Gentle readers, have you missed me? As you are no doubt aware, yesterday was the first day of school in Howard County, Maryland. Both my angels are in school so we are adjusting to a completely new routine in our home. So far all is well. Here are a few highlights.

Our 5 year old wasn't impressed with Kindergarten. We thought he would be over the top with excitement to finally get to attend school with his brother. He had serious jitters Sunday night and thought he was going to throw up. Monday morning, he barely ate any breakfast and we had to bribe him with a video game to get him to wear the shirt I wanted him to wear. He had the following to say about his first day.

• "That stupid false alarm [fire drill] scared the crud out of me."
• "Circle Time is boring."
• "Quiet time was the best. At least I got to color a picture."

Our ten year old was much better in 5th grade. He likes his teacher, his class. he's on the safety patrol so he thinks he's the big cheese. A vast improvement over the beginning of 4th grade when he was terrified of his teacher. All in all, we did pretty well. Both kids got up and went to school again today.

My friends were so amazing to me. I went to coffee with two friends in the morning and walked around Old Ellicott City looking at antiques. I was home for maybe 30 minutes, wandering the house, feeling down when the phone rang. It was another friend asking me to have lunch. I was gone from 12:45 until 3:00. I was so busy I didn't have any time to worry about anything. I have the greatest friends in the world.

Have a great evening.