways and the nice thing is there are beautiful views on the road out so if I start to get stressed, I will just look at a pretty mountain and a feeling of calm will come over me.
What else does back to school mean? Well it’s just time to do all those things I have been putting off all summer. I am ready to admit defeat that I need reading glasses so I am off to the eye clinic for a check up and now I am going to have three pairs of glasses to pick from. Being blind as a bat, I don’t need just any reading glasses, they have to be those progressive things. Ye gods. I’m taking the car in for a service and I’ve got some interesting conferences to go to without worrying about what the kids are up to while I am out during the day. A more sensible eating and drinking schedule will come back into play, meanwhile. There is less excuse for that weekday glass of wine, so my liver is going to thank me for that. Oh, yes, and I thought I’d get that horrible old colonoscopy done in the next wee while. The actual procedure sounds okay, it’s just all the non-eating and then drinking of water (I think? or is that when you are having a sonogram?)
And then before we know it, it will be Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas. They know how to pack the events in here in the US at this time of year. I’m just looking forward to cooler weather and dressing in cosy or (cozy as they spell it here) clothes. Roll on fall I say. And spare a thought for the teachers, saints that they are.