Last day

Today was the last day of summer around here - tomorrow morning, Monkey will get up extra early, preen in front of the mirror for an hour or two, and have her first day of fourth grade. She's had her first day of school clothes picked out for months, and I mean that literally. She got a new backpack, and all the supplies her teacher specifically requested the students have.

It was a pretty anti-climactic end of summer. Ordinarily, we would try to make the last weekend fun by going to the beach or on a whale watch, but it was too cold and rainy and people (read: Sio) were too busy to manage either one this year. Instead, I cleaned (I rediscovered the dining room table!) and putzed around the house, Sio played World of Warcraft when she wasn't at work, Loki slept and drank some Boddington's, and Monkey rode her bike and got absolutely filthy playing with her cousins.

Sio is supposed to go back to school on Wednesday, but we're all a little skeptical. As of last weekend, several portions of her school were without a roof. The new wing doesn't appear to have walls yet, so I don't know where the freshman are going to go. She'll probably spend the bulk of her senior year ducking ladders, avoiding wet paint, and detouring around construction areas. And she thinks the drama club is doing Barnum, which may be more pain than she can take for her senior year.

But soon enough, she'll be filling out college applications and writing her essays, and I'm sure the last day of her high school career will be here before we know it.