Number 2:   Go back to bed.
Number 3:  Start summer vacation.
Number 4.  Tie Mom down like Gulliver, and don’t let her transcribe anything until she gets 8 hours of sleep. 

School is out for the summer! 

This year, school let out later into June than any prior year in my memory, since our school district started for the first time last year, after Labor Day versus way the heck before. 

In the many towns of my past childrearing through elementary, junior and high schools, we have been well-versed in starting school long before summer “seems” to be over, and getting out then in the spring of things, just barely into the first days of June. 

This year, because of the late start after the long holiday weekend, it seemed like school was never going to end. 

The combination of this change, my wicked work schedule this week, and only four hour sleep, led to me waking my 11-year-old up this morning at 7:30, throwing clean undies and socks on the foot of her bed, surveying the weather outside her curtains, and deeming it “shorts weather.” 

I spun on my bare-footed heels and headed back to bed, saying over my shoulder, “I’ll keep your spot warm, for our ‘glorious minutes’ before school.” 

On days, when I’m severely sleep-deprived, and don’t even have the functioning capacity to run the toaster, let alone make “hole in the head Freds” or pour milk on cereal, Ali grabs things like bananas and yogurt, or a bagel and cream cheese, and then dives under the covers with me, dressed for school, except for her shoes. 

“Sponge Bob” freaks out all over the TV, while I half-sleep, half-listen and half-talk to Ali in the “glorious warm minutes,” as we call them, before the alarm clock goes off a second time, signaling that she must kiss the cats, her bunny rabbit and my cheek (in that order) before running a brush over her hair, one over her teeth, slipping feet into shoes, grabbing her pack and running out the door to catch the bus. 

On sleep-deprived mornings, I usually lie down for another hour before I resume work, after watching said bus pick up Ali from the driveway top. 

This morning, was no different … or so I thought, but instead of Ali coming into our bedroom dressed with breakfast in a napkin, she came in grogged over, still in her pajamas.  She asked me, “Can I go back to bed now?”

I sat up, looked at her, smiled at her funny joke, and said, “No, you have to go to school!” 

Ali reminded me then, “Mom!  School was out yesterday!”

I fell back onto the pillows, in a fit of giggles that also comes with days and days of little sleep.  It sounds mentally ill at best.  

“Oh, geez,” I said, “Go back to bed!”

Before Ali left the room for her room, she said, “Do you know what I was dreaming when you woke me up? … I was dreaming that you were writing another book, but you asked me to write one of the chapters for you.  I was just getting to that when you came and woke me up!”

I am going to start that book now, and maybe when Ali gets home from her time visiting her dad, she’ll write one of the chapters for me … before school starts, that is … whenever that is!