School Daze

I just finished loading next year’s school schedule into my Outlook calendar. It took me almost half an hour to do this little data-entry task, and I was grousing to myself about it. Because when I was a kid, in addition to having to walk fifteen miles uphill both ways in the snow BAREFOOT with nothing but a hot potato !NO BUTTER! that served as both a hand-warmer and my lunch (yeah, right - The Lady My Mother was actually an excellent lunch provider and also was not above slipping cookies in there sometimes plus also when she made PB&J she would put a little butter on the jelly side so the bread didn’t get all soggy and have I mentioned lately how much I love my mother?), I don’t recall having very many days that weren’t 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

This is my memory of school. 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., from September through May. Then three glorious months off, and then right back into the grinder with us. We got two weeks at Christmas and a day or two at Easter and that was it, Jack! Every once in a blue moon there would be a minimum day and the rejoicing would be loud and damage to public property perhaps not completely inconsequential.

I’m pretty sure I’m wrong. I’ll bet that if I were to ask my mother, she would roll her eyes, groan, and say, “OH MY GAWD, you guys were ALWAYS getting some freaky day or other off or it would be a half day and I would forget and then I’d get home from shopping and the two of you would be at a neighbor’s house eating all their food!”

And also, I am such a hypocrite. I’m groaning and rolling my eyes and carrying on about all these ‘excessive’ days off – but I tell you what, I am living for them right now. School is out in two weeks, and I am counting the days. Why?

Because I am immortal tired of the morning routine right now. I am sick of standing over my children with a whip every weekday morning shrieking, “C’mon! Brush hair! Brush teeth! Eat breakfast NO THERE AREN’T ANY WAFFLES! Shoes! ACK! Where are your socks? Your socks? YOUR socks! Your SOCKS!! WHERE!? Get socks! Get shoes! Hup-hup-hup…!”

I know I will be casting flower petals all along the pathways to the Hallowed Halls of Learning by the time school starts up again in mid-August. Because that is how these things work. A few short weeks ago, I was kvetching about how cold it was around here. Oh, the cruel, cruel cold! Oh the agony! Rain! Drizzle! Fog! So…cold….brrrrrrrrr…

Already, I have kvetched about the heat. Hot holy pancakes, I groused, why does it have to be so frickin’ HOT already?!

I kvetched endlessly about not being employed, then got sick of being employed and kvetched with equal fervor about how much it sucked to be employed.

So I’m sure that, after having spent considerable time bellyaching about what a hassle it is to get everybody uppity-up-up-up and dressed and pressed and fed and lunches made and out the door hup-hup-hup, I will soon be lying on the floor sobbing, “Why can’t school be all the time? Why? What time is it? Is it time to dump them on the educational system for six hours every day? Please? PLEASE IS IT TIME OH DEAR GAWD HELP ME LET IT BE TIME!!!”

Then, by the time that first ‘buy back’ day rolls around, I will already be saying, “Oh sweet merciful heavens, THANK YOU! I am so looking forward to having a nice, slow morning around here…!”

Sometimes I envision $DEITY wincing every time I start up a conversation, saying, “OY, here it comes, a few weeks ago she was asking me to let up on the rain and now…OH! There it is! ‘wah wah drought blah blah water bill’! I don’t know what to do with the woman, I just don’t…!”

Kind of not unlike the way I do when a Denizen who has just spent the last hour declaring that she is going to drop dead from hunger any second now {swoon!} then glances at her meatloaf, looks me dead in the eye and says coolly, “I’m not hungry.”