Welcome to another episode of, “Well hello there, I am not in fact dead, I have just been busy elsewhere and also I suck.” I have baked things for Nerd Night! I have fitted one hundred smelly teenagers for band uniforms! (That’s not a slam; we do fittings during practice and they’re practicing outside and it’s hot and seriously, please send air freshener.) I have Cleaned Things and Dealt With Broken Things and said “let me know how I can help” and actually meant it, which means I have been doing lots of things which are probably uninteresting to anyone other than the folks I am helping, but whatever.
Chickadee is loving college. Monkey is loving his time on our local campus, too, and this week submitted his last college application (!!!), meaning that now we just sit back and wait and see what happens. I feel like both kids were young- and middle-teens with various issues and that time period stretched out in whatever the opposite of dog years would be; each of those hard years seemed to last at least a decade, while I wondered if we would ever be through it. Now that they are both upper-teens and doing well, time is going WOOSH right past us in a blur. It’s early to submit applications, for example, but if I blink, we’ll be at graduation. So.
My darling daughter was already slated to take a trip home this weekend, meaning I’d be seeing her for the first time in a month (not counting FaceTime…), and I was like a kid counting down to Christmas morning. She’d finish class at 2:00 and get her stuff and be home before dinner! SO GREAT! And then—I don’t know if you’ve heard that there’s a hurricane trying to eat the southeastern US right now?—the phone rang before 6:00 this morning and it was a robocall letting us know that classes were canceled for the day due to the storm. Which: thanks? Instead of waiting for dinnertime, my (supposedly) fully functional adult child stumbled into my office around 9:30, still in her pajamas, with a car full of laundry, and yay for her being home ahead of the storm. BUT I DIDN’T NEED TO KNOW THIS BEFORE DAWN. Also when you see that it is 1) way too early and 2) the caller ID says it’s your kid’s college calling, that has a way of making you (me) release all the adrenaline in the world while you steel for Terrible News, and then when it turns out to be a robocall, you might be kind of angry. And jumpy. Because adrenaline.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Except the laundry, because that’s never going to end. (No, she hasn’t done laundry at school even once. In a whole month. I KNOW.)
While I was off doing other things, I did write a couple of posts over at Alpha Mom. First, I am admitting that my neuroses about my career choices and salary know no bounds, and then yesterday I answered a reader question about transitioning from homeschooling to public school. You could go read those while I fold laundry, if you wanted.
I’m very impressed that Monkey has finished his college applications! My HS senior son is still deciding where he wants to apply. He has at least done a first draft on the common app essay (but only because it was assigned for his AP English class). Still needing to take the SAT & ACT again as well, because when he took them back in June, it was each time after a week of working as a camp counselor (read not enough sleep and no prepping for the tests). Results were mixed…
So glad to hear that Chickie is loving college.
Oh and oh.
I have an Asperger (yes, I realize not the official label anymore) middle school son (7th grade–take a shot for each email *I’ve* gotten from his teachers so far this year) and I am harkening back to your stories of Hulk Smash and middle school woes and I am right there, right now. So thank you for writing about those incidents because even though you spared details (OMG, I need the details of HOW YOU SURVIVED PUBERTY WITH AN ASPY), I am so, so grateful that you shared it. Even though I didn’t know (at the time of reading them) how I’d relate to them exactly, I knew I would…and I do. And I truly savor posts like these because it is nice to know that we might get through this godforsaken time to something different and…dare I hope…better? Or just a new and exciting kind of different?
Now, I also have an 11 year old daughter so I am tucking away this post for later. First, I just need to survive her pubescence as well…
Sigh…another shot, please.
My brother brought home loads of laundry until his third year of college. Then his girlfriend started doing it instead…. (As his sister, I love him dearly, but man, that is a level of devotion beyond my understanding.)
It seems strange that a university would call parents about classes being canceled. Is that what you mean? Why would that they do that? (Legit question) I’m trying to recall if my university had my parents number twenty years ago, and I guess they must have for emergencies…maybe? It’s a blur.
I agree that it’s very weird. I assume that closing of the University is considered something that requires notification (maybe so parents could fetch kids…?), but, um, why not tell the kids and let the kids notify the parents as needed?
Oh, good, I thought I was just missing something.
There may be an opt-out clause for certain types of messages. (I’m thinking of my school district’s “School News Network.”)