It’s been busy!
I mentioned that M had her prom. She’s dating this boy, if that is what you call it these days, although they are both so crazy-busy that it basically means that they’ll hang out together for a couple of hours once a week, slotted in between school, sports practices, club meetings, games, researching colleges, and sleep.
J was gone over prom weekend at a volleyball camp, which has led to enrollment in yet another volleyball camp, this one over the summer, which will be a cool experience for her but has also thrown our plans into some disarray. That’s okay.
In the next week there were three, count ’em, three different track meets, the last of which was on Niska-Day. And we had a beautiful day for Niska-Day, hooray! Cute W and I missed most of the parade in our hurry to get to M’s track meet down the street, which was sad. I weirdly love the parade. Niska-Day used to be an exhausting day full of family fun, but it was surprisingly mellow for us grown-ups this year. J had a few girls over to watch the parade and then basically disappeared for the day, barely popping in to dump her candy and free swag and pick up some aloe vera for sunburns and a toothbrush for a sleepover. M skipped the carnival for homework after her track meet, but then she headed out to watch fireworks with a crew of kids.
The next day, Sunday, Cute W, M, and I drove down to Manhattan for a soccer game. As it happened, there was also a college fair earlier in the day, so we killed two birds with one stone by dropping by to Demonstrate Some Interest. (That is a thing in college admissions these days, did you know? Since colleges track if you’ve visited or requested information or opened their emails or interacted with their social media accounts, Demonstrating Interest is yet another strategy.) The college fair was fine, and we were pleased to make our long car trip count for double. They had a very high-tech system in which the attendees all had a QR code on their phone, so if they stopped by a particular college’s table to chat, the college rep would scan the kid’s phone with their phone to collect their information. Way more efficient than filling out forms.
Then the soccer game. . . well, there was traffic getting into Manhattan (shocking, right?) and so people were not exactly on time, and then gradually the players arrived, even some players who had been at a prom the night before, and eventually it got to the point where everyone was there except our coach. Our coach. Who had to be there, or we’d forfeit. Just so we’re clear: an entire teams’ worth of girls had schlepped from Upstate New York to Manhattan on a Sunday evening for a game that looked like it might be cancelled. The coach barely arrived in time, and it’s a good thing, because the parents would have gone nuts. And by “the parents” I am absolutely including me. The girls won and we all piled into our cars and schlepped home.
The following week (and now we’re catching up to last week), included two banquets and the track sectionals meet, which kept us busy. Originally we had planned for a soccer tournament over Memorial Day weekend, but that didn’t happen, after all, so we had three days that were mostly relaxing, including sleepovers for the girls and a date for Cute W and me.
Tonight we’ll be jogging between some English symposium where M has to deliver a talk and J’s chorus concert, both conveniently located in the high school building. The girls are not enthusiastic about these activities. M started out trying to bluff that she wasn’t presenting anything because she predicts that it will be terrible and embarrassing, and J has been barely dragging herself to chorus lately, so I fear that this will be our kids’ last musical concert ever. We tried, we really did, but it just wasn’t their thing. There are so many activities happening that it feels like surely the last day of school must be any minute now, but in fact we still have an appalling three and a half weeks to get through. Hold us in your thoughts, please! I am only half-kidding.
Oh, and yes. The kittens are still charming us like crazy.
