We’re beginning week 3 in our new home, neighborhood, and
schools. How are we doing?
Ava couldn’t wait to go to school on the first day. After she got over her indignation over being
stared at on our visit the week before, she was anticipating all the attention the new girl
gets, as she jealously witnessed firsthand in Oley this year. I picked her up 6 and a half hours later and
she was happy and chattering about new friends Emily, Emily, and Chloe (my brother
Daryl and my other brother Daryl… ) and showing me her “Welcome to our school”
cards from the class.
Owen, as expected, was a little more apprehensive. The night before he was tearful and worried,
and I admit that on top of the diabetes management, I didn’t sleep well. We walked into school together and met with
the guidance secretary who would give him his schedule and go over it with him,
introduce him to his “buddy” for the day – a shifty-eyed kid named Brock who
was new last year and has moved “lots of times.” Then it was time to say goodbye as he was led
away by the guidance counselor for a school tour before classes started. I reminded him of the pickup procedure and
where I would be parked.
Things roll a bit differently in these schools. In the old elementary school, the teachers
walked their classes out to the buses and made sure they were on the right bus
– here, the students walk themselves out.
Parent pickup is a signup sheet every day where you sign your kid out
and wait in the cafeteria for them to come down the hall. There’s no “matching” student to parent. In the old middle school, dismissal was for
all students simultaneously. Here, bus
riders are dismissed first. Then, after
the buses pull away, the car riders and the walkers (because the school is
actually in town) are dismissed. Again,
no matching of student to parent – and we just line up in our cars and wait for
the kids to come out and find us.
Educationally, Maryland schools are reputed to have been
ranked #1 for the last 5 years according to Education Weekly. And my kids are really getting a sense of
what #1 tastes like. Owen was worried
about getting into a high school math class like he had in Oley, and after a
handful of discussions regarding his math level and being challenged, he was placed
in the only available option here:
Advanced Math for 7th grade.
Once he started – albeit in medias res – then he became stressed over not being able to follow what was
being taught. He didn’t understand. Every day was stressful – he says because of
math. You gotta understand something about
my kid – he wants to be successful. I
mean, all kids do, but my kid doesn’t want to do something unless he’s sure he can be successful. I can pinpoint the exact time of his life, to the day, when this became reality – but, I won’t call out ancient parenting
mistakes.
Anyway, he has found his way – without my intervention… and
is doing well. Yesterday I received an
email from his math teacher welcoming us to the district and offering any help
he can in regards to Owen’s education and success. It brought a great big smile to my face in the
middle of the Comcast office where I waited 30 minutes to return
equipment. He still insists he’d rather
stay home than go to school, but he’s learning and realizing that other schools
teach material differently – and sometimes better.
He is loving gym class – a place that was once the bane of
my adolescent existence – he entered just as they were playing parts of
football and he came happily home the first day to tell me he’d been
tackled. And I got right back up!! This is so not what I ever thought I’d
hear him say. Today they played a game
called Capture the Frisbee, the same game they played in Oley but there was
called Capture the Cow. This made me laugh so hard I almost peed
myself. (Oley is a traditionally large
farming community.)
Meanwhile, back in grade school – my daughter failed a basic
geography test. I mean, so basic that
she couldn’t properly distinguish continent from country, and she couldn’t
place herself on two of the four maps.
She did correctly place
herself on a map of Maryland.
WTF??? I was appalled. And frustrated to the point of tears –which my
dear husband had the pleasure of walking into after a long day of work –
because how could my daughter not
know these things? I’d have understood
her confusion over Maryland, IF she’d had any.
But it was the only one she got completely correct. And then I began to wonder what the H she was
learning in her old school.
All frustration aside, it’s been tough navigating the waters
of a new “home.” While we have moved in,
we are still cleaning up the former tenant’s path of destruction – the rec room
downstairs is musty and dirty beyond words, and everything we moved from the former
house that didn’t have an immediate place in this one went down there for some
later “redistribution.” The dishwasher’s
control panel is malfunctioning and so I have been hand-washing dishes. The internet is pretending to be possessed and
refuses to remain seamlessly
connected, so that I am forever restarting the modem. And when I do, I hear, “Mom – the internet’s
not working!” in a voice that was made for loudspeaker announcements.
Stink bugs. We have
stink bugs. There were thousands of them
hovering at every doorway and window on the house, suddenly appearing on
curtains and climbing walls, chewed up and spit out by the cat, slipping
silently into cars and making little girls scream like murder in the backseat
and, until recently, making me feel like I’d accidentally fallen into a
starring role in some old Hitchcock film.
And suddenly, they are … gone. (cue the creepy music)
The dogs moved back with us the day after our big move, which we were thoroughly not ready for…
and Sabra the crazy brown poodle cried for hours after the love of her life,
Moses, left for the home they once shared.
Both dogs are in dire need of grooming and smell like a wrestler’s ass
crack, and every time they go outside they come in covered in burrs. The first night they were up and down, pacing
and licking (a sound that to me rivals nails on a chalkboard) and finally… Pi
vomited on our brand new area rug at about 4 a.m.
Todd got up early one weekend morning to
whack the source down. BUT – I am so not
thrilled with the amount of dirt that accompanies two dogs with free run in the
backyard. I haven’t vacuumed this much
since the two long-haired, couch loving cat days. I thought my upchuck days were over. Think two proper poodles don’t eat grass like
cows and regurgitate just minutes after reentering the house?? You are wrong. Dead wrong.
Oliver has made a full recovery from his harrowing journey
here and, as I expected, is enjoying his newfound land of the lost. He disappears for hours and I have no idea
where he is. I have searched the house
over for him and turned up nary a whisker.
However, he is still wearing his bell-carrying collar… so we always know
when he’s around. His first late night
investigation elicited a thunderous clap that rang through the house, and my
follow up investigation revealed a large piece of crown molding he had knocked
down from the top of the kitchen cabinets onto the ceramic tile floor. And in true form, he sat there gazing at me
and nonchalantly licking his paw like he’d done nothing to awaken the entire
house at 3:30 a.m. He has, like the
girls, tested out his boundaries with what he can get away with: there will be no lounging on the dining room
or kitchen tables, and the girls have learned are
learning that their stinky selves will not be permeating furniture and beds
here.
The neighborhood is a wonderfully quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac where the fastest car whizzes by at a whopping 20 mph, and there is apparently
no shortage of intrigue and fodder for a writer’s mill. We have a crazy cat lady with a married booty
caller who drops in from time to time, and a police officer who planted traps
around the neighborhood to catch the stray cats who dared to shit on his
driveway where his little girls play.
There’s a house that was foreclosed some 3 years ago with its front
screen door slightly askew on its hinges and gaping open, the backyard like a
jungle but the front mysteriously upkept.
And the unmistakable animosity between the two neighbors to its right, as
evidenced by the 12-foot wall erected between them. There’s more.
There’s got to be more. And I can’t
wait.
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