The lifeguards at our local pool terrify me. Seriously. This one woman is so whistle happy, I’m hearing the shrieks hours after the fact. I’m dreading going to sleep because I know those whistle blows will echo in my dreams.
Unlike the rest of you reading this blog—or at least 99% of you—we are not yet done with school. Thanks to the wicked bad Nor’easters (who says I can’t talk like a local?), we had six—count ’em, six!—snow days this year. One snow day was burned off by taking away a teacher’s professional development day. But we are paying for those other five snow days now, and our last day of school is this coming Friday.
But it’s the first day of summer and, school be damned!, we were going to make it be summer! Our Y membership gives us access to an outdoor pool, so we headed there today. I meant it to be a quick half hour swim, but two and a half hours later I was dragging the kids from the water. Doodles especially as this year he passed the deep-end test and now he can frolic in the long coveted deep end. Pie dolphins about in the shallow end, but we’re finally at a point where I can sit on the edge and watch her instead of feeling like I need to keep her at arm’s length. Not that the whistle-blowing lifeguard would let her do much.
Lucky we got this one day of summer in, because per the weather reports, it’s the last one we’ll be getting for a while. Tomorrow after school we’ll head to Barnes and Noble. I said to my kids this weekend, “There’s no need to get workbooks this summer, right? You guys don’t need them.” They’re at a point where they read and do math for fun and love writing letters that I in no way feel compelled to make them do pages of workbooks. But clearly I’ve forgotten who I’m dealing with.
“Mom! I want a math workbook!” the boy said.
“I want to do a workbook this summer!” the girl complained.
Yes, my children. The ones who do workbook pages for fun. I see lots of exciting blog posts for the summer. “Pie did four more pages in her workbook! Doodles completed a whole page of math!”
At least they’ll always be able to look back at today’s one day of summer.
