An Era Begins to End

YG will be starting middle school next year. She has been agitating about choosing a middle school since last year, discussing imponderables and asking questions I am usually in no position to answer (like, say, "what percentage of kids who apply to X Middle School get in"--asked while I am driving down the highway). So this morning we had our first visit to a middle school. To say the kid was excited is an understatement. We were taken through the school by a lovely Chinese woman whose English was imperfect, with the result that I got answers to questions I never asked, and didn't get answers to the questions I did ask. Still, she's obviously proud of the school, and was very interested in seeing that YG saw everything she was interested in. And it's a terrific school; we liked the teachers, the (huge) physical plant; the range of electives and the afterschool program--the only strike against it is that it's way-the-hell-and-gone across town, with no school bus.

Afterward we took YG out for an early lunch, as she'd missed lunch at school. She was totally intimidated: from being excited and confident, the actuality just overwhelmed her. It's too big; there're too many kids; she'll get lost. I forget sometimes, because the kid is so confident and full of energy and ambition, that she's just a little kid. So there was pizza and cuddling, and occasional reminders that she would be one sixth grader among a couple of hundred at whatever school she's in next year; that we would not be pushing her out of the plane without a parachute; and that this is only the first school we've looked at. She was happier after the pizza, and angling to play hookie for the rest of the day. So we'll keep looking at middle schools, and I'll keep reminding myself that, despite her vocabulary and her sophistication, she's really just a baby and needs frequent cuddles.

If You Want to Get Something Done Blow It Up

One of the things I fell in love with in this house was the downstairs wallpaper: this wonderful raffia stuff over dull silver and copper foil. (Yes, it sounds horrid. In practice, it looks like the walls in the un-renovated 50s-era parts of the Museum of Natural History). So, of course, it's in terrible shape, and after two-and-a-half years (and one pretty dramatic leak through one wall and part of the downstairs hall ceiling), we got a dog, and of course, Emily has been slowly peeling shreds of raffia off the walls. It's no longer so charming, and what I want is to have it gone, and the walls neatly painted. I've found that the only way to get action on a program like this is to destroy what's there, so that action is unavoidable.

Thus, about a month ago, I tried pulling at a corner of the raffia, and a whole swath came down. Now about eighty percent of the raffia is gone. And now I've started attacking the wallpaper itself. It's slow going: I scrape about a one-foot by two-foot section done in about half an hour, and since there's no significant rush, I'm doing maybe a section or two a day. Spouse points out that we have to get it scraped and finished and painted before our holiday open house in December (however he has thus far shown himself uninterested in scraping). Maybe I'll do two sections tomorrow.

If I could persuade Emily to chew at the wallpaper as well as the raffia, of course, we'd be in business.