So, here we are. First day of school.

Noah is in 8th grade now. Not entirely sure how that happened. Not just the growing up fast part but the holy cookies, Batman, he passed 7th grade!!!

Anyway, because the beginning of the school year feels like the beginning of a NEW year, I’m kinda revamping how I run the house. So the last few days, I have been asking him over and over, “Do you have all your uniform pieces together? You know what you’re going to wear Friday morning?”

“Yes, Mom. Duh.”

I knew he had uniforms because once in a while life looks the other way and things work out for me. I made it to the used uniform sale at the school and picked up enough things to get him started.

Then I asked, “You know where your backpack is? Your lunch box? What you’re going to pack for lunch?”

“Yes, Mom. Why do you keep asking?”

So, because things can’t work perfectly, I forgot to set my alarm last night. My husband had to be at the university at 7:30 this morning to attend the graduation of a doctoral student he’s been advising to HIS alarm went off.

I went into Noah’s room. “Hey, wake up. First day of school”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Nope. Nope. Nope. First day of school.”

His day informed him that no one feels good at 6 am.

Immediately, the getting dressed fighting started.

“Get dressed. I’m making breakfast.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“Get dressed, Noah.”

“I can’t find my belt.”

“Seriously? Every day this week I asked if you had your uniform ready.”

“Are the shirts in the wash clean?”

Now, why would uniform shirts that he hasn’t worn since MAY be in the wash? Why wouldn’t they be clean? I did do a load of his white clothes last night but they weren’t in the dryer yet. (So, don’t judge.) I did find at least one uniform shirt in there as I shifted them to the dryer. I’m baffled why it was there.

No I’m not really. He doesn’t put away his clothes, and when Dad says, “Clean your room,” any clothes on the floor go in the laundry.

Sigh.

Anyway, he finally got dressed and sat down to a now cold egg and toast. He told me “cold eggs are the best.”

Uh-huh.

Then it was time to go, and his backpack was in the corner of the living room WHERE HE’D DUMPED IT ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!

He wanted to turn the thing over and just dump out all the papers and pencils and whatever else was still in there, but I told him no and he took everything out by hand.

One bullet dodged.

However, apparently, invisible spiders had taken up residence all over the backpack so it had to pounded on the floor over and over because we could actually get in the car.

Finally, we got to the school. It’s a Catholic school so the dropoff point for the 3rd-8th grade students is the church parking lot. It was FULL!

As we were pulling up, slowly, in the carpool line, I said, “What’s this all about?” The guidance counselor was stopping every car, so we rolled our window down. She said we could park and walk in or just do drop off.

Noah said, “Just dropoff, Mom.” I already knew that because (1) he’s 14 and seriously, who wants Mom walking him in? He hasn’t wanted that since he was old enough to know where he was going, (2) Mom’s embarrassing, and (3) we had the dog in the car. Molly loves car rides and nearly shook herself into pieces when we had to wait for Noah to get his backpack ready.

Then I got home and saw all these other moms from that school with First Day of School pictures of their little darlings.

Nope. Didn’t take one. Nor do I have a nice picture of Noah and his new teacher. Of course, I’ll probably meet her when she wants to talk about why he’s failing whatever class she’s teaching.

Another school year of being the clueless mom has begun.

So excited.