It's the Last Day of School!

Next school year, I don't think I'll be as happy with the "Yay" stickers for days off school  Apparently they're a jinx!

Well, Friends, it's Thursday, May 28, 2020.  The last scheduled day of school for my second grader.  Last August, when I filled out my calendar for this year, I colored each square on the grid for each day off from school and marked it with a "Yay!" sticker.

Isn't it funny how quickly the "Yay!" turned into "Oh, boy.  What day is it again?!  It's Blursday, right?  I bet it's Blursday."

And now here we are.  We've had so many days off from school that when I saw Possible Make-Up Day on the 29th, I just laughed and laughed.  Days off from school became not special real quick. 

Now we're staring down the barrel of Summer Vacation, and the Uncertainty that surrounds the start of 2020-2021...what's the re-opening of school going to look like?  Will school re-open?  Are we all going to be distance learners?  Will we get to return, only to have to go into another quarantine from mid-October until... oh, let's say just after Thanksgiving?  ('Rona's comin' back for a Second Wave, yo!)

If we turned COVID vocabulary into a drinking game, would we all be more wasted than a college freshman at a frat party the first weekend of school on the word "Uncertainty" alone?

No.  I'm not as Excited by this particular Last Day of School as I would have been if the school year had been able to play out the way we all thought it would, back when I decorated that calendar.  You aren't as excited by this particular Last Day of School, either, Friend.  Everything is all disrupted.  It doesn't really feel like we earned it this year. 

Still, it IS the Last Day of School, and tomorrow will be the First Day of Summer Vacation.  And Summer Vacation is all boogered up, too.  All the festivals and rallies and shows and concerts and probably, if your family is like mine, the trips: went with the wind...

We're going to be summering at Bastille Blake this year.  We had planned to go to the American Motors Homecoming shindig out in Kenosha, Wisconsin this summer, but that got postponed to another year, as did the AMO convention that we weren't going to go to, because it was in Denver.  And as much as we love our house, my daughter and I haven't left it a whole lot during Primary Quarantine 2020.  A summer of much the same is going to feel like Xtreme Staycationing, which I am sure is going to become a series on HGTV before too awful long.  That guy from HouseHunters could host it.  He seems personable, and he knows how to make giant tissue-paper flowers.

Here's the thing.  The kids have already been away from each other for about as long as a regular summer vacation lasts.  Hopefully as Summer Vacation 2020 progresses, we can enjoy a little time between Primary Quarantine and a shadowy possibility of General Quarantine in late October, early November.  Hopefully we can start getting together and tone down the distancing.  I'm sure we flattened some curves as we flatlined our social lives, but I am also sure that it's done more of a number on our kids' mental health than we can ascertain right now. 

So here's to the Last Day of School: 2020. 

I hope Brighter Days are ahead of us, in every possible way.