First Day of School

Monday, August 13th was Taylor and Hale's first day of school. We had all anticipated this day soon after arriving in Missouri. Anticipated it because we realized there was no one around here for the girls to get to know, except for the senior citizen crew that resides on our street. They are friendly enough, but I don't think they'd make good spend the night material. Except for maybe Vicki. As long as she brought her dog. She seems about as air headed as Taylor.

We had open houses for each school the week before. For those who don't know, Taylor is going into the seventh grade and Hale the fifth so they are at different schools. Open house went okay for the most part. Taylor's school is pretty big compared to where we came from. There may be about 800 kids in her school. It's 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. All of the halls are divided into grades which is pretty neat. There is hardly ever any interaction between the grades. The only interaction may be foreign language, band and choir. But even PE is grade specific. I like that. During Taylor's open house, all the new kids and parents were separated and taken on a tour of the school. There were about 7-8 new kids including Taylor. Tom and I were both there. As our guide was taking us around she stopped at the choir room. She asked if anyone was in choir (Taylor is) but no one motioned that they were so Tom held Taylor's hand up and said, "she is". That really embarrassed her. Taylor's face is normally a shade of pink but her face got truly beet red. I noticed a boy was really watching her hard. He thought it was very funny and was smiling during this brief interruption. He looked at her a little longer than anyone normally would. After the tour advanced, i told Taylor about what i witnessed to tease her. I thought the boy was very cute and thought she would, too. He has this kind of surfer, what's up dude look to him, (not the Jeff Spicoli look).The tour ended and that was that.

The day started early. She was up at 5:45. Her bus comes at 7:03. That's and entire hour sooner than in Virginia. She got up though on her own and got ready for school. (During the summer, we were lucky to see her out of sooner than 10:00.) She left with her dad walking her to the bus stop. That was not cool with her. He only to walk her half way though. As soon as the bus stop became visible and she saw there were kids already there she made him leave. There were about 6 boys and two girls. No wonder she couldn't find anyone to hang out with during the summer. At 7:15 she comes home. The bus never showed up and school starts at 7:15 so I took her to school. This is funny because she learned where all of her classes are coming from where the bus drops them off, not where parents drop kids off. She had no idea where to go. She said it took her about 15 minutes to find her hall.

At some point that morning she went to the school store to purchase two locks. One for her locker and one for her PE locker. Normally, she would have used lockers last year in sixth grade, but her school was being renovated and there were no lockers. This was her first year using lockers and the typical combination locks associated with school lockers. So she purchases her locks and puts one on her regular locker, backwards. I don't that stood out in her mind at the time. When it was time for lunch she returned to her locker to get her lunch but she couldn't get her lock open. She asked a teacher for help (which I'm still stunned about) and the teacher couldn't get it open. The teacher calls for the custodians and they couldn't get it open so they decide they have to cut it off with bolt cutters. So they cut it off and Taylor opens it to find it's not her locker. She never realized the way to distinguish your locker from all of the lockers that look identical with all of the other locks that look identical was to look at the number at the top of the locker. Harsh lesson learned. I make her carry around $5 for the poor guy whose lock got cut off.

So far, as this is Thursday, school seems okay for her. One friend she's made in the neighborhood I have yet to meet. I hope there's not a reason for that. But i think she's going to fit in fine. And by the way...the cute surfer dude is in about three of her classes. He's even asked her to be his class partner. She's says he's excessively hyper and is a dork. I see love in the air.

Now Hale...she is my social butterfly. She could argue with a rock or make friends with it, which ever she was int he mood for at the time. Her open house was a little disorganized. That day it was 100+ degrees. The open house was at 2:00. We got there at about 1:45. The doors were locked. They did not open the doors until exactly 2:00. They did not have a new to the school tour as the middle school did so we had no idea where we were going when we got there. During the summer when we registered, there was construction and we were not allowed to walk around. The first thing we encountered when we walked in was a teacher whose boobs could have been a shelf for her chin. Sometimes you can just tell when they're fake. It's not like they were huge they were just out there it seemed for all the little kids to see. She did little to conceal them with the tank top and the half unbuttoned button down shirt she was wearing. And the lipstick was hideous as well. I think if I see her like that again, I will complain. Or I can just send Hale to go tell her she's got too much skin showing. She does that to me when my shirt is shorter than the waist line of my pants.

So we finally find our way to Hale's class. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Benac. Pronounced bee-nack. I was hoping for some french twist to it, but it's just as redneck as the beer guzzlers at the soccer park. Bee-nack. She seems nice enough though. Spent allot of time with me, knowing Hale was new, answering all of my questions even though she had lots of other parents. That was thoughtful. I just hope she can contain Hale's mouth. Hale's open house was much quicker than Taylors, thankfully. I will never wear flip flops to another elementary school again. Once we left I asked Hale if she spied anyone she thought she could make friends with. She said she did. I asked if she talked the person and she said no. When she came home from school on her first day, she proclaimed, "I have five new friends." I asked her if the girl she had spied before was one of them, she said it was and that she was the best one so far. Turns out, she lives pretty much right behind us. Her first day home, not ten minutes after she got home, the phone rings. I thought i was just Tom checking to see how their day went, but it was Mattie checking to see if Hale could play. She called another three time int he next fifteen minutes. She must have been checking to see if the phone number was real. After she finished her homework she went out to play with Mattie. Mattie rode her bike to our house to get Hale and to take a tour of our house. When she rode up, i could swear it was Hale. They look just like each other. Except if at all possible, Mattie has longer skinnier legs than Hale.

All in all, school has been great. Come September, I may have another new "First Day of School" posting as Tom will be starting his first days of Washington U. Then we may have "Tracey's First Day at the Mental Ward."

Sweltering in the Sahara hot heat

Yeah, it's hot. Yahoo has us posted at 100 degrees at 8:00 pm. We have our own digital thermo reading set up and it registers 96 degrees. I think once you get over 90, a couple degrees here or there makes no difference. It's been hot to say the least. All last week was in the 100's with indexes reaching a few degrees higher. I can say though, I don't think humidity has been that bad. It's been so damn hot, you can't really tell the humidity. When we first moved in, our thermostat reading was kept at about 72 degrees by the previous owner (or maybe that was the contractor since he was here for about two months). Once we got moved in we were all freezing. We were bundled up as if it were December in Virginia. It did take a few days to figure out the thermostat was designed to function on different cooling zones during the day. Early am was set at 74 degrees, later in the day was set at 72 degrees and then evening was set at something else. We finally, after being in the house for a few days and freezing, figured out we needed to reset the cooling times. We pretty much have it adjusted to 74 degrees for the entire day. Today, however, after seeing 104 degrees on our thermostat, the house reading was at 76, i think. But we still felt great. Even enough to occasionally have to put on a light jacket.

Last Wednesday was the last time I was able to take Taylor and Hale to the pool before school starts Monday. Yes this Monday. A full two weeks earlier than in Virginia. It was almost too hot to be at the pool. I'm not one of those types that likes to get into the public pool. Too many kids without diapers for me. I had no choice. The sweat starting dripping every fifteen minutes or so and I had no choice but to cool off. If not we would have left after 30 minutes.

So in today's heat, we had Taylor's first soccer game. It was a 3:30 game in a series of fields with not the first indication of shade. These fields are flanked on either side by corn fields. Made me feel a little like I was back in Virginia. When we left was when the thermostat reading was at 104 (which i have a picture of). At the field it was 102. We've had some reservations about this team Taylor is on since the beginning. The team started out as the Woodchips, then the coach decided he'd move the kids to a different club called Swanner United. Swanner appears to be a better club, but the coach is still the same. The team only has 11 girls. And U13 soccer plays 11 v 11. So easy mathematics tell you all 11 girls play all the time. We just made our club fees check out to, guess who, the coach. Normally we make a check to a club or league. He explained in order to get a checking account in the name of the club required incorporation and this was too much trouble for him to do. Yes, I know major red flags. But after many bend over and smile experiences in St. Louis so far, we're keeping our eyes open.

If you've read any previous blog postings, you'll know that alcohol is the preferred beverage in this town regardless of the extreme heat. The games were running a little over today so Tom and I made our way to the side lines to wait for the previous team to finish their game. We set up our chairs to wait for prime midfield spots. It's just to the two of us. We don't take up much room. So as the previous team is finishing here come St. Louis rednecks out of the mill works. They swoop in behind us like birds of prey (which are many here, perched high in their own concrete jungle feeding on pigeons). Just like the rest of St. Louis, do what you can to get ahead (or make a buck) without thinking of who you might screw over. Yeah it's a small thing, not a big deal unless everyday you got screwed over one way or another. As soon as the past game's parents are packed up and gone they jump right into our territory, midfield.

Back to the booze. As we're sitting there waiting for the game to start, I here that familiar pop of a carbonated drink open. I glance up and the woman next to me (the redneck bird of prey woman) has popped open a beer. I'm sorry to stereotype people, but I come from a family of proud rednecks so I think I'm an expert at identifying them. She fit the description. She's drinking a beer at her daughter's soccer game. There's nothing more redneck than that. I don't even think my family would do that. Not in public anyway. She wasn't worried about hiding it. I guess there again, that may be the culture around here. The list of classifying redneck traits...beer drinking at your daughter's soccer game, smoking at a sport were normally smoking is not acceptable, the Dale Earnhardt Junior Umbrella, the demin cut off shorts (sorry Tammy), the tattoo of a wolf on your too small bicep (the husband), the foul language regardless of who may be around and the nonstop talk of how good our daughter is, even though she is already at age 12 about 20 pounds over weight. Oh, don't let me forget the echo of "air you go". Maybe not as prevalent as in Virginia, but still heard it even in the Midwest. Kaeli, that was for you! But this couple seemed to have a following. There were plenty of people hanging around them. I never would have imagined. I tried to make my talk small, so as not to appear stuck up but was very annoyed by them. Oh the drama ensues.

This was Taylor's first game, with a new team, in a new state...a guess what. She scored the first goal of the game by either team. Yes I said that right. She scored the first goal of the game. It was awesome. I know it made her feel good and it built her confidence for the rest of the game. She was close at two other goals but was denied. Her team went on to win, 3-0. Her last two seasons in Virginia, they only won 2 games. That's two seasons, not just one. She was growing frustrated understandably. I think what she never grasped was that her first year she was younger than the rest of the kids minus two and was added in and then the next season those three were teamed with a group of new kids to form a completely new team again. Kids don't understand you need time to work as a team to understand what each other is thinking. Or maybe that may not be the case. This team today, with little time to practice all together at any one time, did pretty damn awesome. Who can say what it is. All i know is she did a great job today and she made her parents very proud of her. That goal is what it took to prove to these kids in this over privilege society that she can do just as good as they can if not better. She's been turned away by some of the better clubs for bulls**t reasons. And sometimes i wonder about her own intentions with the game, but either way she can play and if she wanted it bad enough she could blow all of these a**holes away.

So, 9:23 pm and it's now 92 degrees. SAHARA HEAT!

Any of you who know Hale go to crown-ridge.com. This will be her ultimate experience. I'm going to do the Siberian VIP tour with her and then eat some buffalo!

Sorry for the long get away. Have been busy home decorating and pool escaping. Will post pictures soon.

Taylor's soccer team website is swannerunited.com.