The First Day…

… of school.  For both kids.  The Daugh­ter is a senior.  The Son is a freshman.

… of my new life?  I’m unem­ployed.  My days as an edu­ca­tor are done.  My lone pupil, The Son, decided to fol­low in his sister’s foot­steps and not home­school through high school.  And my job as sec­re­tary for The Husband’s com­pany is done.  The com­pany is gone; dis­solved.  All of the paper­work is now in the hands of the accountants.

Don’t get me wrong.  I have plenty to do.  But it’s such a dras­tic change.  And rel­a­tively sud­den.  I’ve been home­school­ing for 12+ years.  I’ve worked for The Hus­band for 10 years.  Now sud­denly, both jobs have evap­o­rated.  At the same time!

I can­not even begin to imag­ine how much I’m going to miss The Son.  I refuse to even let myself think about it.  Not hav­ing him around all day; the con­ver­sa­tions, the field trips, the movies and doc­u­men­taries.  The com­pany.  The cul­tural activ­i­ties.  The jokes and laugh­ter.  His con­stant need for phys­i­cal con­tact — lean­ing on me, hug­ging me, and lean­ing on me some more.

Not only will he be in school all day, he’ll be buried with home­work at night and on week­ends.  What am I going to do with­out him?

I haven’t given up my pur­suit of employ­ment (well, more specif­i­cally the one job I really want and sup­pos­edly was in close run­ning for but ended up los­ing to some­one with more expe­ri­ence in the field) but, hon­estly, I’m not in a huge hurry to tie myself down to another job right now.  There’s so much work to be done around the house.  Years’ worth of odd jobs and unfin­ished projects and all the things I’ve dreamed of doing when I had the time.

Plus there’s the help The Son will need as he tran­si­tions into being a full-time stu­dent at an academically-strenuous high school.  This is high school and these grades count.  Big Time.  Espe­cially since he has grand plans for col­lege and law school.  I expect this year will be the most chal­leng­ing yet in terms of giv­ing my lov­able Aspie patience and under­stand­ing and sup­port; get­ting him through this year in one piece will, I fear, be a task of epic proportions.

Any­way, as for money spent today — despite my best efforts to stay at home and keep my credit card in my wal­let, school means school lunches and school lunches meant a trip to the gro­cery store.

Wal­greens — $11.59

• Walgreen’s Advanced Lotion — $1.99 (mid-sized bot­tle with snap-top lid to be kept in The Son’s locker at school)*
• Walgreen’s Advanced Lotion — $0.99 (small squeeze tube to be kept in The Son’s backpack)*
• Head & Shoulder’s 2-in-1 sham­poo & con­di­tioner — $7.79

*Part of The Son’s sen­sory issues is an almost obses­sive need for lotion use; this Walgreen’s lotion is by far the least greasy option we’ve found to date and I’m thrilled with the reduc­tion in greasy, sticky residue left on my com­puter key­boards, door han­dles, and lately, car steer­ing wheel.

Kroger — $67.03

• Bob’s unbleached flour — $4.59
• 4 Amy’s Frozen Pocket sand­wiches — $2.00/ea.
• Kroger medium ched­dar — $1.99
• Kroger colby/jack cheese — $1.99
• fresh moz­zarella cheese log — $9.99 (ouch!)
• Cas­ca­dian Farms frozen french fries — $4.49 (delighted to find I can eat these! no allergy ingredients)
• Dole juice — $2.49
• Hori­zon choco­late milk — $3.77
• Rudi’s whole wheat bread — $4.59
• 3 boxes Kashi Cin­na­mon Har­vest cereal — $3.49/ea.
• Kroger Raisin Bran cereal — $1.67
• 2.59# bananas — $1.53
• 2.51# organic gala apples — $4.99
• 1.32# toma­toes — $3.29
• 2 navel oranges — $1.00
• 0.93# anjou pears — $1.85

The Amy’s pock­ets, Dole juice, and Kashi cereal were all on sale.

Kroger — $1.00

• head of red leaf let­tuce — $1.00

Just as I was leav­ing the store with all of my pur­chases, I real­ized that I’d for­got­ten let­tuce and since The Son, who until recently was deathly “aller­gic” to veg­eta­bles, espe­cially green veg­eta­bles, has taken to pre­fer­ring let­tuce on his sand­wiches and since I planned to make him a sand­wich for school tomor­row, I put my first batch of gro­ceries in the car and then went back inside for the sec­ond pur­chase — a lone, and might I add, rather small, head of let­tuce.  Thank good­ness he didn’t develop the dreaded sub­ur­ban pref­er­ence for watery cel­lu­lose called Ice­berg lettuce.

Related posts:

1. Day 216: Tow­els, Make-up, Lotion, and Groceries
2. $$: Meat and Potatoes
3. $$: Just Another Sun­day in the ‘Burbs
4. Catch­ing Up on Daily $$ & Doing
5. Day 8