aelf

UofSC has beaten out PennState. Now Zoë has to decide if she wants to accept her Capstone invitation. She was dead set on not doing any honors programs in college, but UofSC's Capstone actually looks more social/less academic, and it has some opportunities I think she'd really enjoy (specifically travel). I'm working really hard at keeping my preferences out of this though, which is harder than it should be. I already got to pick my college experience(s), it's her turn.

She'll be going down to visit UofSC over spring break. I suppose things might change at that point. And she still has an open playing field of offers, she's only declining the ones that she knows she doesn't want (e.g. she prefers UofSC to NCSU, so she declined NCSU). It's nice to be at the stage of making final decisions. Although she had a dentist appointment last week that made me realize everything's still up in the air, because I had no idea when to schedule her 6 mos cleaning! Once she's got a schedule I'll need to get everything shifted around. And probably need to keep shifting, because who knows when she'll be coming home, or visiting friend, or traveling, or anything.

I've bought a pair of theoretically waterproof shoes, since when I was going for walks in the rain my feet were getting soaked. And of course since I bought them, it hasn't rained. They feel pretty well broken in, now I just need to hope for rain to confirm the shoes actually keep my feet dry. Mail order shoes are incredibly stressful.

And Zoë's college results are in, mostly. She got in everywhere but was deferred to the regular round of admission for UMich. It means she doesn't know where she's going yet, since she likes Michigan. Her next choice is now flip flopping between Univ South Carolina and Penn State. I prefer South Carolina, because they gave her scads of merit money (it works out cheaper than even our in-state schools that also gave her scads of merit money). But it's her decision, other than my telling her she needs to basically treat UMich as a pie-in-the-sky, and get down to the serious work of deciding between South Carolina or Penn State.

I'm going to try to work out with her a way to visit both the in-play schools. I'm not going to make her visit the rest of the acceptances since just getting to her two top choices will be a challenge. If it happens. Penn State can at least be a day trip, but it won't be a real college visit. It'd let her spend some time on campus and get a feel for the environment. It's been a while since she's been to Columbia, so we'll need to get back to South Carolina as well. I was also debating heavily encouraging her to go to Purdue. But I'm not sure visiting would push it up her ranking any, so probably a waste of time. It's a great school, though. Anyway, instead of being in the final stretch, turns out there're a few more months to wait. (Though if we're lucky, in deciding between Penn State and Univ of South Carolina, she'll fall (back) in love, and Michigan will just naturally cease to be that interesting.) I guess I'm fortunate that she's not waffling among all the schools on her list. Given everything, I was surprised she had done so well. Applications are up insane numbers at a lot of schools.

On the other hand, this isn't a bad thing because it means her second semester senior year is semi-meaningful (assuming she ultimately gets wait listed at UMich) so she can't write it off. Which is helpful, because she's having a hard time staying interested. Though she really is doing a bang up job, even with everything that's going on. Though she's already said it doesn't matter what she gets on the AP Bio exam, she's not taking college credit for it because she doesn't feel like she's learning enough. She's got something like a 98 average in that class though, so maybe she'll rethink it depending on her result. That, too, is months away though.

We're definitely feeling in the home stretch though. She's got both feet out of the door from high school, a consequence of covid I think, as well as just being ready for high school. I reminded her she could do a gap year or something if she wanted, but she has no interest in wasting time and the thought of being "old" (you know, like 22) when she graduates from college is horrifying. Which does make some amount of sense since she's thinking dental or med school after undergrad. And she wants to have kids, so she keeps calculating career + child bearing and raising, and feeling like she's somewhat on a rail if she wants to meet all her goals. I expect she'll be surprised when her plans shift radically as she gets older. :)

With everyone home all the time, it's so hard to get quiet. We normally have a quiet home, but I really, really need a lot of space and silence and it's hard to get these days. I do a lot of getting up early and taking advantage of what peace there is with everyone else sleeping. That makes it sound like we have hordes here, "everyone," instead of the 3 of us + dog + fish. It feels like hordes.

Zoë drove in snow and ice this week for the first time, and did well. She tried to argue it wasn't a big deal because her car has 4 wheel drive, I told her many moronic drivers who aren't smart enough to stay home in icy conditions end up in wrecks or stranded in their 4 wheel drive vehicles. She said if she ends up in a snowy/icy state she'll need to have practice driving in yuck, and I agreed, but also said as someone who's lived in those environments, the people who live there know the safest, smartest thing is to stay off the roads when they're awful. Being able to manage in an emergency is important, but keeping yourself out of an unsafe situation is even better. She wisely stayed put while it was treacherous, going out once it was better to get some practice in.

Her college application season is going remarkably well. She's gotten in to one of her top choices, and got amazing merit money. She mentioned it would be easiest at this point for her other top choices to just reject her so she doesn't have to decide among them, especially calculating the finances. She's been appreciative that I've been a realist with her college applications, as she's watched friends get rejected/deferred from their dream schools in the ED round. I cautioned her against having a dream school like Brown or WashU because their acceptance rates make them basically a lottery, and absolutely wonderful, perfect students don't get accepted every single year. Apply to them, sure, but don't focus on them to the exclusion of all others. She ultimately decided those applications weren't worth doing anyway (essays!), but she's also seeing the results where she has excellent college choices in hand, and several friends are having to rework their application strategy/wrap their heads around loving a different school. Seeing the accepted/deferred/rejected stats for this year at top schools is just ridiculous. I feel so bad for this 2021 class, they're really getting it from all directions. (But apparently my typical pessimism set my kid up for some level of success this year. So ... go pessimism?)

My broken toe is still broken. It's healing, just slowly, and it's driving me nuts. I'm going to be getting some more firewood in a couple weeks, and I hope it's better by then. Moving and stacking the first load when it was freshly broken was stupidly painful. I also want to resume my morning walks, which were a consistent way of getting a break and getting away from people, but I need my foot to be mostly healed. I'm getting really good at building lasting fires. I start one in the morning and keep it slow and steady throughout the day. I'm so glad we have a fireplace. It's been a notable positive during this experience. We'll need a similar thing for the summer. Last summer was all crisis for us; hopefully this summer won't be. But it'll mean we'll be more aware of the limitations even with getting Zoë ready to head off to college. Maybe it's finally time to get our back porch cleaned up and more usable. I am too aware I'm picking up projects that give me something to look forward to when things outside of my control feel pretty darn bleak.

I'm going to be talking about college applications, so if you're parenting through them and don't want to read, abort abort! I'm specifically not talking about details on Facebook because life is stressful enough for everyone and I'm not going to add to anyone's stress. Once things are decided, I'm sure I'll happily announce where Zoë's going. Until then, I'll just talk about related things (like her potential interest in trying out marching band).

Because we're in strange times, Zoë applied to 9 colleges. Salisbury U (MD), Univ. South Carolina, Penn State, St Mary's (MD), Purdue, Univ Mich, NCSU, Univ Delaware, Univ MD. She would have left off all of the Maryland schools because she doesn't want to stay in state, but with no test scores and no idea how colleges were planning on handled all the deferred 2020's plus no-score 2021's, I told her that she needed to apply to MD schools. (She thinks Univ Delaware is her safety, but I wasn't as comfortable.) Fortunately she recognized the difficult year, and picked MD schools that required little-or-no additional work on the common app. (She did not apply to Towson because it does not use the common app, although all things considered she'd probably prefer to go to Towson than any of the other MD schools.) She decided not to apply to some schools she'd be interested in (Wash U) because of the application requirements.

We were lucky and she was able to get both an SAT and an ACT taken, although the ACT scores didn't come in until after she'd submitted all her applications. She did everything Early Action, which means she's finished with applications (with one sort-of exception). Her SAT score was good enough, but her ACT blew her SAT out of the water. Fortunately her college counselor took up the charge and is working to make sure her schools add it to her applications. We sent it to them all through ACT as a just-in-case. The exception to applications is University of South Carolina, which she finished ages ago, but recently encouraged her to apply for the honors college and some scholarships. She doesn't want to attend an honors college (big school experiences only!) but she'll write some essays for potential money.

What's really nice is that a couple weeks after she submitted her Salisbury application, they sent her an acceptance. Everything now is a touch easier, she has a college she can go to if her preferred choices don't pan out. That's my lesson learned from this. If you can convince your kid to apply to their safeties and their top choices for early action? Do it. It really did/does help to have that acceptance in hand. Now, it's just a waiting game. She has a spreadsheet with the expected dates of admission/rejection for each school. Starting in mid-December and running to early-Feb, I expect her to a bit of a nutcase.

This has been a mess of a college application adventure. No campus visits, only sheer luck she was able to take an SAT and an ACT (rather than taking at least one of them twice, after determining a study plan and studying ... which is how kids do it now. Instead, her cohort's done standardized tests like we did when I was applying, one and done. We are going to have to do campus visits once she knows where she's been accepted. I don't see how she'll choose otherwise. So even if her school's still doing hybrid, we'll probably just tell them she's staying home because we'll be doing weekend trips out of state to see colleges.

Distance learning is still a nightmare, although her first quarter grades were stellar. She pointed out that's what happens when you get to take only classes you want to take, rather than having to take boring classes with lots of writing like history. I'm impressed with the "make the best of it" attitude she and her friends have, and the things they're doing to stay connected and as excited as they can be about their somewhat-vague futures. I'm keeping my fingers crossed my kid gets into one of her top choice schools, and that a vaccine comes out in time for her to have something of a normal college experience at some time over the next 4 years.

It's almost time for Zoë to start school, her senior year. She's not as excited about it as she would be in a normal world, because her school has adjusted a lot of the pomp and circumstance to make it safer.

Meantime, my over 70 year old mom is breaking her over 80 year old friends out of their assisted living homes and driving all over North Carolina because their mental health was suffering greatly from being stuck, alone, in their homes. My mom is a rule follower, so they got permission, and she is the only one taking these women out for their Thelma and Louise getaways. I asked my mom if she wasn't concerned about this additional risk, and she said when she was a child there was polio and no antibiotics and she vividly remembers an instance when she was quite young and had gotten her legs completely torn up on a fence, and her grandfather desperately afraid she was going to die. So, no, she's going to live her life and see her friends, and be careful but if this is what kills her, then she's had a life well-lived. I can't argue with her.

Which of course makes Zoë all the more frustrated about the changes that her school's making because these traditions are huge, and she's not overselling it when she says they've looked forward to these celebrations since Kindergarten. But the school's trying, and I feel so fortunate that she's at a school where she's well known and has relationships with, well, everyone. So she's not going to be alone and adrift her senior year. She already has study groups set up for her classes (AP Bio, AP Calc BC, Women in the Wilderness, Chesapeake Bay Ecology, The Works of Cormac McCarthy, Psychology, Chorus, Honors Latin 5). She's totally lucked out because she can finally fit her performance fine arts credit into her schedule, she begrudgingly picked chorus as the least offensive (she has serious performance anxiety - she loves music, hates performing), and it's unlikely they're going to do very many performances. She's upset about Latin 5, because it's the culmination of the Latin trek which she has adored, but because Latin's taught at Gilman instead of RPCS, it's going to be at least a semester before she gets to be at that class in person. It's a tiny class, I think only 7 kids have made it through to this class, so they should be able to do a really good job with online, but it's definitely a loss. She will hopefully go back in person at the September (the school's starting with the little kids, and if all goes well, allowing the older kids back), which she really needs. I have no idea how she's going to do AP Bio or Chesapeake Bay Ecology online. Those are hands-on classes, and Chesapeake Bay Ecology is mostly outdoors on the schools grounds. She couldn't fit French 6 into her schedule with her other courses, so she's not taking French this year. And she's thrilled to not be taking history.

She still hasn't gotten to take the SAT, not for lack of trying. 5? opportunities have been cancelled so far. I suspect this has something to do with her lack of motivation for working on her college applications. I kind of wish we lived in Kansas, assuming they still do this, where if you were a graduate of a Kansas high school you could just say "yep, I want to go." And there you were. It would be nice to have something that simple to fall back on. These kids have been through a lot, and it hasn't ended. She does have the AP scores from the 2 AP exams she took last year, so maybe that can demonstrate she's capable of college level work if it comes to it. Who knows. I've resolved not to pressure her about it. She's been through enough, she's got enough to deal with.

Zoë's been baking up a storm. It started when the kids were sent home from school, everyone was under the stay at home, and most kids weren't seeing anyone. She baked. And baked. And baked. And dropped off what she made at her friends houses. After a month of no-contact delivery, kids started venturing out a bit, she began hanging out with one of her good friends, and the two of them have basically been constant companions. We've gone through 100 lbs of all purpose flour since this started. And assorted specialty flours, as she could get them (for macarons, special breads, and so on).

The company that employed Mike went out of business as Maryland's shut down began. So we cut all expenses (except, obviously, baking related, for mental health reasons. Oh, and spotify, we didn't take the kid's music). We managed to live on the unemployment money until he got another job, with quite a nice raise too! We're still trying to live cheaply, but we're doing things like repairing the AC in the studio (been broken for a couple of years) because Mike's office is out there and his job's entirely from home. And he might be ready to take on the library project eventually, which would become my office since it's looking less likely that I'll return to the office. I offered to turn the music room into a study for Zoë for when school starts, but she says she'll just stay in her room. We'll see. I don't expect both of our jobs to make it through the ~2 year downturn I anticipate because of all this, so I want us to have a year's worth of expenses ready, not requiring us pull from our retirement accounts or Zoë's college. Mike thinks I'm being paranoid. I think I'm being practical.

I have my fingers crossed that Zoë's senior year goes without a hitch. She's worried about her classmates from China, whether she's going to get to row this year (the season was canceled last year), and if she's going to get to have class with her Latin teacher. I'm worried about her keeping it together enough to apply to college. Mike's focused on performing well in his job and making it through the probationary period. JWST's not scheduled to launch until Oct 2021, so hopefully I'm employed until then. And more hopefully the launch goes well and I continue to remain employed.

When I was young, you had to sort of kind of guess which colleges might accept you, because there wasn't the same volume of information available. And you decided which colleges you wanted to apply to based on the brochures they sent, if, like me, you were going to an out of state college (we moved my senior year in HS, in-state wasn't going to be a thing for me, I needed merit money). And there wasn't a common app, which meant actually doing a complete app for every school. I applied to 5, which was a lot. Didn't visit a single one, though I had been to William and Mary and UVA before. And then when I got my acceptances, I used the brochures and the financial aid packages to make my choice.

Now, you have to go visit the colleges. I suggested to Zoë that unless a school indicated they wanted to see demonstrated interest, she didn't actually need to go visit beforehand. She was offended. So there's this list of 13 colleges she's interested in that she wants to go visit. And it's not even a complete list, it's the names she's recorded. She's talked about others. It doesn't help that her friends are visiting colleges all over the place, and I'm ... it seems like wasted money and effort. I suggest we visit local colleges so she can assess criteria, but no. I'm like, you say you want a big college, but before we plan a week trip to see all these big colleges, why not visit UMD. And if UMD is too big, then we can limit the big colleges to the one or two she thinks she likes for reasons in addition to "they're big." I know she wants to break out of small school, since she's been in a school of 800 students since Kindergarten. But she thinks the local high school (2K students) is huge. But I get it. I picked colleges in part based on which didn't have required classes.

Which is all to say. I'm excited she's excited about college. I'm excited to see her go to college, experience college, enjoy college. I am not excited about the picking-a-college bit.

For the first time since starting HS, Zoë was able to get all the classes she wanted!
AP Latin
AP Music Theory
AP US History
Honors Chem
English
French 5
Photography
Honors Pre-Calc BC

She's frustrated there's no AP English classes that Juniors can take, even though the kids can elect to take AP English exams at the end of the year if they want. But she's getting to take English at Gilman, and if her experience with Latin is anything to judge by, it should be a good class for her.

There are 3 girls from her school taking AP Latin, and one of the Gilman boys told her there were about 7 boys signed up. The teacher is intense. Everyone says AP Latin eats your life. From the kids who are just phenomenal students to the kids who are casual about their grades ... actually, kids who are casual about their grades don't take AP Latin. The teacher kicks kids out of class if they aren't prepared, and has told the entire class to get out when they weren't taking it seriously. And the kids love him (and fear him). So I think it's going to be a growing experience for Zoë no matter what.

AP Music Theory has 7 kids. It's an online class, so I'm not sure how they're going to handle that. Zoë's piano teacher has agreed to help provide structure for studying, and looking at the class roster the kids should be able to put together a nice study group. (4 Gilman boys, 2 RPCS girls, 1 Bryn Mawr girl. Zoë doesn't know the Bryn Mawr girl.)

APUSH has 15 kids. Honors Chem has 19 kids. There are 5 RPCS girls in her English class (unknown how many Gilman boys). 5 kids in her French 5 class, and the teacher is the one she's considering asking to mentor her for her Language Certificate project. She needs to declare that this year. Photography is 9 kids first sem, 10 kids second. Honors Pre-Calc BC is 17 kids.

Zoë's decided AP Latin will be her sport in the Fall, which would give her 2 hours every day after school to spend on it. I think she's forgetting how much time the musical can take, but her perspective of treating Latin like a sport should work for her.

For math, they'll finish out the Exeter Math this year and start using a more standard text book. I'm hoping it's not too repetitive. The "figure it out yourself; now we'll make it harder and see if what you thought worked still works; let's keep doing that until you've figured out basic principles" method works so well for Zoë.

She's not going to do year round swimming. She's just going to swim (winter) and row (spring) for school. She still says she's doing her Gold project for GS, but it's been sitting there untouched. She has time, but Junior year is a bear of a year to begin with, she's already doubling up on academics. I need to figure out how to just let it be until she's ready, and then not get caught up in her stress if she picks an inopportune time.

She's already scheduled for piano. This past year they did most of the lessons during the school day. It took a bit of flexibility on everyone's parts, but it worked well enough they should be able to continue doing it. Zoë's been working on some Chopin so she should be ready to hit the ground running when lessons start up for the year. She's decided her couple-year break of doing popular music instead of classical is over.

In Maryland, the earliest you can get your learners permit for driving is 15 years 9 mos. For Zoë, that was yesterday. She has been determined to get hers exactly on that date for a while now. We pointed out that her spring break trip through Europe didn't get her home until the 24th, and a jet-lagged, no sleep kid is not necessarily going to do her best. She insisted.

We got to the MVA, and it was packed. We spent an hour in line, and then were told that we were likely to be there another 5 hours, and anyone who wanted could break out of the line and make an appointment for later. Zoë was wishy washy. She was not thrilled about standing in line (we couldn't have made an appointment ourselves, because the MVA doesn't let you make an appointment until you're 15 years and 9 mos old - I consider that an error, but they apparently consider it fine) but she really wanted her learners permit as soon as she could get it. I told her I'd do whatever she wanted. As soon as she heard the earliest appointments available were a week away, she said we were gutting it out. And we did.

5 hours to get the person who checked her paperwork and got her sorted out. Another 30 minutes for the test. She passed! And then while the fellow was putting together her permit, something went wrong and he lost the record. He had to send us back to the beginning. She didn't have to retake the test, but they had to go through and find her record, re-enter a bunch of things, and it took another couple hours. It was positively miserable, and by the end she wasn't even excited anymore.

Now we have 9 months to get the required practice in and to get her driving hours scheduled with the drivers ed people. And she has 9 months to complain about there not being a Jewish MVA where she could get her license when she's 16 and 6 mos (Dec 25).

She's one step closer to being independent. It's really cool and I'm glad she's reaching for it. It's a lot harder to nudge a reluctant kid towards independence, I think, than it is to try and gently rein in a kid who's grabbing for it.

Zoë's submitted her schedule. Barring conflicts, next year she's taking

AP Latin
French V
Honors PreCalc BC
AP US History
English 11
Honors Chemistry
AP Music Theory
Photography

She plans to do tech for the musical in the fall, swim in the winter, and crew in the spring. She's debating soccer in the fall as well, but I'm suggesting no especially since she's back to year round swim outside of school. And she said that if she enjoys teaching swimming lessons this summer, she might want to look into doing that at the Y year round. If all goes according to plans, she'll get her license the end of December 2019, which means she can have all sorts of grand plans because I won't have to drive her everywhere. Although she's already asked that I drive her to swim practice next year because she wants to nap in the car on the way to morning practices.

She's also going to ask her piano teacher if he'll do an extra lesson focused on AP Music Theory, since it looks like she's going to be doing that as an independent study. I'm impressed she knows herself well enough to know if left to her own devices she'd probably flail, so enlisting some structure is a good idea.

It's shaping up to be a really busy year for her next year. This summer will hopefully be a bit of the calm before the storm. She's going to be working and doing year round and summer swim. And probably beginning college visits, if we can make up a list.

For the first time in a few years, I updated my resume and realized I'd found myself in more of an architecting/strategy position than a developer one. I confirmed that's what my direct manager is looking for, and immediately started looking for other positions. I'm not terribly interested in architecting and strategy work, so if that's my future where I am I need to make a new path for myself.

My job is stable, so I'm being picky. I've set out possible training plans and career paths, depending on what seems reasonable. And I've applied to a few positions, a couple to get my feet wet and shake off the cobwebs - it's been about 10 years since I last seriously looked for a job - and a couple because they sounded interesting. My resume seems to be working, so far everywhere I've submitted it has asked for an interview, so while it needs work it's good enough.

A friend pointed out that unless I'm willing to grow my career beyond "senior developer" I'm going to struggle with companies willing to pay my salary at some point. I know I'm not willing to go into management. I need to decide what other paths I have. I've been a senior dev since my 20's. Am I really not going to be able to sit there for another 20+ years? I've been browsing job ads and it looks like currently it might be easier to spend the next few decades in the security field while still getting to work and not having to turn into a manager or architect. Do security as a day job and dev work as a sideline? Figure out a way to make sure I can do dev work while holding a strategy level job?

I'm also having a personal debate about how much I'm willing to sell out for. At what salary level would I be willing to wear business casual to work? How much money would make me be willing to architect? It's useful for me to think about, since I start out at "not taking a job where I can't wear jeans" but there's a salary point at which that ceases being true. I need to figure that out so I can negotiate effectively. Although, Zoë does not buy my argument that my "nice" sneakers are "dress" sneakers. They worked for when I was a fed & did the whole business casual thing, so I'm sticking by my position with a very slight nod to the idea that maybe a 25 yr old could get away with dress sneakers in a way a 45 yr old can't.

In other news, Zoë is completely crushing crew try-outs. She's coming home exhausted and happy every single day. She's decided to make it her mission to be the first Sophomore in the first boat (it's unlikely to happen, although so far in the erg times she's making a splash, finishing in the top 8 every time). She's usually so happy-go-lucky it's quite the change to see her be so focused on something. One of her teammates who graduated last year ended up at a fairly local college with a rowing program and has come back to visit, and I think it's convinced Zoë more than ever that rowing in college will happen. Not sure how it'll fit with a pre-med track, but if she wants it I know she can make it work.

One of my coworkers asked if I was enjoying living vicariously through her, and I thought that was an odd question. She is so different from me. She's living a life I would never have lived in a million years, and would not choose. I'm very much enjoying watching her grow and figure things out, but I have my own life.

As always, life is a series of schedule conflicts. This weekend is the Swim Championship. But this weekend is also the Model UN Conference. Zoë talked with her swim coach and the Model UN sponsor, and among them determined that Model UN won out.

I'm interested to hear how she liked it. Model UN is not something I ever would have guessed she'd try. She was excited for the trip, although outraged that the schedule includes late-night meetings ("don't they know how important sleep is?!") which is probably influenced by the getting-up-at-4:30am-for-swim-practice life she's been leading for the past few months. But with the Championship, that's over too. And we'll slide right into crew season.

She has a very very slight chance of making the varsity 8 boat in crew, so I suspect as soon as she's back from Model UN I'll have to negotiate with her for time on the erg. So far I've hit every day this year (yes, yes, still in January), which is unfortunately really amazing for me.

Zoë's allergies frustrated her enough that she wanted to see an allergist, which she did. And found she's allergic to everything. Formalizing how we were handling her allergies and making her room a clean room (fish only, Lemmy not allowed. Removed all extra stuffed animals and pillows. Wash everything on hot every week - it's amazing my college comforter hasn't completely disintegrated yet) helped enough that she's steadfast against getting shots. We'll see how she feels when it's not the middle of winter. She's also made it through the swim season without an ear infection. Hoping that bodes well for her future, since club swim continues and then there's summer swim.

Zoë's been inundated with college mail. She's said she wants to go to a big, co-ed, not rural, college with a crew program she can join. And probably a club swim program she can join. Since she's still talking about dentistry, she understands that she needs to start at a 4 year (most dental schools do not accept science courses from a community college) and money is the driver of her decision (the goal is to graduate with nothing in loans) which likely means an in-state, public school. Over the next semester I need to get her to lay out some thoughts about where she'd like to visit this summer and next year. She keeps talking about Wash U. Maybe I should go ahead and take her, but it would be a complete long-shot. And so many med students go there, I'm afraid she'd end up with some serious weeder courses and rather than enjoy her science classes just see them as a grind. It's funny that she's fixated on the school my parents went to (and did not suggest at all for me, even with my grandmother living locally and having space to house a college student).

Since Zoë decided to do the musical this year and try out for swim, she's spent the past months staying at school until 8 and going on weekends. Then she decided to try out for the swim team which meant a week with me dropping her off at practice at 5:30am and then her not getting finished with musical stuff until 10pm and then not getting home until 10:30 or later. Fortunately she managed to stay up on her classwork and homework. Maybe also fortunately, she has a relaxed view of pretty much everything and can let some things go.
But the musical is over (all three shows sold out!), and she made the swim team! So now we have the more normal schedule of me waking her up at 4:30am so we can leave the house at 5:00am and she can get to the pool by 5:30am. Then pick her up at 3:30pm. Until after Thanksgiving, when afternoon crew practice will begin and then I'll be picking her up between 5-6pm. We have a nice short lull before things pick up a bit.
Getting to school so early did mean that this past Thursday when school was canceled for weather, she was already there for swim practice. I think I need to always toss my work computer in the car so I can head on into the office if the weather is iffy, to make it easier to grab her and head home if school is canceled. Fortunately there's a Starbucks near the school, and her school is always open. So she grabbed a cocoa and then walked to school where she hung out with the security guards and another girl on the swim team until I got there to pick her up. The other kid was picked up shortly before I got there.
Zoë's loving swim, as always. And baffled as to why she stopped doing year round swim, as always. And considering re-joining her year round swim team. Which ... I'm not terribly excited about, especially because regattas and swim meets will conflict like crazy in the spring. But we've juggled a rough schedule before and can again.

This school year, Zoë's taking Honors English, Honors Latin 3, Honors Math, Honors Physics, French 4, World History, and Drawing. After last year, she'd decided she did not like history and didn't want to do AP History. She'd also decided she didn't want to do honors english again. We got her schedule, and she learned she was put in honors english and decided to stick with it since she mostly liked who her classmates would be. After the first day of history she declared it horribly boring and asked if there was a way for AP History to fit in her schedule. It would require dropping out of Honors Math, so she's going to stick it out in regular history. Her teacher is new to her school, came from public school, and I suspect he's not used to having such small classes with kids who are used to pretty decent workloads. They've read very little and written only one short paper in the 2 weeks since school started. I am hopeful this history class lets Zoë enjoy it, instead of struggling to keep up with readings and papers (and constant DBQ practice). While I think AP would only have reinforced her complete dislike of history, I am worried that she's going to get bored, tune out, and bomb completely. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the teacher gets up to speed quickly.

Other than that, her schedule's fairly decent. She's frustrated she couldn't fit AP Music Theory in, but with double language that's going to be a persistent problem. She didn't want to ask about doing it self-study last year, we'll see if she gets up the courage to ask this year. Same problem with photography, it's only offered in one spot and that conflicted with honors latin. And she can't flip honors latin without losing honors math. She's not willing to give up either honors math or honors latin, so no photography for now.

She was planning on playing soccer this fall, but after the first day of try outs was completely covered in blisters from the sun so that was shelved. She considered volleyball since it's indoors. I reminded her she once tried a volleyball clinic and after a couple days decided not to return because it wasn't any fun. It's not going to suddenly become fun because it's the only indoor fall sport. She decided to give it a pass. She's not sure if she's going to do crew workouts or swim over the winter. Swim would mean getting her to school at 5am, but I suppose if that's necessary it's necessary. This is where kids not being able to drive themselves until 16 1/2 at the very youngest is a drag. The earliest we catch a break is the middle of her Junior year. I wish public transportation around here was better. Crew in the spring does make things a bit easier commute-wise since the boat house is so close to our house.

Since soccer was a no-go she'll be doing drivers ed this fall. I wanted it closer to when she could take the test for her learners permit (end of March), but she can't do weekends because of art, and evenings will be clobbered with crew workouts. We like to visit family over winter break, and she's going to be in Europe over spring break. I'll just keep my fingers crossed she remembers everything.

And she's getting the typical ease-in to the school year because with labor day, rosh hashanah, and yom kippur, they don't have a full week of school for ages.

The Crew season ended this past weekend with Stotesbury, so now it's just the final couple weeks. There had been a chance the kids would need to spend this week cleaning the boats and prepping everything for storage, but they were on top of things when they got back from Stotes so no more late pickups. Zoë's ready for me at the regular 3:45 time, and she's boggled about what to do with all her time. Even piano's over. She missed the end of the year piano recital for Stotesbury and as usual will be taking the summer off (in favor of music camps).

I always look forward to the summer and am then annoyed at how it's as busy as the school year and this summer looks no different. Zoë's going to be finishing up the planning for her Gold project and she has plans to complete all of her school-required volunteer hours. She had been thinking of doing morning practices for swim team (instead of evening practices which she's traditionally done because of camp) but then realized that would conflict with school summer soccer practices so now she's not sure what she's going to do. She doesn't know if she'd be able to do tech crew for the musical and play soccer, so she's even sort of on the fence about playing soccer next year. But since she's considering doing school swim next year it wouldn't be a bad idea to do the summer soccer or track workouts (summer swim is heavy on swim, light on dryland). Crew is definitely on for next year so if she wanted to she could make plans with the trainer at her school's gym and do crew workouts throughout the summer. This is part of what happens when I get excited about summer. I want to get the schedule completely sorted out so I know what's going on, and realize half a dozen things are still in the air.

A summer job's on hold. There are very few places that'll hire a 14 yr old and her CIT schedule + volunteer hours will take a significant amount of time. I have a suspicion that she's also going to try and talk the camp director into letting her be a counselor for real next summer, which would solve the whole summer job problem. Especially if she could tack on life guarding at our pool to fill things out. I understand the graduated drivers licensing system, but man I wish that I could be looking forward to her driving herself around next summer (the earliest she'll be able to drive w/o a licensed driver in the car is 16 yrs 6 mos old). I should get all her paperwork together and have her start studying this summer so the instant she's 15 yrs 9mos she can get her learners permit.

This has been an interesting season for our introduction to crew. Zoë's school races in about 5 regattas per season. Looking back at previous calendars, it's pretty consistently 2 home, 2 away, and then Stotesbury which I'm told is like the HS crew championships. This is significantly different from lacrosse, where they have 25 games scheduled. So I already thought I was getting away with a light schedule what with only 5 regattas (even though they run all day, and are on the weekends, vs lacrosse games which most often happen on weekdays).

Then the first regatta was cancelled due to dangerous weather, and it wasn't rescheduled because rescheduling it would bump the second regatta, which they started, but then called early due to dangerous weather and so each team only got to race one of their varsity 8s and no novices got to race at all. They decided not to reschedule the second regatta because it would bump into the third regatta ... which finally went off as planned! It was one of the away regattas so we got to watch the sun rise while driving over the Bay Bridge, which is always lovely. Zoë got to race in an 8 and a 4 and they did really well.

Crew is turning out to be really positive for Zoë. The kids are great, the team is immensely supportive, the kids seem to tend more towards "quirky" than "popular" like the lacrosse kids I'm used to. Nothing negative is meant by either of those terms, but if you live in Maryland and you're not bad at lacrosse and yet you choose to do a different sport, odds are you're going to be just a little bit different. Zoë told me early in the season the coaches asked the kids "why crew?" and aside from the few who said their parents made them, most, like Zoë, were lacrosse refugees. Tired of lacrosse (or, tired of lacrosse in Maryland), wanting to try something different, and crew looked good.

Speaking of lacrosse, she had a phenomenal game on Sunday. She knows she's doing well when the other teams dads start losing their minds on the sideline. After the game she laughed about how they were all yelling different instructions to the kids on their team, and none of them were panning out. We were sitting next to them and they were so frustrated that she kept stopping their kids shots. Almost all of them came up to her after the game and told her what a fantastic game she had. We still lost - not surprising since we only won one draw in the entire game, so we really only had possession of the ball after a save. But we only lost by 2, which is amazing, given the draw imbalance. Zoë was on fire.

And afterwards, she confirmed that the regatta was a lot more fun and while she's sad this is her last season of lacrosse she does not want to play HS lacrosse in Maryland. I asked what if she could stay on JV, and nope, she said even the JV kids (and coaches) are too focused on playing in college and it stops being fun. Of course if she consistently had save percentages like she did on Sunday she'd be a lock to play college lacrosse, but then, as she says, she'd have to play college lacrosse.

I think as a spectator there's less to know with rowing than other sports. I consistently remembered that port was left, I learned it can be really hard to tell who was in the lead in the distance (and I have to remember to put binoculars with my gear!), and I learned that the kids will spend as much time unloading and loading gear as they will actually racing. (And that Zoë was lucky getting to be in two races, because many of her teammates only got to be in one. I had mentally been thinking of rowing like swimming, so I was surprised when she "only" rowed twice, but at least on her team, two races is a compliment.)

Zoë submitted her course request for her sophomore year today. She informed me of this by saying she'd signed our names because she knew we'd tell her to do what she wanted to do anyway and she wanted to hand it in today. I'm glad she told us, and for the most part I think she chose well. The part that I'm a bit "what?" about is not a big deal and mostly that I think she'll get bored.

She requested honors math (alg2geo2, or Exeter math 3), honors english, honors latin 3, honors physics, french 4, and regular history. The other option for history was AP World History, and after talking with the current sophomores she decided since she doesn't love history she'd be better off in a regular history class. There is also an honors option for French 4, but she learned that on her current path, AP Latin and AP French would happen the same year but not be able to because they are always scheduled to conflict, and she'd rather take AP Latin. She's hoping to be able to fit photography into her schedule, and also piano because it's a pre-req for AP Music Theory. She mentioned she could also get instructor's permission for AP Music Theory, but she doesn't know if it would fit in her schedule for her jr or sr years (she was told it won't fit for sophomore year because of double language) and she needs a performance art. She'd rather take a piano course that goes over things she's known forever than have to take a drama or dance course.

This course request is similar to what she had last year, but because of honors latin + honors math + honors science, everything else had to be honors too. That makes me think there's a chance the same thing will happen next year. But she's handling all honors this year just fine so I'm sure she'll be ok next year too if it comes to that. She mentioned wanting to take AP Comp Sci, but it conflicts with double foreign language. I need to check back with her because AP Comp Sci would be a breeze for us to help her prep for if she's willing to do it outside of school. I try to tread lightly since she's in an environment where collecting APs is just something kids do, and I don't want her to jump onto that treadmill.

She's bored with math and doesn't want to "work ahead," because she'd just have to do that in school and it would make it extra boring. I might work up some game theory stuff and show it to her over spring break and see if that gets her interest. I feel fortunate that for the most part her classes are at a good level for her. Although I'm concerned she never has to do any homework (she finishes it in class). I keep reminding myself I'm a successful human being and I never did any homework, but I don't think any of my peers were doing 2-4 hours a night consistently, and I know for a fact that most of her peers are (it's a common topic of discussion among parents). I just need to let it go. She's on the honor roll, she's getting good grades, she's liking her classes. She'll figure out homework when and if she has to do it. (Although if she DID study at home, she could be acing everything but then I start feeling like a nut if I'm asking her why she got a 99 instead of a 100.) We all agreed as long as she keeps making honor roll I'll keep my mouth shut. Just not my brain. *sigh*

But I think she chose a good schedule for next year. Fingers crossed she's able to have her schedule and isn't forced into AP World History.

And I am so happy she decided to do crew! I picked her up from the boathouse today, and it was amazing. It's 15 minutes from the house in traffic, instead of the 45 her school is, and it meant I drove there, wandered around the waterfront for a bit, and then she was released at 5:30pm and we drove the 15 minutes home. Instead of driving 45 minutes to get to her school by 6:00pm and hoping the bus hasn't gotten stuck in traffic, and then spending another 45 min to get home maybe by 7 if we're lucky. (Typically I can get to her school in ~30 min, but traffic when picking her up at ~6pm has been horrible for the past couple months and I've had to plan for it to take an hour so this cuts my time in the car down to 1/4 of what it was.) Thursdays she'll take the bus back to school for piano. And if weather's bad they'll practice in the crew tank or on the ergs at school, but even just one day/wk of the shorter commute would be amazing. And she learned a college she'd been considering also rows at the boathouse, which increases her interest.

This morning the lacrosse gear stayed home, and this afternoon Zoë officially went to crew try outs. The decision is made. She'll play rec lacrosse for her last year in the program and row for school. Hopefully by the end of the season she'll have figured out which she enjoys more since it's one or the other after this year.

I finally sent in the paperwork which will mean hopefully the extended time for SAT/ACT will be taken care of and I won't have to worry about that. The hoops that are required are nuts. I'd've done anything to avoid having to sit in those tests longer. I am not sure why there's so much paranoia about extended time. But everything's on file now so hopefully we're good.

I'm still getting over a cold that hit my lungs. I never get bronchial issues, so this has been an adventure. I'm used to having chapped eyes from them leaking so much, but having to plan my coughing and breathing is annoying. It's just taking some time to get back up to speed.

I thought I had all the paperwork the DAR people wanted, but then I talked to a lady who said I needed some birth certs too, so now I have to hunt those down. Yeesh. At the rate I'm going I might not finish before Zoë's 18 and ready to join. I'm also having a hard time reining myself in. I have this proven line which connects me to two revolutionary war soldiers, but if I prove one more step that gets me another one. (And I have a will for that step which I think should be enough proof, but I'm lacking birth and death certs.) And then down another line I have a gap that I need to jump that would get me two more, and so on down a few more lines. But I'm not sure I'm interested in the work any of that would require.

I can't believe Zoë's over half way through her first year of high school. Crazy.

I dodged a bullet; the camping trip was cancelled because the highs were in the teens, and neither of us adults was interested in a freezing camping trip. I ran the Journey at my house, and it's done. Our Service Unit does Gold and Silver workshops where they walk the kids through getting started, and unfortunately the soonest I was able to sign Zoë up was a few months from now because they're all on Thursday evenings which conflicts with her piano lesson.

Speaking of piano lessons, she's really being stretched by her new teacher. Very few classical pieces, lots of popular music. This week it's all Billy Joel. One of the pieces is 16 pages, and I asked her if it was because he wants her to practice turning pages. She kind of laughed, so I think I pegged it. For the past month+, she's also needed no reminders to practice. It's been ... pretty amazing.

We finished up the psychoeducational testing so she can potentially get extended time on college board exams. What an arduous and expensive process. I need to get back in touch with her school and find out what parts of the report I need to set aside for giving to the exam folks. I'm just done with all this stuff. Too much of everything to keep track of.

For the fourth weekend in a row we're going to have people over. Mike's running an old school D&D game, so there'll be lots of guys and lots of beer. Zoë needs me to drop her off at the mall and then she's going to be picked up with a friend and go back to his house to watch movies, and then I have to pick her up and take her to another friend's house for a dinner party, and then pick her up around midnight to come home. Which means I don't think I'll be joining the D&D game. I think I may just hole up and read in between being a taxi. Or maybe see if I can make some more progress in the craft room. One of the kids doing the Journey loved making friendship bracelets. She'd never successfully made one before. I had her grab as many skeins of embroidery floss as she wanted so she could make more at home, and goodness knows I have more than enough embroidery floss. Giving away half a dozen skeins doesn't make even the tiniest of dents.

The primary benefit of having people over regularly is it helps us make sure the main areas of our house aren't ridiculously cluttered. The dining room table's staying clean. The living room isn't a complete tornado of dog toys. School and sports debris is semi-contained. The upstairs landing isn't a collection of laundry baskets full of clean laundry. I don't like having people over. I like the less cluttered house.

The Girl Scout Journeys are a required piece of Girl-Scoutdom, if you have any interest in earning the Big Girl Scout Awards, much like camping is a required piece of Boy-Scoutdom, if you have any interest in earning the Eagle.

The Girl Scout Journeys are terrible.

For the younger girls, there is way too much reading and book work. There's way too much for the older girls as well, but at least it's more reasonable to expect that older than 3rd graders are likely to be decent enough readers that having a task that requires reading, and recommending reading out loud to a group, won't be age-and-ability inappropriate. Zoë's Girl Scout meetings have general been in the evenings, on a weekday, so you have a group of kids who've already used up their school-abilities on school, and half of them haven't eaten dinner, and the other half haven't had a chance to run around and get all their wiggles out.

Fortunately, for Zoë's Daisy (K&1st) and Brownie (2nd&3rd) years, we were at a meeting place with a wonderful playground that wasn't being used by anyone during our meeting times, and we made liberal use of it. I did not ask the girls to read, since I knew many kids in our troops had reading issues, and it just seemed like Girl Scouts shouldn't be yet another place where their struggles were made public. I would read to them from the Journey materials, and they would chatter about it, while playing. They always really enjoyed the Take Action projects, and coming up with ideas for them, which I figured was most of the point anyway. Who cares if they talked about how important water is to the earth while hanging from the monkey bars?

Her Junior leader did the Journeys more officially, which made sense given the kids were now 4th and 5th graders. But again, many of the kids suffered through the Journey materials, and only really got invested with the Take Action projects. That's the point at which Zoë declared herself finished with Journeys. Except she'd need to do one as a Cadette before she could do her Silver project. She wanted to do her Silver project (she'd really enjoyed her Bronze project as a Junior) so she dealt with the Journey. She absolutely refused to do any other Journeys as a Cadette, even though Cadettes are a 3 year program (6th-8th) and she completed her Cadette Journey as a 6th grader and her troop did at least one Journey each year. She skipped all meetings dealing with Journey work.

In order to be able to do her Gold project, Zoë is required to do a Senior (9th&10th) or Ambassador (11th&12th) Journey. Zoë wants to do her Gold, and has mounds of ideas, but has felt very discouraged by the Journey requirement. She has said on a few occasions that it's just not worth doing another Journey.

Zoë's probably an extreme - she's terrible about making herself do things she doesn't want to do even if it helps her get to the point of being able to do something she wants to do. But she switched troops this year, and not a single kid in her new troop did their Silver project because none of them ever wanted to do a Journey.

I volunteered to run a Senior Journey for her troop. I bought all 3 of them and went through them with the girls in broad strokes, letting them look at the materials, and we've narrowed it down to what seems like the least objectionable. And I've been working on a plan to make it interesting for them. Zoë only needs to do one Journey in order to do her Gold project, but all the other girls will have to do 2 (earning your Silver Award counts as doing an upper level Journey). My goal is to make this Journey connect with them enough that the other girls who want to work on a Gold project would be willing to go through one more Journey in order to check that box.

We're going camping, and we're going to push through this. Doing a Journey in a weekend has been the most successful format so far and I'm going to have the kids trapped at a campsite so they can't do half the work and not come back the second day. But it also means I have to have all the materials there. I can't forget the glue, or only have one pair of scissors, or accidentally bring a deflated basketball instead of the pumped up one. I'm finding that more stressful than I should. On the plus side, I think I happen to have enough hula hoop making supplies that I don't need to buy anything except maybe some more colorful electrical tape. And for any girls who don't want to keep the hula hoops they make, I have a person willing to take donations so we avoid the whole "make something just to throw it away" thing so common with required craft projects.

I really hope I can make this interesting. Some of our girls would love to work on a Gold project. I think Girl Scouts is shooting themselves in the foot with this Journey requirement. But at the very least, I just need to get Zoë to power through this.

I was raised Presbyterian. But when I was little I decided that I was going to become Jewish and grow up to be a Rabbi. My aunt even sent me a newspaper clipping about a female Rabbi, since the only Rabbi we knew was a guy, and in retrospect he must have been from the Conservative tradition. (At the time I wasn't even particularly clear on the divisions within Presbyterianism, except to know that in my cousin's Presbyterian church women couldn't be pastors, and that was strange since there was no such problem with women leaders in the churches we attended in my family.)

I figured out I was agnostic long before I'd ever reach the point of converting, so there was no Judaism for me. When Mike and I had a kid, once she was a preschooler, I took her to several different churches. I'd found value in being raised in a church family, and wanted that for her if it was something that fit. By the time she was 5, she was a confident atheist, and we stopped visiting churches.

Recently, she announced she's going to become a Rabbi when she grows up. This amuses me because she knew nothing about my plans regarding that. We've since had several discussions about how she can't convert because Judaism is a religion first, and unless she can find it in herself to believe in a god there's nothing there for her to convert to. Until she legitimately converts, she can't become culturally Jewish (not that that would be something she could do easily anyway, no matter how many Jewish friends she has, she is not being raised in a Jewish family and all culturally Jewish traditions she participates in she does so as an outsider). She's not likely to find it within herself to believe in a god.

I wonder if there's a gene that could be tagged "affinity for Judaism."