The High Cost of Summer

I've been adding up what this summer is going to cost me. It's pretty impressive. Makes you appreciate having your kid in a free public school all day.

Gray and I are going to get together tonight and piece together a patchwork of visits, camps, programs and classes to keep Grayson's summer safe, full and busy. Last year he spent most of the summer days in the SPARK program that he attends after school during the school year. This is relatively inexpensive at $80 a week, but he gets bored with the same old thing and the same old kids all summer long. So this summer we're going to try to shake it up a bit.

So far I have him enrolled in a dinosaurs class at the museum, and two classes at City Arts Center in OKC: Stop motion animation and Comic Book creators. These three weeks alone add up to $360... and the dinosaur class is just a week long half day program! There are about 12 weeks to the summer. At this rate, I may have to take up turning tricks or trading sexual favors for summer class tuition. We're looking at around $1000.

So I'm now exploring freebie options. How long can I pawn him off on my folks? How long will he be staying with various members of Gray's family? Which of his friends' parents owes me a favor???

In July I'm going to have to put my baby on a plane by himself to fly to El Paso for a week with Gray's family and his assorted cousins. I'm sure he'll be fine, and it will be a good experience for him to be a big boy on his own and all that, but my BABY? On an airplane by himself?? What if the weather is bad and he's scared? What if he misses a connecting flight? What if someone snatches him and kidnaps him to Peru? What if, god forbid, the plane goes down??? I have never been nervous about flying, but I'm finding that I'm quite nervous about Grayson flying alone. I do not like it, nossir, I do not.

Yesterday, my assistant Krysten came back to work for the first day after her maternity leave. She's easing into it, starting at part time after six weeks off. Handling everything on my own has certainly kept me occupied. I am reminded of how grateful I am for all the work she does, and to the museum for granting me a full time assistant. I can hardly believe I used to do all of this myself all the time! Granted, it's been years since I was obliged to, so I've no doubt gotten fat and lazy. Add to that the fact that for several months there this fall and early winter I was completely non-functional because of the divorce and move... I'm just now getting back into the full swing of work. Having so much to do has actually been sort of enjoyable. I never have to ask myself "what now?" I just zip from one thing to the next without thought, gleefully checking things off my list like a madwoman.

Here's a picture of my desk. This is no worse or better than it usually looks. Just my standard mess. I've been preparing press releases personalized to each of the winning students or student groups from the Native American Youth Language Fair... hence all the different colored pens for color coding lists. I've read somewhere that creative, right-brained people work best in an atmosphere of controlled chaos, and that a messy desk may be the sign of a creative mind: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/smth08.shtml

I must be a freaking genius.