And they’re off …

School started this past Wednesday and it’s taken me a full two days to stop singing and dancing and celebrating so that I can calm down enough to write this post. Today, I cleaned up the last of the balloons and confetti and streamers. I think I’ve got it all out of my system now.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sorry! Just had to let that out.

YIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And that one too.

I think I’m done.

My girls are doing fine so far (and I’m doing awesome, in case you couldn’t tell) and the transition back to school was painless and rather seamless.

WAAAHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sorry! I didn’t see that one coming. I think you can relax now.

Here’s Zoe on her first day back. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Pay no attention to the fake smile that makes her look as if someone is yanking out one of her vertebrae. I was nowhere near her vertebrae.

It was about 6:30 a.m. when I snapped this. It’s on our back deck because Zoe refused to walk out our front door if I was anywhere within fifty feet of her, let alone with a camera in my hands. It might have had something to do with my baggy shorts or my oversized t-shirt sans bra or my socks or my unshaven legs. Or maybe it was my bed head. I have phenomenal bed head … my hair sticks straight up and out without the aid of gel or pomade or paste or any of the 64 jars of hair product in our house. I’ve paid a small fortune for all of that product and none of it comes close to what my hair will do for free when I’m woken up at some God awful hour before dawn.

Isn’t life ironic? I wrote a song about it once but Alanis Morissette had a better agent than I did. And for those of you who don’t know who Alanis Morissette is … my God, what is wrong with you? Take a jagged little pill and google her. Get it? No? Then you didn’t google correctly.

.

Here’s Helena, about one hour later. This was taken in our front yard. I looked exactly as I did an hour before but Helena is only eight and hasn’t yet reached that stage where she’s constantly embarrassed that I even breathe. She’s only embarrassed sporadically, like 60% of the time. This morning, her excitement over school outweighed the humiliation over my existence so I was allowed close enough to take some pretty decent shots, my DSLRTCALOM notwithstanding. This lasted right up until the bus rounded the corner at which time it dawned on her that it was entirely possible I would actually follow her down the driveway within sight of everybody on the bus. She immediately morphed into her sister and yelled “Bye mom!” and ran away before anyone could guess we’re related.

.

She was all in blue and you have no idea how much I had to photoshop this picture so that she did not resemble a smurf. My little unsmurf is getting so big, the little stinker.

Helena’s backpack was chock full of school supplies because the elementary school administration in our district is smart enough to send out supply lists in the summer. They’re good people.

The high school administration, however, is another story entirely. I don’t want to say they’re bad people because that doesn’t sound very nice and it’s too sunny and beautiful today not to be nice. If it was rainy and cold, I’d call them asshats but it’s sunny and beautiful so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they hit their collective head and sustained brain damage. I can think of no other reason why, despite every teacher having a web page, they wait until after school starts before they physically hand out supply lists. After the sales are finished and after every single store in a twenty mile radius has been picked cleaner than the nose of any child under the age of three.

I’m not talking about paper and pens and pencils and folders and other no-brainers. I’m talking about the 1.5 inch and 2 inch and 3 inch binders needed in PINK, PURPLE AND BLUE ONLY, the black marble journals that are COLLEGE RULED ONLY, the ORANGE AND GREEN ONLY dry erase markers, the BLUE ONLY highlighters, the three hole punchers FOR BINDERS ONLY, and all the rest of the stuff that somehow wasn’t important enough to post online before school started but once Wednesday hit, became absolutely mandatory in order to graduate.

Did I mention that we have two high schools in our district, serving thousands of students? So you can imagine the chaos that ensues when these thousands of students and their irritated and overwhelmed parents hit the stores within a two hour period on the same night and become seething psychotic maniacs willing to rip out their best friend’s kidneys if it meant getting the last jumbo sized YELLOW ONLY book cover.

And if anyone thinks that they saw a short, dark haired, chubby little woman going gladiator in the local Target because she couldn’t quite reach that five-pack of multicolored highlighters, just give her a break because she had already gone to six different stores and her back was killing her and her head was pounding and she knew without any doubt at all in what was left of her mind that that was the last pack to be found in the entire tri-state area and it was either go gladiator or offer up her firstborn and she needs her firstborn for a tax write off.

Not that I have any personal knowledge of this woman whatsoever.

You know what? The hell with the weather. STUPID ASSHATS.

I feel so much better now.

YYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

I knew there was one more just dying to come out.