Preschool and the One Ring
My subject line makes this sound so much cooler than it is. Sorry, such is the world.
Today I got the paperwork to enroll the Mouse in preschool. I'm so excited. I've been eager for this step for a while now - not because I'm super gung-ho about my kidlet growing up, but because I think she deserves to have regular friends to play with on a nearly-daily basis. I had a brother and a sister growing up - I learned plenty from interacting with them every day: how to negotiate, how to share, how to talk to other people without sounding completely crazy. Plus, I was never lonely (though sometimes I longed for it, lemme tell you!). Moira has none of this. She doesn't socialize regularly with anyone under the age of thirty.
I tried a Mommy & Toddler group last year, hoping to get some good playtime for her. Clearly, I found the wrong one; it sucked. Hard. I was miserable, Moira was miserable. It was just awful. More for me, no doubt, but still. I'm not good with strangers, but I figured we'd pretty much talk exclusively about our kids, so it wouldn't be too awful. So. Wrong. No one wanted to talk about kids. They wanted to know why I worked. Full time? :gasp!: Even "'Cause the world's so expensive, right?" didn't work. They looked at their manicures and started talking about people I didn't know. I tried one more meetup, figuring I must've gone to the snobby one. Nope. Same deal. I guess I could've tried to find another group, but by then I was completely freaked out.
So, then, preschool. We're going to one through the YMCA. Partly 'cause the program looks cool, partly 'cause it's close by. Mostly 'cause we can afford it. It starts in late August, three days per week for only two and a half hours per session. She'll be cool with that kind of transition, I think. Plus, she gets to swim. Two days per week are swim days. I wish I had two swim days each week. The only real catch is that, due to my work schedule, I won't be the one dropping off or picking up or doing much of anything with preschool, including volunteering for field trips and stuff. :( I guess I'll be the Mom that no one knows. Ugh. I'll get to schedule one weekday off per month. I'll just have to choose wisely, I suppose.
On a totally unrelated note, q-sama and I finished The Second-Breakfast Club yesterday. Now we're letting it sit, with a plan to revisit on Monday for the first of the edits/revisions. I don't think it's gonna need much, but we'll see. It finished at over 60,000 words. Not bad for only two months' writing, huh? Last time I wrote something long (about 10K shorter, in fact) it took me six months. Clearly, collaborating with Li is the way to go. Anyway, we plan to release it in six chapters - one per week starting this coming Saturday. So mark your calendars, Tolkien fans. Well, maybe not Tolkien fans - they might be outraged. Let's say, fans of cracky-but-not-really high-school AU fics featuring LOTR characters sometimes acting like they did in the book/films instead. That covers it better. So mark your calendars! If you exist.
/ shameless plug
And I've already gone back to working on my Eowyn story, which actually surprised me, as the mood is so altogether different that I thought I'd have to abandon it forever. She's making me sad, though. Poor Eowyn. She has to suffer a lot before she gets to happy, doesn't she?
Today I got the paperwork to enroll the Mouse in preschool. I'm so excited. I've been eager for this step for a while now - not because I'm super gung-ho about my kidlet growing up, but because I think she deserves to have regular friends to play with on a nearly-daily basis. I had a brother and a sister growing up - I learned plenty from interacting with them every day: how to negotiate, how to share, how to talk to other people without sounding completely crazy. Plus, I was never lonely (though sometimes I longed for it, lemme tell you!). Moira has none of this. She doesn't socialize regularly with anyone under the age of thirty.
I tried a Mommy & Toddler group last year, hoping to get some good playtime for her. Clearly, I found the wrong one; it sucked. Hard. I was miserable, Moira was miserable. It was just awful. More for me, no doubt, but still. I'm not good with strangers, but I figured we'd pretty much talk exclusively about our kids, so it wouldn't be too awful. So. Wrong. No one wanted to talk about kids. They wanted to know why I worked. Full time? :gasp!: Even "'Cause the world's so expensive, right?" didn't work. They looked at their manicures and started talking about people I didn't know. I tried one more meetup, figuring I must've gone to the snobby one. Nope. Same deal. I guess I could've tried to find another group, but by then I was completely freaked out.
So, then, preschool. We're going to one through the YMCA. Partly 'cause the program looks cool, partly 'cause it's close by. Mostly 'cause we can afford it. It starts in late August, three days per week for only two and a half hours per session. She'll be cool with that kind of transition, I think. Plus, she gets to swim. Two days per week are swim days. I wish I had two swim days each week. The only real catch is that, due to my work schedule, I won't be the one dropping off or picking up or doing much of anything with preschool, including volunteering for field trips and stuff. :( I guess I'll be the Mom that no one knows. Ugh. I'll get to schedule one weekday off per month. I'll just have to choose wisely, I suppose.
On a totally unrelated note, q-sama and I finished The Second-Breakfast Club yesterday. Now we're letting it sit, with a plan to revisit on Monday for the first of the edits/revisions. I don't think it's gonna need much, but we'll see. It finished at over 60,000 words. Not bad for only two months' writing, huh? Last time I wrote something long (about 10K shorter, in fact) it took me six months. Clearly, collaborating with Li is the way to go. Anyway, we plan to release it in six chapters - one per week starting this coming Saturday. So mark your calendars, Tolkien fans. Well, maybe not Tolkien fans - they might be outraged. Let's say, fans of cracky-but-not-really high-school AU fics featuring LOTR characters sometimes acting like they did in the book/films instead. That covers it better. So mark your calendars! If you exist.
/ shameless plug
And I've already gone back to working on my Eowyn story, which actually surprised me, as the mood is so altogether different that I thought I'd have to abandon it forever. She's making me sad, though. Poor Eowyn. She has to suffer a lot before she gets to happy, doesn't she?