Day Two of school, the first Wednesday of the new year… whatever moniker you want to pin on it, yesterday was without question, abundant in its fullness.
The new morning schedule (new since the lackadaisical Christmas do-what-ever-you-like-in-the-morning-on-your-computer vacation) is beginning to establish itself, with my students gathering around the dining room table, books and paper at hand, around 8am.
I try to work with Jacob on his math and writing drills in the morning when he’s fresh, so we hit that first yesterday. Writing came first, and he sped through his word list with surprising ease. Then I tried to get to my internet math worksheet creator, but was blocked by a mistake in Paul’s internet proxy rules (he blocks all internet during the school day except educational sites like Britannica Online, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, and SuperKids Math – he just forgot to add that last one when he set up the rules for the new year). Not to be discouraged, I whipped off some large stacks of numbers for him to add. (Adding and subtracting are the functions we have to drill and drill and drill right now. Tuesday, when faced with a worksheet filled with subtraction problems, he grumbled “Why do I always have borrowing? I thought I was supposed to be doing multiplication.” Unfortunately I jumped the gun with introducing a different function late last year, and he apparently assumed that his days of working addition/subtraction problems were over. It was a sad moment when the bubble burst, but he got over it.)
While he was working on that, I determined that, even though I had only 7 dollars in my wallet and a mostly empty can with some change in the bottom, we really needed a few food items too urgently to wait for Thursday. Combining my purposes, I next had Jacob count all my change (see how I incorporated his math skills there? I’m *that* good!).
Well wouldn’t you know, that assignment posed a serious challenge and took a substantial amount of time and effort. When finally the job had been completed, I thought he needed a bit of a reward for all that hard work. I had him bag up the change and come along with me to Fry’s. He was eager to work the Coinstar machine, and once we had our voucher in hand, we set off to consider what we wanted vs. what we needed vs. what we could afford. Items went in the cart, other items followed them and the first items were put back; it was an excellent exercise in estimating and prioritizing – tasks I have seldom been able to focus on with him when shopping with all the kids together.Â
Note to self: shop with The Boy more often.
Finally we made our way through the checkout and even had enough money to pick up a no-bake lunch – a foot-long sub from the deli that would easily feed those at home lying hungrily in wait to pounce upon us and rifle through our bags upon our return.
The rest of the afternoon was redeemed with Great Books readings, Medieval History, American History, Science, and Literature, and all was peace and harmony – until the Father-unit came home and upset our happy little apple cart with the first Math Class of the new year. Math is hard for children who have inherited my genetic indisposition to the subject. I pity them. I pity their teacher. I hope they all marry mathematicians like I did.
Wednesday is generally a scattered supper day, with everyone grabbing a bite when and how they may before running off to the various church events of the evening. I left with all four kiddos at 6, hoping the traffic would cooperate with getting Geneva to her youth choir practice at 6:15. At 6:19 she was peeking in the door, only to find that nobody else was there yet. I had her hop back in the van and we drove down the block to Burger King because Jacob had not gotten anything to eat during the bite-grabbing-fest at home. I got him the chicken fingers. No sauce. That way at least I could be sure he would not be walking into class with multi-colored schlop on his shirt.
Then we raced back to church and saw kids walking in, so out hopped Geneva.
Then I had 30 minutes to kill before the rest of the kids were due for their classes, so I drove a circuitous route to the second-nearest QT, where I had Laurent jump out and wash the ranch-and-blizzard off the nearly opaque windows, while Megan ran inside to get me a Vitamin Water (my new favorite, Blueberry-Acai-Pomegranate) – which I promptly shared with a very thirsty boy.
Then we raced back to church, and I walked Jake to his class in the Loreto center. I stopped by Geneva’s choir room on the way back, and Ann (the wonderful choir director) asked me to check with the office to see if there was anyone to walk the choir kids to their classes – which I tried to do, but there was quite a lineup of people waiting there already, so I headed back and Ann and I walked the kids to their classes, which are scattered across the campus and obviously you can’t just send kids running willy nilly at night…. and then I walked back through campus and out to the parking lot and across the parking lot and as I approached the van, saw that Paul and the three kids he picked up had just arrived and so we met up, and I walked back with them to the Youth House… and from there to choir rehearsal over in the cathedral, and by then I had completed the universal health recommendation of 30 minutes of walking per day. Huzzah!!
After choir got out at 9pm, I loaded my remaining 2 teenagers + 3 from the East Side into the van (Paul had taken the youngers home when they finished at 8pm) and we headed down the homeward trail. I was so clever to take the highway instead of going through town – saved myself loads of time……. until I made that one wrong turn into the Airport Loop From Hades. With help from on high, we made it out of the vortex alive, and still had enough gas in the tank to deliver our precious cargo.  The drive home to the west side via surface streets was, while ponderous, yet blessedly uneventful. Walking in the door 1 hour and 15 minutes after leaving church, we were greeted by Jeff and the younger two, who had been waaaaaaaiting for us to get home, and had just decided to go for ice-cream when we arrived. What providential timing for everyone concerned. I did not need ice cream… but the quiet moments to sit at my computer and surf were a balm to my bewildered brain at the end of the evening.
So ended Day Two of school, or the first Wednesday of the new year… whatever we call it, it was filled to the brim and overflowing.
