Tuesday, September 21, 2010

New School Year


School has started anew this Fall, and every year is different. At the Girl's middle school, she says there are 200 more students this year! I guess the incoming 7th grade class is much bigger than last year's!

I was wondering what was going on the first week of school. I took the familiar route to drop the Girl off, and couldn't believe the traffic. After 3 years of having kids at this school (2 for the Boy and 1 for the Girl), I know the best place to drop them off, how to avoid traffic jams, etc.

But suddenly the street was full of all these parents that have no idea! They park along both sides of the side streets, so that only one car can fit in to drive, so that you have to take turns with people going the opposite direction. Some people are apparently blind or something, as they couldn't seem to figure out that they needed to take turns, and just went ahead and barged into the lane anyway, going the opposite direction!

So far, by getting too far to the right trying to avoid other drivers, I have knocked back a mirror on the van of a woman I know ("So sorry! I'm sorry!") and knocked over a trash can!

How embarrassing. Now I go a little later to avoid the crunch.

The girl is happier this year, since she has more friends and is no longer the younger class at school. Last summer her best friends never wanted to do anything - not even come swim once a week. But when she went to camp, the Girl made friends with a popular girl, and after that got invited to do a lot of things and made more friends. When school started again, her old friends got jealous. But really, what was she supposed to do?

I got a little worried about the new friend, however. The first day of school the Girl said she was sharing a locker with this new friend, as she doesn't really like where her own locker is (bottom row, downstairs). Later that night, the friend texted her that her parents didn't want her to share a locker.

So I was hoping that this new friend wouldn't turn out to be a problem, but so far it seems OK. You know how girls can be.

She is 13 now and I feel her pushing me away. She's taken to calling me "Monkey" - a term less endearing than I'd like. The other day I got excited when she sat next to me, in front, when I took her to soccer practice. It turned out, tho, that she only wanted to changed the radio station at will.

Last weekend her soccer team won a game on Sat., but the Girl was mad at one of her teammates and basically wanted her kicked off the team. The next day they lost a game, but the Girl scored on a great penalty kick and was very happy. She tries to get cranky with us trying to help her (bringing food and offering it to her), but I try to emphasize that we are only trying to support her.

Meanwhile, the Boy has visited us twice already this semester! Wow. He says he's going to try to visit more, as he now realizes how little he came home last year. Really? What about the year before that?

I think that because he's in an apartment now, he's more on his own than ever before. He called me one day, saying, "Mom, I hate cooking SO much!"

One day he called from Costco, asking what he should buy. I made some suggestions, and he said he'd already picked out rice, salsa, and bologna. OK, whatever. He asked what he could do with bologna, and I said, well, you can try frying it.

Later that week he texted me that he HATES fried bologna! He said he cooked it for dinner and couldn't even eat it! He asked what else he could do with it, and I suggested eating it with a lot of mayo, or trading it to his roommates for an egg or something.

He bought about 2 lbs of it, and wanted to bring it home, but I said don't bother. It's not even good for you. Technically, it's bad for you.

But I told K that now that the Girl is pulling away from us, the Boy seems to be coming back our way.

That would be nice.

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