Still Here

I considered blaming the lack of recent posts on the start of school and all the chaos that brings but I decided that would just be more of an excuse than anything else. Indeed life has been rather boring, or at least as boring as it gets at our house, so I haven’t had a great deal to report. The kids have pretty much settled into their routines and we’ve settled into yet a greater lack of sleep. I find myself already looking forward to Fall Break which for me translates as a week off from chasing kids to each of their many events, religious ed classes, therapy sessions, etc., etc. Plus there’s always the added bonus of no homework, talk about a perk for mom!

On the Max front I am ashamed to report that this morning I actually turned into one of those mothers I despise…I sent Max to school with a cough and a lovely case of the sniffles. I really hate when parents send their sick kids to school but with Max whenever one of these respitory events starts I know it’s the prelude to a week’s absence at school. So this morning I decided to send him in just long enough to infect everyone else and to pick up his work packet for the week so that he won’t get too far behind. Selfish, I know but I try not to max out his absences in the first month of school. As much as I abhor sick kids being sent to school I have equal disdain for obnoxious letters sent home from the school regarding excessive absences. I often wonder why after four years they actually waste the paper these letter are printed on, it’s not like they don’t know Max’s medical history. Certainly they get the fact that he is going to be sick more than your average bear. Heck, they have letters from several doctors telling them this. Ah the bureaucracy of the public school system, gotta love it!

Ellie seems to be surviving her first days of high school. However, I can’t be completely sure of this because when we ask her how her day went we get the typical teenage answers, rarely more than one word in length. She has been put in a few honors classes, has tested out of two years of Spanish, and is on the swim team – hopefully, she hasn’t bit off more than she can chew. So academically she seems to be doing well and on the “practical” front she has mastered the bus route situation, mostly because I decided to let her handle it on her own which means I can no longer screw her up.

After my last post many of you asked for the full bus story so in hopes that Ellie won’t be reading this (she’d kill me for embarrassing her) I will enlighten you all on the pandemonium of her first day of high school which all began before she even arrived at the doors of the school building. Long story short, this year marks our first experience with the monster known as the yellow school bus. Until now we have always dropped Ellie at school and Max’s principal told us from day one that he’d prefer to have us drive Max to school. Evidently he’s a bit freaked out about having a kid with nothing more than wire clips holding his chest together on the school bus. Go figure…

And so I digress...picture the first morning of school, dad finishes taking the obligatory “first day of school” pictures and off we go to the bus stop. Our first mistake was that we were about ten minutes early so as we came around the corner we saw the bus (or so we thought) pull up to the stop. I yell, “Run, Ellie, run!” so off she goes and boards the bus. As I turn to walk home I see one of our neighbors pulling up with his daughter in tow. I decided to refrain from telling them that they missed the bus, smug in my triumph of the school bus routine. Within a split second, I realized these folks have far more experience with the yellow beast than we do. I immediately get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach – I had put my daughter on the wrong bus to destinations unknown! As I arrived home I received the first of a barrage of texts from Ellie, she was on the way to another high school about ten minutes away. I told her to sit tight and wait for me to pick her up so I could take her to the right school. By this point Max was laughing hysterically at the idea of his sister being lost, surprisingly enough Michele was not quite so entertained by my incompetence. As I’m hopping into the car I get yet another text from Ellie telling me that the bus driver was brining her back to her bus stop. I heaved a big sigh of relief which lasted about ten seconds as I watch the right bus pull up, load kids and depart. I continue my wait and yet no one shows, by this point I have no idea where Ellie is. Finally, I text her to ask for her status and she replies that she is at the right school because bus driver #1 (wrong bus, wrong route) has flagged down bus driver #2 (right driver, right bus) and they made a transfer of hostages mid-route. (“Gee El, thanks for the update,” I think to myself.) And to think we were able to fit in all this excitement before first bell, talk about the Keystone Cops! I’d like to think we are very talented at disaster-causing events but Michele insists it’s just that we aren’t happy if we’re not making a name for ourselves! So there you have it, it wasn’t as short a story as I hoped, but you can’t always condense chaos!

Just received a call from Max’s school, my ruse has back-fired and Michele is on his way to pick up typhoid Max as I write this. Oh well, can’t blame a girl for trying. Wishing everyone a great week!