Back to School

At the moment, my house is quiet with anticipation; expectation of the long awaited first day of school. There is nothing like the first day of school. It is the chance to start things anew and look at things with a fresh perspective. Without these kinds of fresh starts, life would surely become stagnate. I know that for the last few weeks, stagnate is what I have been feeling. I need a brand-new beginning, there is no doubt about it. I know my kids do as well.

In just a few minutes the quiet anticipation is going to turn to buzzing expectation. I will miss my children dearly. They are really cool kids and they are fairly amusing to hang out with; however there are a few things that I will not miss. Like the plethora of discarded drinking glasses that invariably pile up no matter what 'system' I enact. They also will not be able to graze at the trough that is our pantry all day long like they do during the lazy days of summer. No, they will have to wait until after school to come home and have a 30 minute eating frenzy, as they are forced to 'starve' all afternoon with no snack at school. I am not sure if they eat more while grazing or during the binge, but at least the abandoned granola bar wrappers and yogurt cups are restricted to a finite period of time. That way I can make one clean sweep of the house and pick them all up at one time instead of shrieking at them all day to pick them up.

I will also not mourn the loss of their constant and continuous bickering. This last few weeks they have felt the incessant need to irritate each other. It is too haot ot go outside and do much of anything, and I ran out of money to throw at them for entertainment, so they took up pestering one another as amusement. Have you heard of an experiment in which rats where placed in a cage without enough space to accommodate all of its inhabitants? Well, what happened was the rats started tearing each other apart. This is what occurs in human specimens in August, in Texas where there seems to be no place to escape the confines of their domiciles -- They fight to see who can be ousted from the cage to insure proper elbow room for the remaining inmates.

We used to start school in early August, thus allowing our children and their ensuing scratching, biting and clawing behavior to be the responsibility of the public school system. Alas, that is no long an option. The powers that be in Austin, Texas have seen fit to mandate that no public school be allowed to start classes before the last Monday in August. I feel certain that it was a teacher's lobby group that pushed that legislation into action. No way would any other special interest group benefit so much from this regulation. It surely was not stay at home moms of four kids who pushed for it.

It is a time for renewal today, however. A season for change and a shift of focus. It will be nice to have a routine again and to try to get some perspective.

Okay, the are up now, so I can't think straight any more.