First Days and Last

Newsletter 2021-08-15

School is back in session. In fact, it has been for two weeks. Why haven’t I written about it yet? I was too busy celebrating. It’s hard to type with two bottles of champagne in your hands. After three straight months of working from home with four kids and two pigs and a dog in the house, I’m down to just the animals. The actual animals, not the human ones, even if the girls do stampede through the house like a herd of wildebeests. But now, between the hours of 8:20 a.m. and 3 p.m., my home is actually quiet. It’s the greatest thing in the world but also a little unnerving. Sometimes I knock over something large and breakable just to feel less alone. That’s just the first of many changes that have been a long time in coming but that also somehow took me by surprise. The key to survival as a parent is to never look ahead or behind. Always live in the current crisis.

For starters, big brother is back in a big way. This one was entirely my fault, which I guess is par for the course for t…