The Fall

This time - mid-September through October - is really my best time of year. My event is freshly over, and although I have ideas for next year, I don’t have to implement any of them yet. The boys are in school, it’s time to plan for the holidays, we have Southern California delayed summer. It’s a whole thing. I see my usual flood of emails instantly reduce to a mere trickle, and while this is jarring, it’s also kind of great.

I spent the weekend in Chicago at a dance event we’re hired for every year. It was a good time. Thanks to my new expanded event schedule which left me less exhausted and fed up, I had more energy going in to this event, so had the spoons to have lots of good conversations and bonding time with people I don’t get to see very often. I only have four days at home and then I head up to a jazz festival in northern Cal next weekend. That event for me has been a bit isolating because my band leader, who has the car, works at the event a lot more than I do, so I find myself alone and stranded much of the time. However, a close friend is coming this time, and we’re planning on getting out to see the redwoods, which would be amazing. So I expect this trip will be better than the previous. 

Yesterday while I was bored at the airport, I got alerted that someone was on the porch, so I had a look, and it was Bobby on his phone. I could hear some loud voices - not angry or anything, just loud - coming from the phone, then he got up and walked around to one side of the house, then immediately went around to the other side, then must have gone back into the house through the back door (why was that open?). The H was at work at this time. It was puzzling. What the heck was he doing? I’m dying to ask him, but I don’t want him to know I was watching him. It just reminded me that sometimes with teenagers you just don’t want to know what they’re up to. Lord knows my mother would have died if she’d known all the dangerous shit I got up to when I was just a year older than him. We trust these kids to be home alone and outside of our purview - we trust that they won’t eat things they’re not supposed to or go through our things or steal money or do anything dangerous or destructive - but the fact is, we have no idea what they do when we’re not here. I like to think they’re just playing video games or scrolling through YouTube shorts, but who knows? I was such a hyper vigilant mother when they were little - unless they were in their room at night, they were never out of my sight, not even for a minute - but it’s hit me that those days of constant surveillance are over. At some point these kids will want to hang out with their friends after school, or on weekends, and there’s nothing I can do to keep them safe. Theo already has been going to stores after school and buying pizza and boba with his friends without asking or telling us; I wondered if I should tell him not to do this, but honestly, he’s old enough. I did the same at his age, and it’s time he learned a little independence. After all, next year they’ll be at the same school, and I might have them start taking the public bus home, since it picks them up right in front of school and drops them really close to home. 

Speaking of being at the same school, in just two days I apply for Theo to get into the gifted magnet at Bobby’s school, and we get an answer in March. I have a (perhaps) irrational fear that he won’t make it, based on the fact that he’s been waitlisted for the gifted program every year up until now (even though that’s a different situation since that program at his current school doesn’t have much space). He has tons of “points” thanks to my having applied every year, and he has sibling points thanks to his brother, but I still worry. He’s a smart kid and I don’t want to see him fall behind. Already I’m not thrilled with how 6th grade is starting out - he rarely has homework, and talks about the movies they watch at school. Huh? I guess I’ll withhold judgment until I meet this teacher at the parent-teacher conference. 

It appears the bots are at it again - I noticed this phenomenon during the 2016 election, wherein my blog posts that normally get about 50-60 views suddenly started getting hundreds, and then this sharply dropped off the minute the election was over. The same thing is happening here - hundreds of views on all my most recent posts, but no comments or followers. I know at this point after all these years I probably only have a tiny group of people who check in occasionally to see what’s happening in our mundane lives (thank you!), so there’s no way my post on Bobby’s new girlfriend got 800 page views. Crazy.