The longer school hours this year is really taking its toll on my two girls. Not only do they have to be in school for 9-11 hours on some days of the week, in the hot sun, with only recess but no lunch break, they also have tons of homework.

As a result, they frequently have tummy aches from not eating proper meals at the proper times. Lunch time is now 3:00pm for us on days when they finish school at 2:30pm! I try to wait till they get home so we can all have lunch together. And even for me, after eating 2 breakfasts, my tummy is already in knots by 3:00pm, not to mention for the poor teens.

Their complexions too have suffered. My girls are so tanned now it’s ridiculous, and before they never had problems with pimples, etc, but lately I’ve had to buy these nose strips for them to remove blackheads!

They have to rush through their meals to get to the mountains of homework. By the time, they get through that, there’s barely any time left to study as it’s already past their bedtime. It’s so hard to wake them up for school the next morning. So school ain’t no fun no mo, like I say. I just can’t wait for my poor babies to be done.

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The bookstore seems to have found itself a permanent spot on my Saturday morning schedule. To be honest, I don’t remember making half as many runs to the bookstore in my entire school life as my kids do now in a month.

Every Saturday, at least one of my kids will go, “Mom, we need to stop by the bookstore. I need some stationery” and I’ll go “What? Again?” and this is where we’ll end up.

At the rate we’re going, you’d think my kids eat stationery for lunch. The truth is if they so much as leave an el-cheapo pen unattended for even two seconds in school, it’s gone! Poof! Never to be seen again.

And since it’s not feasible for me to hire a security guard to protect our stationery investments at school, we have no choice but to go replenish the lost items every Saturday! I guess I should thank my lucky stars our trips are not to buy books. Books here are so freakin’ expensive I’m telling my kids to quit reading !

How often do you and your kids go to the bookstore?

We’re having a very busy weekend here, quite a change from our usually laid-back ones. Raine and Skye were out of the house at the crack of dawn this morning on a cross-country run at school. They looked for all the world like they were going to climb Mount Everest with caps and sunblock on and heavily-laden backpacks of sandwiches and cans of sports drinks.

Five kilometers, a steep slope, scorching sun and 90+ degrees out can be pretty tough. But they had fun. Skye came home with a headache, sore muscles and bursting with exciting stories to tell – tired but happy Raine had introduced her to some of her friends.

Raine was nursing the beginnings of a sore throat and too tired to talk much. I too had a splitting headache from my grocery morning at Tesco where their specialty is to suffocate the customer with their barely-there air-conditioning.

Steev attended two farewell dinners for his friends who’ll be leaving for college in Tasmania and Australia next month. Tomorrow he’ll have his first taste of driving school – a full day of driving instruction. Not sure why it takes a whole day, it’s not like they’re teaching the kids to do rv repair !

It’s a very busy weekend but we’re having fun. How’s your weekend going?

I had to pick Steev up from college this morning and I was running really late. Isn’t Monday always crazy like that?

Anyhow as I was running out the door, I decided to text Steev to let him know I’m on my way. Right after I did that, Raine’s cell phone chimed in a new text message. First thought that hit me:

Now why would anyone text her when they know fully well she’s in school?

I peeked at her cell phone screen and it said right there the message was from “Mom”.

Mom?!? Who the heck is that?

Oops, I guess that would be…. me!

In my hurry to rush out with car keys, purse and shoes in hand, my text message had gone to Raine instead of Steev!!

I blame it on Monday!

My pack mules (to use someone’s word for my teen daughters with their super-heavy backpacks) came struggling up the stairs after school with another mountain of homework today. A great way to reduce body fat, I jokingly told them.

The past two days, they’ve been swamped with ‘homework’ which consisted solely of copying entire chapters off the text book into an exercise book ! Some of you may know that I’m not a proponent of homework for the sake of homework.

Copying wholesale is merely an exercise in writing. It’s completely unproductive, meaningless and serves no purpose except to profit the stationery makers! It doesn’t benefit the kids. at. all! I might as well get the whole book photocopied and turn in as my “homework, there all done, you happy now ?”

The road outside my daughters’ school is a two-way street. Every day, just before school lets out, there are cars parked and double-parked on both sides of this street, leaving a single, barely passable lane in the middle.

What really gets me is that not a day goes by when some smart aleck isn’t trying to drive against the traffic flow on that street. During the half hour or so when school lets out, the street turns into an unofficial one-way street.

They don’t seem to get it that since there’s a never-ending line of cars coming from one direction and the street is clogged with waiting cars, there’s just no way to get through from the other direction. No point honking and throwing tantrums because there’s just no room for negotiation !

Even coming from the ‘right’ direction, I can’t squeeze through in my minivan. I usually try to get there a little early before the madness starts. Some parents sit in their cars to wait. Parents of younger kids brave hot sun and age spot to walk up to the school gate to wait. That’s just how it works.

We had one of the quietest weekends ever. The hectic first week of school really took us out, physically and mentally. Saturday morning, I dragged us all to the grocery store and between me and the kids, we loaded up the cart in record time and got the heck out of there after a quick lunch. Nope, no way I was in any mood to cook.

After we got home, we realized we had run out of puppy food. What a great excuse to go out for dinner! So that was how I escaped cooking two meals in a row . Yes, I know I said we’d try to eat in more but this was a dire emergency!!

We stayed home all of Sunday, basking around the house like a colony of tardy, overfed seals .

It’s really hard transitioning from a lazy Sunday to a crazy Monday, I tell ya. The spring semester has just started for Steev. Monday morning traffic in the city is insane but I got him to college in time for his 8:00am class after dropping the girls off at school.

Speaking of seals, I’m starting to look like one. Good thing I got to work out for almost two hours at the gym and got caught up with my gym buddies who haven’t seen me since Christmas Eve , before heading back to Steev’s college to pick him up. So that was the entire Monday morning gone. How did yours go?

Rarely has a Friday been this much anticipated in our household. Sure we live for the weekends (doesn’t everyone?) and we’re usually happy when Friday rolls around. But today is different.

This is the Friday we’ve all been looking forward to!! This is the Friday after 5 grueling days (feels more like 5 years!) of unnecessarily, ridiculously long school hours. When I picked the girls up from school, they were beaming from ear to ear! And we drove straight to the McD’s drive-thru for the lunch they’ve been waiting all week for!

A few quick wisecracks from the girls today.

Raine (gobbling down her burger): Man, I feel like I just got released from jail!

Skye (right after lunch/shower): Time to get some sleep, be back in two hours! (After a two-hour afternoon nap, she couldn’t stop smiling through dinner.)

Raine (to her friends online): Boo you, homework, you can sit there till Sunday!

Already the girls are counting the days till the end of the school year.

5 down, 200+ to go !