SAY IT ISN'T SO!!!!!!

Barbara Ward-Finneran

I continue to think, no perhaps, dream is a better word, that after 18 seasons of this - somehow it will magically right  itself, but I am wrong!  Apparently in the south, August is not a summer month.  The thermostat screams otherwise - yet the calendars are marked.  School starts this week.  YIKES!!!  YUCK!!!

It's seemed wrong since the summer I moved here.  Arriving in mid-August with hopes of scouting out work as a substitute or fill a last minute teaching vacancy before school started.  Silly me.  Long before my furniture arrive school had started!  And, every year, it still is so WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, that school starts before Labor Day!  I know in just days it will seem normal.  I know that we get the majority of June off so it's all "even".  Yet, it makes me a little crazy every (dare I use the word) southern back to school season.  A post Labor Day start is my normal.  It's still what I long for to be normal.  I guess I'm a gal who loves tradition.  That whole unofficial beginning of summer and putting your "whites" away after Labor Day gets lost here when hot temperatures rear their ugly hear in March or even sooner some years.   Despite the fact that summer has unfolded here, we have enjoyed may a lazy and fun filled day, and the thought of routine is mildly desirable.  (Wish it didn't have to start in the dark every day!) I still long for back t school to begin in September! "Ain't" never gonna happen here! :PPPPP

I'm back at work.  The regular/real day job is back in full swing and my kids, and the rest of our county begin on Wednesday.  So ready or not - here comes the 2011-2012 school year!

All the back to school sales and the fact that teachers reported back days ago should have that fact based in reality in my little corner of the world.  Yet somehow it won't truly be real 'til Wednesday morning when I snap the traditional first day of school pictures of my boys alone and then together.  Is it really possible that I've been taking those pictures for 8 years?! Is it possible that I'll still get away with those precious photos this year with my eldest starting middle school? Is it possible after 18 years that I still dread back to school before Labor Day?

Yes. Hopefully. And, Yes!