It was a pretty boring weekend in our house. There were no games or practices. No parental social events. Nothing at all on the calendar.

C talked S into taking her to Ikea to get her birthday present a little early – a new desk set – so we spent Saturday afternoon putting that together and rearranging her room. As always, assembling Ikea furniture was maddening at times. The final result looked good, though, and C was pleased.

L got inspired and asked to move her computer desk from the bonus room into her bedroom. I told her she should just wait a few months until M leaves and make M’s room a computer room. She already plans on taking over M’s bathroom the minute she leaves. She didn’t like my idea, though, so we moved a few things around and her gaming rig is now probably way too close to her bed.

With nothing else really going on, I’ll use this Monday post as a chance to catch up on everything going on with M, as it is SENIOR SZN. Do the kids still say szn?

Friday she sent S and I an excited text that said “I’m a cum laude!” A few years back CHS went to the model where the top 15 percent of the graduating class get slotted into summa, magna, and cum laude honors groups. She had been telling us all year she wouldn’t make it because, “There are so many smart people in my class. I would have made it easily last year, but not this year.”

Damn, throwing some shade at the class of 2022.

My immediate response was:

She was not as amused by that as I was.

Anyway, about ten minutes later she sent another message: “Wait, I didn’t get it.”

The reason for the confusion was kind of fucked up.

The school office called all the seniors who earned honors over the PA in groups. For some reason the principal decided to call an extra ten kids, in between two of the other groups. M was in that extra group. When they got to the office the principal told them that they were all 0.002 GPA points short of making the cut, but she was still super proud of them and wanted them to know they were as valued as the kids who make it.

M was PISSED. The rest of the day she had to either correct people who congratulated her, or, after the official photo of the honors grads got posted and she wasn’t in it, answer questions as to why she was absent.

I get her frustration. You either don’t call those kids to the office over the intercom – have their counselors send them a message that they were close – or round up those 0.002 points and include them. Seems like kind of a shitty thing to do to announce them to the entire school just to tell them, “Sorry, you were soooo close…” She said she spent the day thinking “If only I had taken one more honors class,” or about an A- she got freshman year.

I thought about how since final grades aren’t in yet, how do we know that any of these 10 extra kids won’t end up with a better GPA than some of the kids who got selected ahead of them? Seniors don’t have to take spring finals, but there are still three weeks of classes and plenty of time to wiggle the final GPAs a bit. I guess there has to be a cutoff date, and that will always be before final grades are in.

S told her that no one really gives a shit If you were in the top 15 or 16% of your class. While the extra colors would have been nice on graduation day, M shouldn’t let it bother her once she woke up Saturday morning.

I get that the intent behind including these kids, but I’m not sure the administrators thought it through very well.

Prom is this coming weekend. I’m pretty sure there has already been way more drama around M’s group than last year. There’s some girl drama; one lady in the group has been kind of a wank for a few months and that has caused some problems. Then there has been drama about pre- and post-prom parties, and M’s friend group not all getting invited to the same gatherings.

Making matters worse, Saturday looks like it will be cold and rainy. So M is already stressing about how her hair will look, where we will be able to take pictures, etc.

Weight of the world and whatnot.

We got the invitations for her two grad parties sent out. We are doing a family/friends event at our house on Memorial Day, then she and her two friends are doing a bigger party together in June.

Saturday night, as S and I were winding down, we came to the conclusion that while the college years are certainly going to be expensive, no one warns you how costly the finals weeks of your senior’s high school days will be. Prom, baccalaureate, graduation, graduation parties, then the prep for going off to college. It ain’t going to be a cheap summer for us.

Oh, M informed us last week that she was going to need several dresses because she has so many grad parties to attend. We both laughed and reminded her that she has a job; if she needs more than one dress she can buy the others on her own. She thought we were being incredibly unfair by suggesting that. I kind of enjoy the moments when a kid who is very smart and pretty mature says really dumb stuff. It reminds me she’s still an idiot kid at times.

She is not our only graduating child. L has been bugging us for awhile to host a pool party on her last day of eighth grade. I was very much against this. Even though she has a tiny class – only 28 kids – I didn’t want to deal with all of them. Especially since the last day of school is a Friday and S would be at work.

I asked L if we could just do the girls but she said no, she wanted the entire class.

Then I realized her last day of class is the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, so a lot of people would probably be leaving town that night. I asked around among friends who have lake houses and, yep, they were all leaving Friday night.

S is home on Thursdays. M will have graduated and can help. S suggested we do it that day. Since it was now two against one I had no choice but to go along with that plan.

I sent the invitation out Sunday. I’m sure it will be fine. Although I wouldn’t mind if it stormed and we had to cancel. That makes me a terrible person/parent, doesn’t it?

S has also been trying to get L into dresses for her spring events. Eighth grade Mother’s Day Mass, graduation, and then M’s stuff. L is actually into cute clothes these days, but she hates to go shopping, so it’s been a struggle to find enough clothes for the next six weeks of activities.