Gone Fishin’

It’s taken me all of two weeks to realize my son NEEDS to go to summer school.

Or Mommy’s head will explode.

I never thought I’d be the mother that sent her kids off to do something simply because they are driving her crazy. I even looked at those mothers with the stink eye when they would tell me Jr. absolutely had to be enrolled at the preschool’s summer camp.

What selfish bitches. It’s summer. You don’t need to send your kid to glorified daycare in the summer while you get a pedicure.

Cough. Cough, aaaahem.

Yeah, about that…um…I was wrong.

I actually called the preschool director over the 4th holiday begging for a spot for Count Waffles. BEGGING. I’ll take anything. Any day. Any time. Name your price. Just take my pride and joy from 9am to noon. Please. For the love of all that is holy…take him. Entertain him. Give him something better to do than watch me drink my coffee and wonder if I can justifiably give him a pail of water and a spatula and call it a “fun, outdoor, water project.”

As luck would have it, we’ve had visitors and holidays and swim lessons to occupy our time these first, few, school-less weeks. But I can see glimpses of just how ugly things will get if there isn’t some sort of structure this summer.

Naked, popsicle-streaked, bored, napless children will abound. They will clamor for park trips and be disappointed when I say “no.” It’s 106 degrees and the slide will, literally, burn your ass. ( I don’t want to talk about how I discovered the slide-from-hell-that-is-a-lawsuit-waiting-to-happen, but let’s just say I still have marks)

They will either be clothed in a wet bathing suit or their sticky birthday suit.

Shampoo and soap will be optional. The pool does the job, and who’s going to see them anyway?

And I will fall into a very lazy summer of “cleaning” (I picked up the toys, but ignored the large juice spill in the kitchen) and “educating” (yes, watermelon seeds can be spit even further if you use your tongue thusly) and “bending the rules” (sure, you can dig up that entire pile of dirt and pour it over your up-side-down bike as long as you walk through the sprinkler later).

So go ahead and give me the stink eye. But I’m sending my kid to summer school so I can go get a pedicure. I might even hire a babysitter too.