It's All Over

Since I'm a big fat LIAR, and don't have the results of the contest to post yet (don't ask), I'm just going to mull here. Thank you. You too.

I don't think it's the caffeine. I think it's the hormones. And I think something's off kilter. I see my doctor on Monday and she'll be playing the part of Dracula. Actually, she'll send me to the lab for blood. We'll figure it out. Until then I get to be crazy and a dangerous driver. Shh! Don't tell my Hunny.

Driving around town today (I picked up more pearled barley and wheat berries. And peppermint leaves!), it occurred to me that my kids started school yesterday. Did I tell you that? I did? Unlike Mayberry Magpie, I didn't take first day of school pictures. It also occurred to me that the summer passed ridiculously quickly. Anyone else notice that?

The worst part of this busy summer - and it just hit me today - is that this is the first summer since my kids were babies that I haven't read books to them. When I home schooled I read to them all the time, especially to my boys who struggled with reading. Oatmeal Head fell in love with Over Sea, Under Stone, then went on to read the other four books in the series himself (I LOVE this series!). I read them aloud to Little Guy. I never read the Harry Potter series to the kids, but because Little Guy was trained to hear books, he went to the library and checked out all the audio versions. This summer he actually read one or two of them himself.

Last summer was the last summer reading books to the kids and I didn't even know it. I was so nervous about putting them in school for the first time, wanting to get in every moment filling their heads with things they could keep forever, that I read to the boys non-stop. We started with the entire Chronicles of Narnia in one week. Then I read Tarzan of the Apes to them. They balked at that, but were transfixed once I started. After that I read several Sherlock Holmes mysteries to Oatmeal Head. I didn't want it to end.

And now it's over. I was driving home from Whole Foods and saw some tin can things with spouts in the back of someone's truck and thought, "The tin woodsman from the Wizard of Oz!" One thought led to another and I thought what fun it would be to read the real Wizard of Oz to Little Guy. I realized that he's too old for it, and that he's in school now. And I work weekends. It made me very sad.

So while other moms bemoan the fact that their kids are now in high school (Maybelline started high school yesterday - hooray!), I struggle with my babies being too old for me to read aloud to them.

Oatmeal Head, coming home from school yesterday, tells me that his language arts teacher must like to read out loud a lot. She sounds like a ghost when she talks, with her voice rising and falling rather eerily. And I have to wonder, is that how I sound when I read to them? Then it's a good thing I had to stop, right? No. *sigh*

Y'all have a good weekend. Until I write again ...

Flea