It's almost dark at 8:04 PM. We have weeks of warm weather left, but only a few days before school starts and 10 days or so before the pool closes and summer, by my definition, is firmly and finally over.
I predicted months ago that I'd be sitting on the couch one late-August night, sadly wondering where the summer had gone, but I'm actually not as sad as I usually am. After a week of vacation and another few days of little work, I'm ready for a return to a more structured schedule. I don't manage unstructured time very well. I'll miss my kids, though. I could reconcile myself to the end of summer if I didn't have to send them back to school. As for homeschooling, see earlier reference to unstructured time. Left solely in my educational care, my children would have read hundreds of novels and spent many hours swimming and playing music. They would also be unable to count past ten. I know my limits.
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It's 8:45 AM now. Today's really the last day of summer, REAL summer. High school orientation is tomorrow morning at 7:45, which means that I need to wake a 14-year-old up at 6:45. I'm always up early anyway, but being up myself and dragging sleepy teenagers out of their beds are two entirely different things. School doesn't start in earnest until Monday, but once a kid enters a school building at 7:45 in the morning and returns home with reams of forms for me to sign, the spell is broken. And now, it's time to work.
