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Sunday Dread
No. No I haven't hit the road yet. I tend to carry on my business out of order so instead of making lists or checking out what sort of carry on restrictions will be in place when I do get to the airport (will Magnadoodle be verboten? How about crossword puzzles? Which part of my optimism amuses you most- that I think they'll let me settle into my seat with those items or that I think Felix will actually play with a toy long enough for me to even furrow my brow over a puzzle or turn a few pages in a novel?)
Usually Sunday Dread of Monday is just a morbid anticipation of the impending week. I am now concerned that this feeling that has set in, a feeling that feels a lot like run of the mill Sunday Dread, is actually a Fear of September.
The day after Labor Day Weekend ends, you see, is the day that one must have one's act together when it comes to preschool applications. All around town, people will be manning multiple phones, frantically pressing redial buttons in order to get through clogged lines so that one can request applications to preschool. The competition is fierce and miserable, apparently. I wouldn't really know. I haven't done this before.
Sure, this is a drag, but I used to stand of absurd lines for New York Film Festival screenings. I participated in late night fax-a-thons at bank offices (no one had a fax at home) to request tickets for the Toronto Film Festival. I am no stranger to this kind of persistence.
But I'm worried.
I'm worried because I don't have my act together. I know I went to some information sessions in the spring, but they just gave me good intentions and sticky angst.
Here's where I am:
- I don't have a complete list of preschools to which I want to apply.
- Sad to say, luck is a major factor. Plenty of schools have random lotteries, where one doesn't even get a chance to apply unless one's kid's name is drawn at random from something like a hat.
- I completely forgot to attend a local preschool's "open house" last week and ate things like Vietnamese salt and pepper squid and hollow vegetables in Chinatown instead. I wonder if they'll feel slighted and put my name on a blacklist.
- All of my "connections" to schools (yes, one is supposed to have them) are either so wildly tangential that I'd be embarrassed to invoke them or are to schools that would require a pretty hefty commute (more than one someone has suggested that I consider moving).
- I develop strong opinions quickly. There is a preschool relatively close to me that I just can't bring myself to apply to. Even the things I've heard about the place from the happiest most enthusiastic parents make me strangely angry. It would be pointless to even dip my kid's toe in that process.
- The social aspects of preschool are daunting. This is universal, not unique to New York at all, no matter what you hear on television. Here's a recent review of Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads (I know I keep mentioning it) from the UK's Telegraph that comforts me (I'm not living in the lone city of awful parents) while it annoys me (why are people so appalling)?
Anyway, my time would probably be more effectively spent making the Traveling Lists that I scribble on the backs of envelopes and then lose in my bag, but it is Sunday, and this is the time for the purposeless fret.
posted by Elise at 4:51 PM
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