The School Year that Wouldn't End

I'm going to miss my son the Bear's last day of school because the school year just got extended by a day. We're already deep into makeup days due to the oodles of snow days we had this year.

Night before last, I was talking with a friend of mine whose daughter is one of the Bear's good friends. We were speculating on whether yesterday's pool party for the elementary school would be canceled due to the forecast thunderstorms.

I said - flippantly - "Oh, I don't much care, as long as we don't have another snow day."

And thus jinxed us.

The whole town woke up around 4 a.m. yesterday to a spectacular light show. By the time it ended, the lights had gone off - not in most of the city, not in our house, but in the elementary school a hundred feet from our front door. By the time they went on again, school had been canceled, along with the pool party, and a makeup day declared for tomorrow.

As my friend said to me: "It's all your fault!!!"

I'll be out of town starting tomorrow morning for a three-day meeting in Minneapolis, the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. And so I'll miss the Bear's last day as a second-grader. I won't be home to give him his first kiss as a rising third-grader. I won't be among the first to hear who his teacher will be next year. I'm pretty sure I'm more bummed about this than him, since his dad will be home to do all those things. Plus he's got a shiny new bike.

I'll put a post or two up over the weekend, thanks to Blogger's new scheduling feature. If I have connectivity at the conference I might try to report in from Minneapolis. No promises, though.

This clematis got nailed during the storm; when it's not backlit, it's nearly black.