Public high schools in Florida have a fine arts credit requirement. When my son was finishing up his freshman year, he was not happy about having to take anything with the word "art" in it.  He begged to take something online so that he could take an extra science class.  Science was what his friends were into. He was so persistent that I actually went into speak to the Principal about allowing him to do this.  Despite that fact that this woman was in charge of 2100 young minds, she really thought about it, looked at his transcript and strongly suggested that he take his fine arts at school and not to take an extra science class. "It will be good for him" and she pretty much took about a huge rubber stamp and marked "Denied" on his request.

   At the time, I did not understand her refusal for more science. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) is being heavily pushed these days. It seems that every boy is rushing towards this type of major in college.  The thought is that STEM is where the jobs are going to be. Even kids who are not "science kids" like mine, were feeling the pressure to head into this direction.

   My son wearily reported for photography the first day of tenth grade.  During the year, he not only learned about the history of photography and studied the masters, he learned about cameras, taking photos and how to develop black and white film in the school's darkroom. Near the end of the year, he decided to take Advanced Placement (AP) Photography during 11th grade. 

   During his junior year ,while taking this college-level photography class, he started running around with his friends on urban photo safaris. They are starting a photography club at their school.  Some of his photos were chosen by his teacher to be shown at art shows around town and entered into contests. 

   In June, as he was heading off to his old summer camp to be a counselor, he asked if he could bring his camera and help the camp photographer out. The camp said to bring it and maybe he could help once in a while during the summer.

  He's been at camp for a little over two weeks and taking photos every day.  Hundreds of his photos have been posted on the camp's website so far. Right now he is a "war" correspondent  (Color War!)  

Color War Breaks out with Plane dropping Team Assignments!

   I guess getting out of one's comfort zone is usually a good thing. This is motivating me to get out of mine but I'm not sure what I'm up for this summer. Any suggestions? I'm thinking about learning about wine or paddle boarding. I'll probably go with the wine.

     Happy Summer!

My boys are teenagers and embarrassed by the mere existence of parents. They HATE when I blog about them but they are gone for the summer and are not supposed to be anywhere near the internet. They will be mad at me when they get back.

All Alone (poor me)

My boys are still at camp and my man had to go out of town all weekend for a business conference. I was going to go with him but we decided that I would not see him as he was booked all weekend. So Friday morning I dropped him off with no plans of what I was going to do to keep myself busy until late Sunday night.

My married girlfriends are all with their summer boyfriends as their kids are also at sleep-away camp. The kids are all coming back next week so I knew not to try to be a third wheel in those love-fests.

My unmarried  friends are just too wild on the weekends for me to hang out with. I challenge college girls to keep up with newly divorced 40-ish hot mamas on a Saturday night. These are not your mother's 40-ish friends. These are yoga-going, botox-taking, fabulous women who have ditched 180 pounds of ex-husband and are out for fun.  I am not interested in that. At all.  

So I barricaded myself in my house. I bought new dishes and totally cleaned out my kitchen. I really dug deep and pulled out a ton of stuff that we never use.  Goodwill hit the motherlode again. I am seriously keeping them in inventory this year. I moved stuff around. My kitchen is so organized right now. I feel like I could work at the container store.

I went to the high school uniform sale. The uniform company for both schools does not have a retail store in the area, so they do on-site sales. This means that I have to go to one for the high school and a different sale for the middle school.  I know, call the waambulance.  It was quite depressing walking into the high school gym to buy man-sized embroidered polo shirts. I am not ready for the summer to be over.   I have to do middle school next week. I hope that they did not grow too much at camp, or I will have to then return the shirts to timbuktoo, the location of the uniform store. 

I did some other work but did not finish all of the projects that are on my list as I got caught up in a Sex and the City marathon. Yes, I've seen every episode  but they just suck me in.  I still think Mr. Big is an  a-hole and she should have married Aiden.

My husband got home and while I was lonely, I tried to respect the lull and enjoy the silence. The boys are back in a week and the craziness starts up again.  

Dear Son...

In addition to old fashioned snail mail, I can send e-mails to my sons at sleepaway camp. You have to buy credits for one dollar per note  and you can send a text-only message (no photos) that will likely be read by the camp in the same way that prison guards read incoming inmate mail.   The kids cannot e-mail back.

My husband loves to write to them this way. I really don't and only do it when I have an urgent message to get to them.  It usually is on the last day of camp when I write " please leave any wet towels or clothing at camp and not place them in the bags for the five day un-airconditioned truck ride that the trunks take from North Carolina to Miami".

Here is today's email to my youngest child...

Dear Sam:

I know that you have not escaped from camp because I've seen some amazing photos of you on the camp website this week but I have only received one letter from you.   I am not mad at you for not writing to me even though I have written to you every single day including the five days before you actually left so that you would get mail during the first few days of camp.

That being said, you MUST write four letters before you leave camp. You must put stamps on these letters and actually mail them.  Please write to

Grandma B
Grandma S
Aunt J
Aunt K

I don't care if the letters just say "Camp is great! I love and Miss you". You are going to be in the dog house when you get home if this is not done.

I love and miss you so much honey.

Love Mom

Remind me to clean their room on the first day...

When my boys are away at camp, one of my rituals is to clean out their room. I do it every summer. Every year,  I procrastinate and wait until camp is almost over to do it and bitch the entire  time.  Every summer I am amazed at the amount of crap that they have accumulated in just one calendar year.

My boys share a room. I have a housekeeper who "cleans" it every week and they are in charge of keeping it "neat".  I try not to go in there during the school year too much as I get overwhelmed. Instead of working with the crack cleaning team that I have assembled and keeping it tidy, I just turn around and go into another room.

This year, before they left for camp, the team spent a day in the room. I made each child try on every single clothing item which led to me realizing that they had no clothing that actually fit them. They said that they cleaned up the rest of the room. ( I did not verify this).   I thought that this would lead to my summer chore of the one-a-year major clean out being a breeze.  It was not.

Yesterday I started out under their beds. They each have a loft bed and going in underneath was like a treasure hunt. Here are some of the pearls that I found :

1. Unopened letters that I sent to camp last year

 (This is not one of them. I don't have a child named Merdith)

2. A Christmas tin of life-savers (like an 8 pack), also unopened.

3. 3 unopened packages of legos and other little toys that they accumulated but never opened

4. A Target gift card (unused and obviously misplaced)

5. A visa gift card

6. 12 pairs of headphones which was especially annoying given that they are always telling me that they have no headphones and I am always buying them more.

7. Four string backpacks which was also annoying because I had to buy string backpacks for camp because they sad that they could not find any in their closets

8. Eight usb flashdrives. (see number 6)

9. A cache of discarded electronic devices (cameras, iphones, ipods, nintendo ds')

10. Many socks

It was like an episode of mini- hoarders in my own home. Or we could host a new show called, "Why the Japolina  spends all of her money on headphones and usb flash drives instead of designer shoes". We could be the new Honey Boo Boo Family where every one makes fun of how stupid we are.

So once again, I spent one of my precious summer camp days entrenched in their room, trying not to cry when packing up their babyish books  to take to goodwill. Once again I am cursing myself for not doing this the first day that they were gone. Remind me to do this task right when they leave next year, and get it out of the way. 

Why you should send your school age children to sleep away camp...

Despite a little hiccup last week involving a kid at the camp infirmary, the first week of having no children in my house has been amazing.

Did we go to Europe? No. Did we re-decorate the house? No. Did we host elaborate dinner or cocktail parties for our glamorous friends? No.

What did we do for an entire week without minors living under our roof ?  Pretty much nothing and it was glorious.

No carpooling. No yelling. No breaking up stupid arguments. No mountains of laundry. I ran the dishwasher once instead of 7 times.  No $300 visits to publix. Sure I miss their little teenaged faces, but I know from past experience, that once they are home for five minutes, it feels like they never left.

The summers when my boys go to camp is a flashback to the early days when my husband and I were newlyweds. Luckily we still like each other as much as we did 20 years ago so it is joyful. I suppose if we were not getting along, or worse, it might be lonely. Fortunately, we are still kicking it as a couple so the month that the kids are not here is fun, fun, fun.

For example, my husband was home early tonight so we walked down the street to a Mexican restaurant and had chips, guac and beer (at 6 p.m. on a Tuesday night! ). If you don't have children living under your roof, this may not seem amazing, but trust me it is. During the school year,  6 p.m. on a Tuesday night is the bewitching hour and bedtime seems days away. 

I am enjoying the silence and respecting the lull (while simultaneously cruising the camp photo website to try to find a glimpse of either kid and then analyze the photo to death). Besides that little mental problem of mine and thousands of sleepaway camp moms, summer is delightful right now.