I try not to fall into the trap of thinking my life experience is more universal than it actually is - the Inn will disabuse you of that notion very quickly - but I feel like I should be out of school by now. When I was growing up, the school year basically ran the day after Labor Day to a couple weeks into summer, every year, everywhere. I'd heard that maybe it was different in the extremes - like, Minnesota would have a long winter break and start a little earlier/end a little later - but not too much so. When you watched TV, it was basically like that on every show with kids and school.
And yet, for my first year back in public school in 25 years or so, it started around then but I'm there until the 25th of June, and that's without much in the way of snow days. They don't have many of those any more, between climate change and all the tele-learning infrastructure that was built during the pandemic, and it's driving me nuts.
And it's not like this everywhere - on some places, it's weirder! I'm on a group chat with other authors, and one of them who lives in Texas says her kids' school year ended the week before Memorial Day, so they had to take their summer vacation the week off the holiday because the kids' summer activities start on June 1st, when I've still got three weeks to go.
Would I have been this annoyed by it if I were in my natural role of teacher/parent? Probably not, I admit. It's normal for Millie, as much as anything is (she's had two out of eight years disrupted by a pandemic, so what's normal?), and a couple years ago, I was getting used to having a scheduled job rather than being freelance, so it didn't seem too long. I did kind of notice kids staring out the window a bit more on nice days as a teacher, and I'm sure doing it right now. Granted, I've been doing it all year, but I'm maybe even more fidgety now. Kid attention span when you know some of your teachers are playing out the string is a heck of a thing.
On top of that, the delay is driving the whole group of us nuts. Millie has been at a complete loose ends ever since Griff's academic year ended, because there really isn't anything to fill her time with, and it's stayed to really get awkward with the "girlfriend". My daughter is only just about to turn 14, and she's had crushes, but by and large attraction is new to her, and six months or so is about when someone who has been to the Inn starts to really acknowledge that the gender identity, sexual orientation, and hormones they've inherited are something to be accepted rather than fought. So she's got the urges of a 20-year-old man who spends a lot of time with someone with the appearance of that boy's girlfriend who has spent most of the past year looking out for him, and, yes, I do freak out every time I see Emilia and Rusty talk about how quickly Katey started hooking up with that grown man at right about this point!
So we've been doing what we can to keep her busy. Ande apologizes for not helping out more now that he knows, but we don't blame him for wanting to spend as much time with his girlfriend as possible before she's off on her internship. I try to get her over at the house as much as possible to read and study with me so she won't be very far behind when she starts school again in the fall, and I like to think it's centering for her, seeing that her life is being tended to and that I'm there to help. Harmon creeps her out, though, so she's been spending a few nights out with Ray.
It's annoying that we're dealing with Harmon this long, which is another artifact of the long school year. Since he doesn't plan on becoming Alicia again, we decided to basically run a month behind with a broken "thread", which means that Millie's current "roommate" is heading to the Inn tomorrow, as is Harmon, even though they were a month apart last summer. Harmon is going to be doing a daily round trip like Toby and Lambert did, although thankfully without flying to Miami and back, heading north at around 4pm or 5pm, then setting a 4am alarm so she can be at school the next day. By the time it's my turn to head up, school will be out, so we won't have to do around much.
Suffice it to say, we are all really, really ready to get things back to normal!
- Arthur/Penny/Millie
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