August 29, 2022

Daily Diary, Day 728: Public schools started today in San Diego, and on my morning walk, around 8 am, I saw 3 young men who looked to be off for their first day--by the look of them, to high school. The first two I suspect were freshmen because in each case their mothers were busy taking photos as they walked off, and the boys were looking very embarrassed. One of them, who I’ve seen walking a dog in the mornings, I barely recognized with his hair all elaborately coifed! A few minutes later, a saw another boy, looking a bit older and much more nonchalant, getting into the driver seat of a car and I’m thinking--not a freshman. A second later, I saw his father getting into the passenger seat, and I chuckled—thinking that having your Dad in the car with you as you pulled up to school would take away a lot of the coolness factor!

California recently passed a law that high schools can’t start any earlier than 8:30, in response to all the research about teens and sleep, so the timing worked.

Anyway, lots of fun thinking back to my own high school days. In 1964 when I went off to high school, my suburb didn’t have its own high school. We were too new, since most of the houses were built on what had been farmland before WWII. My home was built in 1955 with other houses on a street that had been for the farm, and the old farm house was at the top of the street. My elementary school was expanded to house grades 7-8 right before my class was ready for those grades. And when it was time for us to go to high school, they started busing us, and kids from another suburb, so we could attend an already existing high school that served a much older neighborhood.

In the spirit of trying to make us all feel welcome they made up a new name for the school that referenced all three neighborhoods. I lived in Green Tree, the other suburb being folded in was Castle Shannon, and we were now going to the old Dormont HS. So, the new name was Keystone Oaks (Key for the door in Dormont, Stone for the Castle in Castle Shannon, and Oaks for the tree in Greentree.) You might imagine how embarrassed we teenagers felt about the new name.

Anyway, thinking about this was a fun way to start the day. I would love to hear stories about your own high school days.

As for my goals, I did quite well on Saturday, getting 1285 words written and putting together an hour and forty minutes of exercise (counting cleaning, walking, and PT.) I achieved the same amount of exercise on Sunday, but only 503 words written. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep Saturday night and frankly my mind felt pretty much like I was wading through molasses, so I was glad to even get that much written.

Good night’s sleep last night, so feeling more optimistic about word count, and I already have my 60 min walk done. We are, however, going into a spell of hotter weather –forecast up into 90s this week, so I don’t know what that is going to do to productivity in writing or exercising.

Here are the only blooms that I found today that didn't look wilted.