Time for more coffee, y’all.
Much to the small people’s delight, we’ve reached the end of the school year.
And thus, I just demonstrated to you how good I am at telling the partial truth. The full version of it, you ask? In summary, while I love my students and much of what I do, suffice it to say, the school year’s end couldn’t come soon enough for me as well.
No, seriously. Y’all have no idea.
Okay, some of you do.
Fortunately, the last few weeks of school always involve some fun-filled breaks from the routine,
like elementary school field day, for instance. All you Yankee mainlanders will appreciate this: our island version of field day involves being sprayed with water throughout the various competitions. Growing up in Chicago, I was just glad if I didn’t have to wear a coat on field day. Here, they wear swimsuits for the whole day of school.
God bless Carolina island living, my friends.
My younger son’s third grade class just read The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary, so as an end of the year project, he had to build a mouse house. Two years ago, he watched his older brother build a mouse house after his third grade class read the book, and promptly began saving items to use for the mouse house he would create at the end of his own third grade year. As an added educational bonus with this project, he learned that milk gallons start smelling after a while if you don’t rinse them before storing. Due to his mother’s insistence, after she uncovered his plans, that he not begin accruing materials at such an early date, as well as her subsequent removal of all such accrued items from his room (y’all should have seen it), he was able to relearn the milk gallon lesson last month when he was allowed to begin mouse house material acquisitions again.
Good times.
In typical fashion, he built a souped-up version of a mouse house large enough to fit a small canine. What it is lacking in aesthetics it makes up for in functionality and plain old fun. Among other things, the mouse can fly through the oatmeal container and the milk gallon and shoot out into the air on his little bike, like a rodent version of Evel Knievel.
In unrelated news, Baby-girl came to me the other day and said, “Mom, you should put this on An Island Mom.†When I looked at her and paused, she looked at me like I’d lost a marble or two and added (gesticulating all the while) “You know, ‘cause they’re beachy things and people might want to see them. Don’t you get it?â€
Since I have not lost sight of my brand and since I occasionally aim to please in the parental department, here they are: children’s costume jewelry secured from a local shop and a colored-on shell, courtesy of Baby-girl, the beach, and RoseArt.
It’s all good.
So here we find ourselves in early June. Exams are done, grades are turned in, desks are cleaned, and I now have two glorious months spreading out like milk and honey before me.
Y’all, it’s summer vacation,
where toes have more time in the sand,
where alarm clocks become temporarily obsolete,
and where little girls (and their mamas) spend all the time they can just sitting for a spell.
Long live the days of summer.
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Coming soon: The Fourth Annual Summer List and Oh No She Didn’t: She Went Camping Again