The First

School starts this week and I’m gonna act like that’s the reason why I’m beginning this new blog. But really I just happened to decide to do this a few days ago and am finally getting around to it just now. It’s just a coincidence that “now” is also the day before we once again bend before the unyielding structure of public education. This will be looser and more frequent than any of the other blogs I’ve maintained here, on my website. Hence its name: Semi-Bi-Weekly-ish Check-In.

The general outline of an entry, as of now, is to share a bit about what I’ve been up to, maybe talk about how I feel, throw down a few words about what’s coming up, and then I guess I’ll wrap it up with one or two of the better (or at least newer) posts I’ve made on one of the soc-med sites I haunt.

Last weekend we took the girls and some of their friends to Santa Cruz for the day. A very long day, which I’m still processing. I’m still processing the end of 5th grade for my oldest, which was 10 weeks ago, so there’s something of a waitlist. The day was bookended by two odd encounters with a little “OPP.” OPP, how do I explain it? Simply! It’s an acronym for “Other People’s Progeny.” Waiting in line to go on our first ride of the day, I watched a 7 or 8yo girl, waiting to get off a ride, burrow in her nose for a hidden treasure. The rim of her nostril was red and angry looking. This wasn’t the first intrusion of the day. I watched, fascinated, as she dug for the mother lode. then, having succeeded, she quickly dipped her finger in her mouth for a snappy finale and I immediately decided that I was done people-watching for the day.

But you can’t choose what you hear.

Much later, when the sun had almost set and the smaller, gastronomically-challenged humans had been taken home, I found myself the neighbor of a young man on another ride. I didn’t get a good look at him as I was keen to avoid what I’d seen earlier, but I guess he was about 13. As the ride gets going I hear him exclaim, almost panickedly, “Oh Daddy, oh Daddy!”

And I think to myself, “he seems kind of old to be afraid and calling for dad but maybe he’s developmentally chal—”

“Oh Daddy, HARDER, Daddy, HARDER!”

“wut.”

“Oh Daddy, OH DADDY, HAR—”

And then I finally got it. He was being edgy. (I hope.) “Funny.” (Right?) He (definitely) wanted attention and also he was probably (ugh) horned up in that early teen way that early teens can get and here he was, expressing it. A foot away from me. Honestly, this incident might have been the reason I finally started writing on here again. Because what else do you do with an experience

Anyway, I’m thankful no one I was with noticed either of those kids do those things, nor the two high schoolers who cut through swaths of people to get on the “Big Dipper” roller coaster faster.

Where none of them were ever seen again.

But all those kids behaving questionably did get me anxious about the girls starting a new school. I keep imagining the worst, like all the kids there will be like the ones I described above, etc. I know it won’t be like that. But still. I’m a worrier. I’m a worrier but also I’m a ridiculous optimist. So I have hope that this is the year that a certain subject or teacher happens to spark something inside of her and she finds some real joy in learning at school. She has her own interests, and I think she liked, on an interpersonal level, most of her elementary school teachers. But I feel like she’s missing something. Or missing out on something. I’ve never seen her running home to work on a school project the way I’ve seen her excited to see her own plans to fruition. But maybe I’m romanticizing things. Misremembering my own time in school and conflating it with 80s movies and sitcoms. I don’t know. I just want her to be happy and thrive. She might already be those things, in her own way, for all I know. And either way, maybe I should just be content she’s not treating her face like a self-service snack bar or pretending to act out a sexual encounter on a ride full of confused strangers on a beach.

Fresh Posts! Fresh Posts!

There’s still time to get in on these right on the ground floor!

“Unless it's meat from a cow that was actually born in Hamburg, Germany, it's just sparkling beef.” As shared on Bluesky

“It's 10 pm somewhere, do you know where your alcohol is?” As shared on Bluesky

I’m on Threads, Instagram, the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, Facebook, and, of course, Bluesky.