A Jen Too Many

I need to blog. I really, really do. I have neglected the blog shamefully for the past couple of weeks. And I have things to say, I really do. In fact, I've taken to noting them down, listing the ideas as they hit me.

Someday I might actually do something with those ideas. Today, however, and probably for the next little while to come, every time I sit down to write all I can think about is, "School! My baay beee!!" and then my stomach gets all tight and I have to fight off tears.

I am such a wimp.

But, oh! She is so soft and cuddly and warm! She fits so perfectly on my lap. She is going to be gone All Day Long. She will come home talking about friends who are only names to me. She will have all sorts of experiences that I will never know about. She will have problems and have to solve them all by herself, because I won't be there.

This is good for her. This is good for her. Keep chanting that, Jennifer. This is good for her!

It just stinks for me.

Because I am a wimp.

Yes, yes, I have mixed feelings about Youngest Girl Child going off to school. We all knew this was coming. No matter how excited I get about once again having a life that does not involve being continually on stage, having to scrutinize myself constantly to assess the example I am presenting, I am still letting my baaay beeee! (sob) go away from me for hours and hours a day, five days a week, into the care of strangers who will surely not care nearly as much about her sensitive nature and tender heart as I do.

And today I found out that it's all going to be four hours a week longer than I thought it would be.

I still haven't gotten anything telling me who YGC's teacher will be, so I was nosing around the school district's website, trying to find out if the letters have gone out yet. I noticed the new bus schedules were up, so I clicked on it to confirm what time the bus will hit our stop, and if the stop is going to be in the same place as last year.

The bus will be using the same stops as last year. The pick up and drop off times have changed dramatically. The girls will have to be at the bus stop 20 minutes earlier in the morning. They will be dropped off 30 minutes later. That's an extra 50 minutes a day on the bus.

It wouldn't be so bad, except that my kids are one of the first stops in the morning. In the afternoon, the bus takes the same route, in reverse, which means my kids are one of the last stops in the afternoon. In other words, the bus turns left in the morning, after entering the subdivision, and right in the afternoon, so that the kids who get picked up last in the morning are the kids who get dropped off first in the afternoon.

This annoys me. Very, very much. I intensely dislike how much time the schools claim out of my childrens' lives as it is, and now they're taking another hour a day. For no good reason! It's not like I can't make good use of this time. I've got quite a bit for them to do every day, and only so long before bedtime to get them through homework, chores, outside play time, dinner, and family socializing. I'd like to start Oldest Girl Child on piano lessons this year, which adds another daily commitment. And how am I supposed to find the time to let them take some other kind of lessons, like ballet, without pushing bedtime back - which I am not willing to do?

I'll have to think this over for a few days, make sure I'm not emotional about it anymore, and then maybe call the school district and ask them to reconsider the first on / last off thing. Could we at least have the first kids on in the morning be the first kids off in the afternoon?

One of The Boy Child's best friends is getting married, so I've been going through the loving couple's online registry this afternoon gauging how much we can afford to spend on a present (and rather surprised at the modesty of their list - the most expensive thing on there is a $100 vacuum.)

Funny story - years and years ago, before dinosaurs walked the earth, I had a roommate who was getting married. She was in college and all our friend were either in college or working for minimum wage. In other words, everyone we knew was as broke as we were. The week she got married there was a sale on drinking glasses (six to a package) at one of the local discount stores. Sure enough, when she was opening presents after the reception she found that she'd gotten 14 dozen sets of glasses! (And boy, wasn't I relieved I'd gotten something else? I actually had considered those glasses ...)

When The Love of My Life and I got married we kept things very small. We weren't even planning on having a reception, but a friend decided we needed to have one and threw us a small open house at her home. We wound up getting something like 10 presents out of it, several of which were broken. It wasn't a statement on anyone's feelings about the marriage, honestly. It was just a funny coincidence. To this day I have a beautiful cobalt blue pottery bowl with a long, thin crack in it that I am very careful to never use for anything heavier than dried flowers.

Do you have any funny wedding present stories? Share them in the comments!

So we wound up getting the new transmission instead of the used one, because we realized we didn't know how many miles would be on an old transmission and what was the use of getting the transmission replaced if we were just putting in something that was also going to run out of miles soon, too?

Which turns out to be a good thing.

Yesterday, driving home from church, the car gave a huge jerk / lurch. I thought I'd hit something - something big, like a log in the middle of the road. I looked in the rearview mirror to try to see what I'd just run over, but saw only the car behind me (way too close - my momentary hitch had caused them to nearly hit me.)

I drove on for a little bit, feeling that premonitory "How expensive is this going to be?" churning inside. Sure enough, when I had to slow down a few blocks later I heard strange noises as I tried to get back up to the speed limit. Which is when I started sending loving thoughts to my fantastic mechanic, who had urged us to get the new transmission with the 3 year / 100,000 miles / all parts and labor covered warranty.

Because it was the transmission. Yeah. The transmission. Not the engine. No, no, no, no, not the engine.

I made it safely home (hooray!) but when my beloved tested the car later he confirmed that I'd been lucky not to be stranded by the side of the road. The car starts, but it won't go into reverse. Or rather, it will shift into reverse, it just won't move. He didn't check to see if it would go forward - we have enough problems without crashing into the house.

All of which leaves me sitting here, waiting for 8 a.m. so that I can call our mechanic and arrange to have a tow truck come pick up my poor van.

It was two weeks to get it back last time. We have 3 1/2 weeks of summer vacation left. So much for fun day trips. I guess we'll spend a lot of time playing in the wading pool, instead.

Unscheduled time is good for kids, right? Right?