New Student

I"m getting back in touch with the range of emotions JR must have felt last September when he started kindergarten. I feel like I've started a new school. New (wonderful, BTW) teachers. Every day new and exciting things to learn. New friends.

There have also been passing moments of desperately missing my old friends. (I had this moment yesterday, standing in line at the deli across the street from the new office building, waiting for my sandwich, where I felt this sharp, stabbing absence of one of my old lunch buddies. When I emailed him later, he reminded me that we'd been lunch buddies for 17 years. We knew each other's routines, we could order for each other.)

There are also the new routines at home. Mastering the new commute. Getting organized the night before with items necessary for the new book bag. New school supplies.

Mostly, it's exciting and invigorating. I leave work every day with my brain feeling like it has been stretched in an entirely different direction. It's akin to the "burn" you feel after working out (okay, okay, the "burn" that I've heard that some people feel when they work out). :)

Life is new.

(On the homefront - last night we had a discussion about mating for life and swans. At camp, they took a trip to a state park with a lake and JR reported that they saw swans. First he described them as "neese" which he eventually acknowledged to be geese, but then he corrected himself. He said the birds were big and white and they saw one (which he described as "totally unexpected") and then were even more surprised when there turned out to be two. So we discussed mommy and daddy swans and how they are usually seen in pairs.)