This weekend I had an excellent time hanging out with J and L, two women I haven’t seen since our class reunion. I didn’t realize until Saturday night how much I’ve missed them. The two of them see each other a lot and I was worried I’d feel odd, but it was tons of fun and like I hadn’t been out of touch for ten years.
J lives in town and kept insisting we meet for lunch sometime. I want so much to call her RIGHT NOW and say, “Hey, let’s do lunch this week.” but I can’t. I’m still nursing the littlest one on my lunch hour. He doesn’t nurse much, but he always goes for at least a nibble. I’m worried that if I stop meeting him for lunch, he won’t meet me for evening snack, midnight snack and breakfast. But this is stupid. Skipping one day won’t make him quit cold turkey. And he IS 23.
Okay, so he’s not 23. And my older two children did not go off to college today. It’s just elementary school. And it’s a nice elementary school with nice teachers and nice computers and nice textbooks and nice parent volunteers. It also sucks in many, many ways, but I’ve spent a lot of energy on that today and I’m done with it for now.
I was worried my daughter would have a nervous breakdown this morning. It took months to convince her to stay at preschool without crying her face off and it took a good two weeks to get her into the swing of things in kindergarten. Even t-ball practice this summer was difficult and terrifying for her. This morning, though, she hopped out of the car and said, “Bye, Mom!” and ran off to stand with her class. Well, how’s that for all grown up!? I think I’ll let her drive her brother to school tomorrow.
Let’s all cross our fingers tomorrow isn’t Nervous Breakdown Day. She knew she wouldn’t have P.E. today and she’s fully aware she goes tomorrow. All summer long she’s been obsessing about jumping jacks. She can’t really do them and gets frustrated and cries. She hates not being able to do something correctly on her first try and she really doesn’t want people to laugh at her.
What she doesn’t know is her jumping jacks aren’t funny. They are really, really sad.
Oh poor little honey. Tell her I couldn’t do sommersaults right. And when the kids laughed I learned to make depreciating jokes about myself. Class clown = no one laughing AT you. Okay, yes it does, but in a good, ME ME ME! way.
(verymom, the banished)
You know what? She’s gone to school three days now without one tear. Dammit. She’s all grown up!
She isn’t even worried about P.E. I guess she finally noticed how much everyone else sucks at jumping jacks, too!
P.S. You’re not banished. I couldn’t really do that, could I?!