Where Are the Truancy Police When You Need Them?

By last Friday, the V-meister's holiday break from Montessori school was starting to wear me down. She had been out sick for the entire week before Christmas, so we were nearing the end of three-and-a-half weeks of an extended stay-at-home squirmfest.

"What are you doing?" I asked as she ran, for the fourth time in a row, full tilt into our front door, hit it, then collapsed with drama onto the hardwood floor as I watched warily and the J-dog clapped with glee.

"Just practicing bouncing off the wall, Mama."

This activity was performed at regular intervals throughout that last vacation week, interrupted only by the occasional knock-down, drag-out fight with the J-dog or a combo thumb sucking/hair twirling/squirm session on the brown TV watching throne.

Today, however, was a day of restrained joy, tempered only by the agony that had to be endured as the V-meister prepared for her first day back at school by staging a level six meltdown at the suggestion that her hair be coiffed into a pony tail.

I'm pretty sure she was all the way out of the car at drop-off before I careened out of the school parking lot, leaving a thick cloud of exhaust fumes in my wake.

The J-dog and I then proceeded to the supermarket, where, heady with the excitement of a one kid grocery run, I almost felled a couple of tottering seniors as I zipped up and down the aisles with speed and precision, the J-dog's hoodie flapping behind him in our manufactured wind.

When we returned home, the J-dog immediately set to dismantling the fireplace grate while I busied myself with important tasks such as crossing off dead calendar days, calling in sick for this afternoon's dental appointment, rifling through paperwork, and surfing real estate sites.

And that's when I discovered it - the 2007-2008 Montessori school calendar, with it's bold face statement that school will resume for all students on Wednesday, January 2 of this year.

Uh . . . . . . . . last week, then.

'Roundabout the time the V-meister was backing up for her fiftieth consecutive wall run, I presume.

(And that thar's called shootin' yerself in yer own dayum foot, folks.)