ramblings of a rainy Monday.

So I'm back in NC. And allergies are still killing me, maybe even more so here. It's been one of those "wherever you go, there you are" past few days. I'm still not writing anything but work stuff, and even then, not nearly as much as I'd like. It was great to see my old coworkers and get piles of ARCs, but there's this latent restlessness/agitation that just isn't going away. My paycheck still hasn't arrived here yet, which gives me an idea of how this is going to be the rest of the summer. (major fail). Super stressed about work, thesis, money, life.....it goes on and on. Nothing new, I guess.

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but on Facebook several people I've gone to college with have been posting about wait lists for preschools, etc. I don't get it. It's preschool. This will not affect your child's chances of getting into Harvard or Yale or Brown. The cache that preschools have, in my opinion, is total bullshit. THIS is what you're worried about? The "right" program where your child can babble with peers and parallel play with blocks and tinker toys? Eventually learn the alphabet? (Although I remember learning it in kindergarten, even though I learned it at home already). I don't know. Maybe it's just the NJ/NYC East Coast thing. I just have a feeling I'd want to shoot myself if I were one of those people freaking out about where my child was going to go for preschool. Safety, etc - yes, I get that. But the other stuff? Ugh. What ever happened to the local preschool? Have things changed that much? Or is this the whole Parenting, Inc thing again? 


Seriously, though, breathe. Think about it. We didn't grow up with competitive preschool admissions. (what a ridiculous phrase, "preschool admissions."). We didn't have thousand-dollar strollers the size of tanks, or videos purporting to make us geniuses. Our parents didn't have designer 3-D ultrasounds (or 4-D, whatever). Hell, my parents didn't even know if I was going to be a boy or girl. We played in the dirt and sometimes ate it. We didn't wash our hands 24/7. We wore - gasp - hand-me-downs. Because we were toddlers. We didn't care. And we turned out okay, for the most part. For all my enthusiasm with kid stuff and baby stuff, this just irks the crap out of me. I know it's a certain socioeconomic niche that I'm talking about, by G-d help me if I ever become like that.