I know it's only been a few days since the first one, but so many of you have called to ask about the first day(s) of school so I thought I'd put this week's out early. As you remember, Alyssa had to start on Friday while Sidney got to wait until today. It sounds like it would have been fun, but Sidney and all of the other middle-schoolers were incredibly BORED!!! I think they were secretly ready to go back, although they'll deny it to their graves.
Alyssa came home on Friday singing and skipping up the driveway. She LOVES her teacher (Mrs. Sherwood .... more on her later) and she LOVES the kids in her class and she LOVES being the oldest grade in the school. She LOVES that she had no homework that day and basically brought home an empty bookbag. Her BEST friends are in her class, Brittany and Carlie. Funny, I don't remember hearing about them last year.....
Today was a different story. She drops her 20 lb bookbag on the table and starts to unload it: "Sign here, fill in our address here, email and phone numbers on this line, oh by the way...we are going to Williamsburg in October for 3 days and it's only $250 but you only have to pay half of that by next week, sign here saying I can go and that you'll go to the parents meeting on Wednesday night, sign this line and put our phone number, sign here, oh by the way...I want to do GO FAR (remember that story???) again and it's only $15 due next week also and our final race is November 11th, and one last signature here saying that you'll volunteer to help with one of our classroom parties. Can you help me with my homework now?"
Ooooookay. I should have expected that. It was all a blur, but I think I got it all. If not, I'm sure the teacher will send home a note. Oh, about Mrs. Dana Sherwood now. Let me just say this: Brent was more than a little disappointed when he missed "meet the teacher" night last Wednesday and I can pretty much guarantee that most of the dads will be helping out in the classroom whenever possible. Dana is a young twenty-something skinny ex-cheerleader with long blonde hair and a smile that would stop a train. She got married over the summer and I, like most of the other "moms" in the room, can only guess what her new husband looks like. We all threw out our guesses while standing in the back of the room and figured it was safe assumption that he was named Biff or Sven and you could probably bounce a quarter off his six-pack. (taking a slight pause here for fantasy construction)
Now there's Sidney. She didn't come home today singing or skipping up the driveway. She came in, threw her bookbag on the floor and complained about the amount of homework she had. After that she called one of her friends to finish venting and then came back to the kitchen. Same 20 lb bookbag, same forms to sign. I thought.
Do you remember when you bought your house? Did you take the time to count exactly how many times you had to sign your name and write the date? This beat anything I had ever seen/done. She had a checklist and was ready to go. I had pen in hand and was ready to sign. How bad could it be? I soon found out. Keep in mind: she did this all in one breath.
"'Sign here, sign here, email/phone and signature here, oh...we're going to Carowinds (amusement park) with the choir in the Spring (yes, she signed up for choir) and it's going to be $85 but you don't have to pay it yet, sign here, sign here..this one says you won't sue the school if we blow up the science lab, sign here, sign here saying I'm in good health and you won't sue the school if I have a heart attack in gym, sign here, sign here, oh yeah...the 8th graders all go to Disneyworld in January and it's $500 but you only have to pay $100 a month, sign here, sign here saying that this is the barcode number on the $100 TI-84 Silver Plus calculator you bought me, sign here, email address here, oh..I need $15 for a new gym uniform and I need a new reed for my oboe, sign here, sign here saying that the information we learn in social studies is strictly the opinion of the author and doesn't necessarily reflect the opinions of the school administrators, sign here, initial here, and finally, I need you to write down what you remember about Geometry when you took it." Then she stared at me as if expecting an immediate answer. I gave her my best "deer in the headlights" stare instead. I was still digesting everything I had just signed and running a total in my mind on what this year was going to cost me. I got on Ebay later on to see if they would allow me to sell any internal organs. It doesn't look like it.
"Geometry? What do I remember about geometry?? That was, like, a hundred years ago!"
"Well, what do you remember about it?!?!"
I thought a minute. "It was about shapes!"
She snarled at me. Then she wrote it down, word for word. I'm sure that teacher will be wondering where Sidney got her brains.....
OK, that's the longest one you'll get for a while. The weeks will probably get boring from here on out. Oh, I did want to tell you this: if you left click on the pictures in these blogs they will get bigger (most of them) and if you right click on them you can save them. Enjoy!
Have a good week,
Amy and the girls
