Herky Jerky and Hot

OK. Indulge me in one rant about starting the school year in the middle of a run of “feels like 120 degrees” weather.

OMG. It’s so hot and miserable. OMG. Their schools annoy me most of the time anyway, and the sizzling, rain free, humid steam room heat and scraggly dead vegetation means I am a Ball of Thin-Skinned Aggravation as we start this school year. Jack’s private Catholic high school is annoyingly conservative – girls cannot wear pants and their skirt length is measured with a ruler, there is a razor and shaving cream at the door so boys can be forced to do a closer shave they show unacceptable stubble, you can only go to prom if you bring a date of the opposite sex, boys’ hair must be short (above the collar), no hair dye allowed . . . a million rules, largely gendered, for which any infraction leads to detention. The younger boys’ public charter school is annoyingly liberal (on the surface) – they over-think, over-explain, are infantilizing and exhausting and really lead the pack on performative wokeness in all of their countless email communications that I don’t have time to read. What makes it hypocritical is that the administration simultaneously clings to a series of barriers to entry that keeps it largely white and abled and rich (including an academic admissions test that disabled students like Jack can’t pass, and complicated unnecessary admission processes with mid workday hours-long lines to stand in, all designed so that poor Black kids’ parents can’t meet them). It makes all their sermons about values ring hollow.

Phew. OK. I’m done. These schools give our kids a decent education and they are the best options we’ve got. We are lucky the littles got into the charter they’re in, which is public and therefore free. We are lucky Jack’s Catholic school admitted him (unlike any public school here), it’s pretty cheap, and it has a really great setup for kids with learning disabilities. And while the school’s imposed framework is super conservative Catholic, everyone who works there does live in New Orleans . . . so the draconian rules are tempered somewhat by NOLA’s general looseness.

And now for something completely different.

Golly was the weather perfect in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. It rained a bit on occasion, most days even, but not as much as we expected. I shall sit here sweating and prickly on my couch in NOLA and try to mentally transport myself back to the glorious mid-sixty degree days I so recently enjoyed.

A quick recap of our itinerary: On June 4, Craig and his dad headed to Dublin where the Prof would teach a monthlong summer course and Craig would go to the same school/child care situation that the big boys attended back in 2017 when they did this fun trip.

(A few blast from the past pics from when his brothers did this trip in 2017, which filled his little toddler heart with jealous rage at the time.)

This year, in the 2023 trip, we made plans that the three of us plus the Prof’s whole family would fly up to meet them at the end of their month at University College Dublin, and then spend two weeks abroad. Here is what we did:

• Dublin, all of us had 2 nights at the Radisson Blu St. Helens

• Take a train to Belfast, where we stayed 2 nights in the Hilton Templepatrick

• One night in a Belfast hotel close to the ferry station, then taking the Stena Line ferry to Scotland

• 7 nights at a beautiful home/B&B in Arrochar, called Fascadail House. We needed every room, so the owners actually bailed for a trip to France and left us the house entirely to us. It was perfect. We took day trips from here to Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Inveraray Castle, Stirling Castle, and more.

• After our week in Scotland, the extended family split off and just our family of five continued alone. We flew to Amsterdam from Glasgow and spent two nights at the Hotel Estherea, (which my Mac labels as the “Yab Yum Brothel”). I just loved every inch of this hotel’s decorating, and our room was right on the canal.

• Next we took the Eurostar to London to spend one night in a crappy and extremely expensive hotel before our flights home.

It was a wonderful trip – more to come once I’ve just dipped myself in an ice bath and stuck my head in a freezer for a bit.