Last Day/ First Day

"Yesterday"  (meaning Tuesday, 1/16, I'm still awake, so it's still Wednesday for me) was my last day of the winter break, so I spent extra time in bed after dropping off my son at school at 8:50 am, which led to a spectacular parenting "fail."

I never thought I'd sleep until the home phone* rang at 11:55 am with my son asking me whether I was going to bring him lunch. I had not only silenced my cell phone, but also turned off vibrate when I started getting too many texts from a group of friends in the early morning, but I thought I'd wake up at 11:30... I never put the alarm (which surprised him).

My 15 year old was very understanding. He patiently listened to me getting up, heading to the kitchen and frantically telling him the options for food (frozen Indian or lasagna? No. A sandwich? "You? No!" [apparently only daddy makes good sandwiches], until I said, "Well, what about veggie dogs?"  "If you have hot dog buns, then yes, why didn't you mention that earlier?" Luckily I DID have the buns and I didn't mention that earlier because I hadn't thought of it yet, DUH! I kept asking what else he wanted and he was very nice about it, "Just put mayo on the bread, mom. How long is it going to take?" Said he with a quiet voice that implied a bit of impatience. "Ten minutes, max!" I barely had enough mayo for the three hot dogs, but I thawed some home made tomato sauce to season it (in Brazil we cook the hot dogs on a type of marinara sauce, for big parties they are actually thinly sliced, when cooking for the whole family I just slice them lengthwise so they'll go farther, but I put three whole ones for Kelv).

When I said to him what a big failure I'd been he only chuckled and thanked me for the food. I love that kid! I went back home, put a load of clothes in the wash (laundry has been pretty intense this early January -- too much stuff piled up from December and I'm not done with all the bed linens yet), then later I drove to town -- my first trip pretty much since before Christmas (I did take my son to buy a backpack the day before school, but that was it!) and I was only able to stay for an hour and a half (went to Costco & Target) because I needed to pick up the boys at 5.

I didn't work on my syllabus until late in the evening, but I wasn't worried, since I only needed to make some small changes.

The other "fail" for this first day was the snow that never came, so there was no snow day as my son so wanted and secretly me too! ;-) I had to drive on very light snow during my last 20 minutes of the drive and I thought I'd missed the bus, but I hadn't, the app was just weird.

It was a roller coaster of a day... I won't go into details, but I was upset and stressed that 16 of the 45 students I had last semester didn't register for this semester's sequel class. Then, I had an unexpected and unexpectedly good meeting with my colleague and spent hours writing some emails and trying to leave. I didn't leave until past 5 pm. I stopped at a bunch of stores along the way and only got home close to 9 pm! I still cooked some pasta for the boys and got them to go to bed because K had to stay late at the university.

Yeah... this sounds like a typical "first day" to me! Working is wholesome. Yeah... I don't know what else to say about that now. Hopefully it will get better someday... I hope it'll be a good semester. In spite of the lower number of students. I have a feeling it will be!

*yes, we still have a "home phone" line -- it's a VOIP & we pay 6 dollars a month for the line. I can no longer call 60+ countries (we paid 39 for that for years), but I'm using Google voice to call my parents. I still like to have a phone line, and for 6 a month, I don't think it's bad.