The Most Wonderfully, Dreadful Time of the Year

Yeah, I know, I suck. I haven’t written on this blog for like a month. That fake-dead possum’s been sitting up there staring at those of you still kind enough to check in and see if I’ve had anything interesting to say for what seems like an eternity. Insert numerous valid excuses here and we’ll move on.

So, the boy child starts first grade in two weeks. What the heck happened to the summer? One second it was here, the next *POOF* gone. Okay, on the one hand, I’m looking forward to Jake going back to school, because as much as I love him to individual bite-size little pieces, he’s kind of driving me batty. He’s bored and I have to work, so to get back at me, he attempts to set the house on fire. Okay, not really, but he did decide that he would turn up all the heat in every room, and in doing so nearly melted the massive bins of toys sitting up against his heater (because to me, summer equals extra wall space!). It could have ended badly. I sent him to summer camp three days a week, but that’s over now because I’m running out of funds, but even then, I still had to work the other days that he was home. Those articles on why you shouldn’t pop hardcore sleeping pills to cure anxiety aren’t going to write themselves!

So while I’m looking forward to having more time to work, which means more time to play with Jake when he gets home (when he interrupts me 50 times a minute to ask if I’m done yet, I lose my train of thought and it takes me twice as long to write an article), I’m also dreading it. If you followed last year, you may recall the two dozen or so posts about what a nightmare school has been for us. Jake doesn’t conform properly (thank the gods for that!), so he’s labeled a trouble-maker, and if he breathes the wrong way, he gets suspended. One time, he didn’t even do anything, they couldn’t prove he did anything, but the principal used some sort of interrogation tactics to get Jake to admit to doing something he didn’t do, then suspended him. I asked to see the evidence, but the bus tape mysteriously went blank during those five minutes. I argued that there was no proof, the principal argued that Jake admitted to it, I argued that he turned my son into a liar, he got pissed and said “well, he’s still suspended from the bus tomorrow!” So I’m totally not looking forward to a repeat of that.

The thing that gets me is that at summer camp, every day they tell me how well behaved Jake is, what an awesome little boy he is, and so on. They think he’s an angel, while his school thinks he’s the devil. I think this year I’ll just start saying “please don’t speak to my kid without his attorney present.” I wonder if my brother knows a good elementary school criminal lawyer in PA?