The school year, that is. The girls are done on Friday.
The past two weeks have been exhausting. Their school just sucks the life outta ya at the end here. Breakfasts, meetings, concerts, picnics, more breakfasts, more meetings.
After Friday, they have two weeks to knock around the house and town aimlessly, one while I’m working, and one while I’m on vacation. Then they leave.
For 7 whole weeks.
I am really not feeling good about this.
They were going to go for 5 weeks, but then a vacation came up with the Ex and his family, and because I could not shift the trip on the front part, due to Beloved’s excursion to school in mid-July, it ended up extending the summer.
E is cool with it, J and I are not.
I’m trying to decide that it’s a good thing. It’s good to have a little break. It’s good to move without them home, so they won’t have to deal with it, and we won’t have to worry about entertaining them while packing boxes and supervising the movers.
but that will be done around August 1, and I’ll still have 3 more weeks sans kids.
Blech.
And it doesn’t help that I worry for J. This year has so badly sucked …. I think. I mean, I think it sucked because I see her spending a lot more time alone during social gatherings (breakfasts, picnics, meetings, concerts, oh my!), while the Ex-BFF gathers all the girls around herself to the exclusion of my daughter. But part of this is a decision she’s made, and that she is proud of. She wanted to break away. She has the option to join the group, to hang out with the masses, but she tells me she doesn’t want to, because then Ex-BFF will think “everything is normal again” and will start to be mean to her again.
But I fear that instead of just distance, the summer will bring her an entrenched loneliness. That she won’t snap out of.
I used to think I’d worry about E, and not J. J had social skills, and she has an awareness of social situations, and people are drawn to her. While forever, E has been elbows and loudness and (really, still) nosepicking. But E’s oblivion, socially, has served her well. Very well. J’s connectedness has made her dependent. J has to deal with cliques and in-fighting, while E just lights around, from person to person, gender to gender, happy with her own self no matter where she is. And she is accepted and included in a normal, natural way, and I think very healthy.
SO — maybe I should worry less about J. Maybe this struggle that she’s going through will make her – eventually – happier with her own self.
Her sadness, though, saddens me. A lot. It’s pervasive! I try very hard to lightly tell her she needs to move on, and figure out an existence in the new (chosen) framework, but I am soooo worried for her. I just don’t want her sad all the time, and I don’t want her addicted to her sadness.
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E’s grade did a talent show yesterday (at one of the many breakfasts). There was much goofiness. Much. Sandwich-making while blindfolded, ridiculous “magic” tricks, odd dance numbers. Odd. E and her friend did a skit, which they wrote.
They cracked me up. It was called “The Secretary” – which made me nervous at first, knowing what I do of the movie by the same title. Of course, the girls knew nothing of that, and instead put on a hilarious slap-stick skit which seemed age-appropriate and in good taste. I was very proud of them.
Then with another group of girls, E and her friend took something they’d learned about in their Music Theory class this year and made people laugh with that as well. With E on the trumpet, and friends on the bass, flue and piano, they did a performance of 4:33. Which, we all found out, is 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Fortunately, they didn’t make us all sit there for that long, but we did enjoy it, and I’m glad that we didn’t have to hear E play the trumpet … which Beloved and I watched her being taught the fingering for just before they came on stage. She’d never touched one, until that moment.
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I look forward to the decreased demands on my time that Friday will bring. Balancing work with picnics, meetings, breakfasts, parties and concerts has been challenging. Of course, just as it’s coming to an end, work slows down to the point of semi-idleness. It will be hard next week, having to exist around Beloved’s declared rule for the girls: No waking before 8 a.m. (said rule was greeted with cheers and laughter … they’re not morning people). So while they all slumber, I will be rising at 5 to go for a run and then trudge into work.
