School Starts Right as the Money Runs Out

School started yesterday with an abrupt change in schedule that I'm sure we'll all be accustomed to by Easter break. Lily gets up too early for good sense and gets fully dressed in a calculated casual indifferent sort of way -- a look that says -- I really don't care what I look like but you should see all the clothes I tried on that didn't make the cut this morning. Makeup so carefully applied as to look unmade up (Thank God!), hair blown dry to look like it dried naturally. And jeans. Always jeans. ($10 jeans from Target -- am I lucky or what?)

Anyway, she does all this in time to come down by 5:30 a.m. to wake us up by playing Reveille on the piano, then collapses on our bed because she's exhausted. (We are currently in discussions about doing the math for what time you need to go to bed in order to get eight hours of sleep before getting up at 5:00. She is never tired at night.) All I have to do is get my gym clothes on, my teeth brushed and yes, I do make her lunch just because I like to.

She's the punctual alien, the person in our family who is determined not only to be on time (not my best thing), but also to be there early. So, if she wants to be on time that badly, I take her, work out on the way home and can be at my computer at work by 9:00 -- clean, exercised, fed, horses fed, even some procrastination thrown in. It's a good thing. Except for the part where I see her running out of steam....

I miss her. It was fun to work at home and have this wonderful, interesting person at home with me. But she needed to go back to school. I was running out of money buying school supplies. No clothes. Just supplies and things to put the supplies in.

Tell me, why does an eighth grader need a $100 calculator? And how long do any of us believe she can keep up with it? Shall we take bets?

Maybe it will help her do the math on what time to go to bed in order to get enough sleep....

And how did she talk me into a Vera Bradley purse? She has to carry a purse at all times because she needs to have her Epi-Pen in case she gets exposed to nuts and goes into anaphylactic shock. I used to buy purses for her at Target and hand them to her when I got home. Now she wants to pick out her purse, and I have to admit, I don't want anybody else picking out my purse so I cooperate.

So after we looked at every purse ever made, I caved and went to the Vera Bradley store. How can those things cost so much? But I got her one, and even a couple of things to go with it. I asked her if this purchase would make her happy forever, and she said yes. Happy Forever.

So there you go. We're all Happy Forever. And very, very sleepy.

Comments

[Venomous Kate]

Oh, hon, I wish I could give you hugs because I've been there, too, with a daughter who woke at the crack of dawn to spend hours looking like she didn't spend hours looking like that, and all I wanted to tell her was "I wish when I was your age I was half as beautiful at you are without all that stuff!"

And now that the Big-Eyed Boy's back in public school I can also relate to miss the wonderful, interesting people who surprisingly survived our bumbling attempts at raising infants.

But, Anne, you are writing again. I felt it in every single sentence of this post. Didn't you? Haven't you missed that, too, just like you'd miss breathing if you didn't do it for a while because it's that much of a part of you?

[groovyoldlady]

I remember getting up and running to meet the bus at 6:30am only to fall asleep in third period History class. Teens are made by God to stay up late and get up late.