Today marks a beginning and an end.

My son starts his senior year in high school and it’s my last “first day” of K-12 school. I’ve had 22 first days of school since my oldest daughter began kindergarten!

Most things…I’ll always miss. Making lunches, buying school supplies, double checking that everyone has new socks and shoes. (I don’t know why but new socks for children are very important to me. It’s symbolic that they have a mom who is looking after them.)

But I have to admit, there are some things I’ll never miss. For one, spending a month’s worth of groceries on donations to public schooling. Filling out endless and repetitive forms. Traffic jams at school in the morning. Running out of lunch bags. Back-to-school night where you have 1.4 minutes to gallop across a crowded campus in the dark to find a classroom, hear the teacher’s quick intro, then the buzzer rings and you have to gallop to the other side of campus.

And every school we’ve ever been to has been under construction while my kids have attended. Even in Hong Kong! In fact, my son’s high school gym was recently torn down. As the construction workers excavated, they have found (so far) 26 Indian bodies and a horse! So work has halted…indefinitely.

Kinda sad for my son–a basketball player–to have his last year, without a gym.

Enough of my whining!

Here’s a little something to get your blood pumping and put a skip in your step on this Tuesday, the end of true summer.