Real School, Day 2

So with less apprehension today, we entered into day 2.

And in an unlikely turn of events it was "raining" this am. meaning there was something between a fog and a light drizzle happening on the way to school. And also meant that kids weren't meeting on the playground.

We discovered, or rather, i asked and they realized, that the other kids drop off their backpacks on the hooks outside (yes. that is outside. as in outdoors, since the classrooms open to outside not to an inner hallway. We don't have winter here, remember?)  their classrooms before they go to the playground. And we realized today that kids go straight to their rooms when it's raining.

Joey's been talking to a boy in his class and although he doesn't know his name, he's been sitting near a boy, talking about boy things, I consider that making friends in boy-world.

Sonia's been studying the other kids. She says the kid who sits next to her is named "Saul" but pronounced "S -owu-l" like Raul ( with the little upward accent over the last u), There is also a Phillip. I asked if she could maybe be friends with the girls rather than the boys.. we'll see.

Kayla is just Kayla. Everything is "great" or "awesome" or some other superlative.Her teacher asked me if she had a twin at pickup today, so I'm guessing Kayla's been sharing in class. What she's sharing I'm not 100% sure of.

And today I met with the Brownie (girl scout) leader which I'm now a co-leader to. They needed a leader and co-leader to have a troup and I thought fondly (or that pesky nostalgia i have) for my days as a girl scout and said I'm not up for the challenge of leading a group myself but could certainly be there and co-lead. In fact I think the meeting will be over before the parking lot traffic jam clear out afterschool anyway.

So.. as I'm trying to find the correct mom I'm supposed to meet at the planter in front of the school... I find myself seeing all sorts of mom waiting to meet other people they don't know what they look like and I see a group of moms. I recognize my (PTA president) neighbor and guess it's a PTA gathering.

And after I meet up with the girl scout leader mom in conversation of waiting for the other mom who said she'd volunteer to help but who's daughter told the leader that she's not doing girl scouts this year afterall.. anyway. She didn't show up.

But the Girl Scout mom says "oh, those are PTA supermoms"

huh?

and the tone of voice and the rest of the sentence I wasn't paying enough attention to catch exactly what was said led me to realize..

OHhhh.. this is just like highschool.

Those are the popular cheerleader girls. (well, in theory. In my high school I can't say being a cheerleader made you popular or anything close to popular. But this is California and I believe all those TV shows and movies with popular cheerleaders were in California.)

We're the nerdy girls here with the girlscout troop.

Right.

So I mull that over through the day and decide maybe they're just the sorority sisters of elementary school. And of course PTA president lady is tall, insanely skinny, tanned from sitting on her yacht (which parks behind their house) and blonde straight from the salon. She's a real life walking Barbie. No. not jealous. not of that. their Porche, on the other hand...but anyway...


They were having PTA membership drive at the pick up time today. So.. for $10 I joined. And I'll see for myself what the fuss is about. If there is a fuss. For 1 Wed Am a month, I think I can handle the time commitment. And since I'm not the one trying to teach my kids right now, I feel like I'm rich in time. And I never joined a sorority before. This might be something to blog about.

But in reality, I don't feel rich in time. In fact the past 2 days I've been more stressed about time than before. Mostly because 3 times a day I have to be somewhere at an exact time. (drop off, Kindergarten pick up and grade school pick up). Add to that the stress of soccer and Awana and I'm 1 week into burnout.

And to speed burn out along, I semi-volunteered to be soccer team mom for Sonia and Joey's team. In truth they didn't have any other volunteers and well after the fact I said I could do it if no one else would. I guess that's the way it works the one with the most guilt the fastest becomes team mom.  I learned, tho. And I waited for another mom to do it for Kayla's team. Messing it up for 1 team is more than enough.

Anyway.. at 1pm I got a call from the coach asking if I was willing to be the team mom, I said sure, and he asked if I could tell everyone we had practice that night at 5;30

OK. first of all.. when we signed up our practices were supposed to be Tues/Thurs. Today's Wed.
Second of all, we have Awana at 6:30 and it's 30 min away from the soccer field, Unless you can somehow teleport my kids and feed them at the same time, this is a problem.
Third of all.. ok. what are the phone numbers of the families?

He'll email them to me.

2pm rolls around. I don't have an email. I call him at work and he says he sent it. I Check. nothing there and wait while he re-sends it while I'm on the phone.
Finally I have it in hand and get it printed. I figure I'll work on it while sitting in the parking lot at school waiting for the kids.

Cept JM brings a harmonica with him in the car. Oh, yeah, and he's playing it.

So I get call #1 done. The phone number is for the dad's work number. I ask "uh, is the parent of Ashley Smith (ok changed to protect the innocent) there?" and I get the flurry on the other end of the line and hear "Major Smith here" and think. oh, great. I think this is a bad bad thing. WHY am I calling the fathers at work? Don't these kids have mothers with phone numbers?" Apologize for the calling at work, explain they have practice and the coach needs to collect the $20 for shirts and banners and get asked "what team is this?"
-uh... coach Julio, the kids named the team the blackhawk lightening team.
"what age is this team?
(sheesh.. I didn't expect to have to answer this kind of question!)
-well, sir, I think it's the 6-8 year team. My kids are 7 on it.
"well, my daughter's only 5 I don't think you have the right team"
-I'm sorry for the confusion, It looks like she was at practice last week, she has the number 2 jersey. (and I have her birthday in front of me and she turned 6 on friday. But you're her dad, you probably forgot.)
And them I'm told  "well, wednesdays are not going to work for us"
(well.. ya know it doesn't really work for us, either, but that decision isn't mine to make.)
-uh, yes, sir, I understand, it's not ideal for us either, shall I let the coach know Ashley won't make Wed Practices and we'll see her friday?"
"well, I guess so"
-thank you, we'll see you then. (hang up and wonder if I needed to remind him to bring $20.

And after that call, i realized it wasn't going to be a 30 second "hey, practice is tonight, bring $20) call.

Although for the most part I talked to voicemails and answering machines.

Of the 23 phone numbers I was given, 2 went to voice mails that in no way resembled the names on the list, like Allen Smith's voicemail  answered the phone for some named Juan Martinez. At least half were work numbers that went straight to voice mail and the rest I left messages on what ever voicemail I got, hoping it was the right one. Half the kids showed up, So I guess some of the numbers were right. And if you account for the father I talked to (work number again) who said he didn't think his son was on a soccer team, that he was called by a football coach last week, the above Major who said Wednesdays don't work for him, the father (work # again) who said his son was already at home and he didn't think they'd bring him back for soccer, (not sure where the boy goes between school and soccer on a soccer night, but we go home in our family...) and the mom who called me back to explain that it's the last weekend of Motorcross (???) and they would be able to start the soccer season next week it looks like only a few may not have gotten the message. And since no non-team kids showed up ( I assume there were still 5 other teams practicing there) I guess I may not have inadvertently invited too many kids to our soccer practice.

And tomorrow it starts again.

*yawn*

First day of school

Very first day of very real school.  The expressions pretty much sum it how they were feeling about it.

In front of the school.
It was a mad house.

And I guess I'll describe the school and borrow some pictures from their website to do so..

First of all... it's a "campus" When I went to elementary school, it was essentially a tunnel of a building. A hallway with classrooms on either side in a big rectangle. As a little kid it seemed enormous, of course, but in hindsight it was a big rectangle. The gym and lunch serving area was at one end of the triagle, the kindergarten and library at the other, the school office in between and all the elementary classrooms in between.

Here.. it's a 'Campus'. With.. I dunno.. 9 buildings. all surrounded by fencing that makes it feel like an upscale prison.

(borrowed picture) below from the inside of the prison campus, the buildings are mostly centered around this patch of green grass surrounded by concrete sidewalks. That's the library building I think. To the left of the picture is the cafeteria area. so from the inside of the prison it looks not much like a prison and more like a farm with many barn buildings

 Below is the cafeteria area. I imagine the noise level will be deafening when kids are in there...

Kayla waving good buy from the kindergarten playground. She has no fear or apprehension. And didn't manage to wrap her teacher around her finger in the 3 second interaction she's had with her. I'll give her until tomorrow to have done that.

Sonia's lined up with her class. The adult in front of the kid with the green backpack is her teacher. The rest of the adult are parents milling around. She picked out the "first day of school" outfit that Grandma got her. And the shoes I bought her for Christmas (2010 or 2011, depending on when they fit, since I found them for under $3 last week shoe shopping, we bought them. I didn't expect her to expect to wear them today, much less insist that they fit), but I think they're probably too big. But of course they're sparkly, so she had to wear them today.

Joey's with his class group. He's looking less apprehensive. He's a boy, standing near boys. I think he'll be ok. Not too many moms hovering over this class. Or perhaps they were done hovering and I went back to take a picture.

The non-kindergarten classes were very inconsistent. Some teacher had their names written in chalk on the concrete in the line up areas, but the second grades were 3 basket ball courts away from the playground.  Sonia's teacher wrote the room number instead of her name and Joey's teacher had nothing on the ground and expected the kids to go directly to the classroom. Of course it would have been Joey's teacher who didn't have things exactly like the orientation said it would be like, because Joey's the one who need advance warning and consistency the most. We'll see how today went.

And then there was the traffic jam. 3 sheriffs were directing traffic, but it was backed up past the entrance to our neighborhood. Walking would have been faster. More dangerous considering how hard it was to pull out in a car into/across the traffic, but perhaps a mom dragging 4 kids on foot would have let someone let us across the road rather than being a mom in a minivan with 4 kids... (well..3 since Larry isn't working this AM and I made him get up so since he was awake, he could veg on the couch with Mickey Mouse and JM just fine..

T Minus 22 hours

Until the first day of public school.

On Friday there was a list with the class rosters of what the kids needed to bring with them the first day and since I don't happen to have 3 tubs of anti-bacterial wipes here in my supply closet, I guess I'll be finding a store today that does have them. My future school supply guessing didn't guess those, but I did pretty good on the pencil case, crayons, color pencils, and glue sticks. I didn't think to add tissue box to the list, either, but.. I guess it does make sense. The one thing NOT on the list was normal pencils. That surprised me. Maybe I was supposed to fill the pencil case with them?

In other news, we fired up the grill yesterday. Nothing fancy, but it seemed appropriate for a holiday weekend. .After church we stopped at the grocery store and for a cook-out lunch I needed to run in get burgers, buns and cheese for the burgers. And Milk since we were out.

I came out with burgers, buns, cheese.. plus figs (cause it was a recent conversation that we have a fig tree and actually don't know much about figs other than they are a component in Fig Newtons), strawberries, a pineapple, green peppers, ice cream, frozen french fries, and... no milk. Yep totally forgot that one. I'd like to say it's the first time it's happened. But that would be lying.

About the figs..I'll have to take and post a picture of them. They have the shape of large purple-ish cloves of garlic, but with the softness of a grape. However.. you cut it open and it looks like a sea urchin or something else found in the depths of the sea. And they taste alot better in Newtons than they do fresh. However.. when you live in a Mediterranean climate you can plant such things so we did. Just because we could. I also planted a pineapple. More on how to root a pineapple plant from the green top of a fresh pineapple later.. (have a new one rooting now after yesterday's grocery store impulse buy)

So not much else happened so far this weekend. Took the kids plus Sonia's friend to the splash pad playground yesterday it was busy as usual. On the way home, they were "starving" and since it was dinner time and we had a non-family member with us and I didn't want to be a mean mom.. I stopped at McDonalds. They have 20 pieces of chicken nuggets here for 4.99 which isn't a huge price to pay to keep them from telling non-family members that they're starving and I didn't feed them.  But then I have 2 non-conformists who insist on cheeseburgers, get the bag and have to go back because 1 of the 2 cheeseburgers didn't make it in the bag...

So.. Hand them the nuggets and they're clamoring for ketchup.  I look in the bag and there are 2 little packets in there. I think, well.. 2 packets is better than none, I guess and open them and spray it in one of the boxes I handed to the kids to share and I get a whiff of the said condiment..... Salsa.

At that point I'm torn between "it's my own fault for not looking" and "oh what the HECK?! is this a joke?!!"  and decide in the interest of not dragging all 5 kids into McDonalds (again) that they can eat the non-contaminated nuggets for a snack and dinner when we get home.
But I toy with the idea of writing a letter. I still might. But more likely I'll just learn to double check ketchup shaped condiment packets with red writing on them to make sure they say "ketchup" before applying them to my kids food in the future.

Do the McDonalds not in the southwest stock salsa packets? Is this a regional thing? probably. Sometimes I miss living in rural VA where Larry and I were the ethnic minority. Sometimes. But then I'd have to go back to hearing in that slow twangly drawl "welll...... you must not be from 'round here"

No. As a matter of fact I'm not. In fact if I was in my hometown, you wouldn't have to ask me where I was from. Instead you'd see me in town and ask how California was, how my brother was, how did he like Brooklyn, and you'd say "boy, can't believe how big your kids have gotten, why the last time I say you, you didn't have your youngest..." and then I'd know I was home. And this weekend I'd be mumbling about the curse/blessing of the annual fair gumming up the traffic but I'd still manage to get there and see everyone I knew and get myself some fried dough with powdered sugar getting everywhere.. Not young enough to be working in one of the half dozen school booths peddling roast beef, sloppy joey, and not old enough to be working there because one of my kids was there.. (shuddering at the thought of my kids in high school. 2nd grade is giving me a nervous ulcer)

So to answer yesterday's unresolved issues

Kayla's coach is Isidro and I have his phone number

And Orientation for kindergarten was at 2 pm.

And it was, uh, interesting.

And I was stunned by the number of families there. Yes. Families. As in Mom and Dad were there with their offspring. Don't these dads work?

Anyway...  I still have unanswered questions but it seems my best plan of attack will be to just blindly guess along the way.

One of the bigger differences between here and growing up is the lack of school buses.

So if it weren't for the state highway it's taking my life in to merge and cross traffic in a vehicle standing between us and the school, I'd consider walking there.. but.. I think we'll go with the slight protection that a little bit of plastic and steel might afford.

So.. I get to drop off the non-kindergarten kids in 1 parking lot, then make it to another parking lot to drop off the kindergarten kid. If we're late I have to escort them to the office, sign them in tardy and take them to class myself. They lock the gates promptly at 8. I think I might as well just plan on walking the through the office, given the propensity for promptness we have. Especially since Sonia's refused to fall asleep earlier than midnight this week. I've been waking her grouchy self up in the morning yet she still is up and bouncing off the walls while the rest of the sane world is sleeping. Somedays I really really think they're something abnormal with her and then I remember who her father is and realize it's genetic. (he takes being a night owl to a new art and could sleep past lunchtime given the opportunity).

So.. it's a holiday weekend and of course I have absolutely nothing planned. nada. Maybe I'll turn on the grill or something. Not like I can listen to the sounds of the Woodstock fair from my yard and head down there for fried dough this weekend. I miss fried dough. I wish the west coast would 'discover' it in stead of peddling all this healthier for you stuff they seem to peddle. Darn health conscious skinny blondes. No not jealous. ok maybe alittle but not about the hair color, real or from the salon.

Well... Orentation should be tomorrow

For Kindergarten.

Cept that no one told me what time it was. Stopped by the school this afternoon, but despite cars in the parking lot there was no sign of life.

So.. supposedly Kindergarten orentation is tomorrow.

Supposedly the Class Rosters were supposed to be posted on the school gate this week as well and I couldn't find those, either.

This try to send the kids to public school effort is not going well.

Nor have I gotten a list of what we're supposed to send to school with them..

Anyway... I'll update you on the Public school Fail later..

In other news...

Soccer team fail.

Signed the 3 olders up for soccer, on base since it's a know entity and it's reasonably priced.

And I got a voicemail from a coach for Sonia and Joey saying there was a team meeting/practice tonight.

At a field with easily 100 other kids and 24 coaches and several dozen parents there.

Nothing like wandering around the field asking "uh, do you know which coach is Jorge?"
"which Jorge?" 
"uhhhhh......."

Answer: he was the one in blue.
With the team not assigned to the field that day.
So the kids played duck duck goose between soccer fields while he went over the basics of ordering a team banner, who's going to collect the money for it, who's going to get and take the Jersey's to get the kids' names on them... etc...

At least it was a short practice.

And Kayla's in a different age team. Whom I have not heard from.

so Tomorrow I also hunt down the Youth Sports Department to see if I can get that resolved.

And all this the day before a holiday weekend. I'm sure it'll go smoothly and easily.

So we now have a garden

I know the rest of the world is thinking "uh, isn't the last week in August a little late to start a garden?"

To which I reply- Yes it is. For you. (And I remind you we have a guest room with a vacancy sign on it.)

For us, the hottest part of the year is still coming- October. October is the month when God turns the blow-drier on hot because Lord knows it's just not *quite* dry enough to burn hundreds of thousands of acres spontaneously without it. 

So we have 2 olive trees, 1 fig tree, 2 orange trees, 1 mandarin orange tree, 2 apple trees, 2 date nut palm trees and 1 blackberry bush in addition to the 3 peach trees that the squirrels ate everything off of.
AND: 6 tomato plants, 6 various pepper plants, 1 jalepeno pepper plant, 6 zucchini plants, 6 strawberry plants, cilantro, basil, pumpkin and something else I'm forgetting. Right -  lettuce. 

And seeds to plant more. We'll try peas again when it's cooler. And Spinach. And I want to try potatoes and carrots which I've never successfully grown before.

To do this in our clay soil, we decided to get compost. Actually Larry thought manure would be good, but I'm glad we couldn't find any locally. We opted for the local organic compost. And boy.. even it smells. A whole lot like manure, in fact.

And we got worms. And plan on getting more if I ever do get a compost bin going. I tell myself I want to, but I'm full of good intentions and not so full of the follow through of those said intentions.  I guess recognizing the problem is the first step. Which is why I didn't actually buy the composters I've seen knowing full well that the chances of any long term follow through on it is pretty low.  Heck, even with curbside recycling and 2 massive recycling cans, I still often have our crate of recyclable stuff sitting in the kitchen and it doesn't smell like manure.

I don't believe for a heartbeat that those countertop or indoor kitchen composters are truly odor free. And I'm not about to test that theory.

Other than that that's about all that's new here this weekend. Nothing terribly horrible or funny.
Well.. other than the new game the kids developed in the back seat of the van.
 
It's the newest version of rock-paper-scissors... Its rock, laser, gun. Paper and scissors just weren't destructive enough. So as I'm driving I hear fighting in the backseat about the lethality of a gun vs a light saber/laser and who has killed who in the latest dual. I swear they make me think they're being raised by savages. hmmm......

An ENORMOUS public thank you

To my real life quilting fairy godmother.

A real life thank you is coming but here's my public one :-)

Words will never express the gratitude I have for your presence in my life- both the past and present and future.  Word do fail me but I know my life is a better place because of you and the reminders I have here bring great joy and more gratefulness that our lives have intersected and hopefully will continue to do so.

It is my prayer and wish that my kids have a wonderful influential person in their lives as you have been in mine.

With much love and hugs~~~

XOXOXOX
Gina