School is starting Monday, and this year I'm sad

I usually am glad for school to start back up because I have very limited time and energy to do anything other than watch the girls during the summer. By August I'm usually very ready to send them off to school. This year, for some reason, I'm sad thinking about sending them to school.

Maybe it's because the older they get, the more difficult it is to handle them and I'm worried something will happen while they are at school. Or that now that they are both in middle school, I am worried about ridicule and/or harrassment from other kids their age. Maybe I just don't want to be alone while they are at school. None of these reasons seem right, but I'm not sure why I feel sad for this year to start.

I'm becoming more reclusive because there aren't many places that I can take the girls by myself. It's frustrating and depressing to know that I have to have help to take my own kids out for the day. I can manage visiting relatives, going to one particular gas station, two different McDonalds restaurants, and a couple of the local metro parks.

However, the parks sometimes present a problem because Lotus does not want to get out of the car. So, for anywhere from one to five or more minutes I have to try to lure Lotus out of the car. I'll have Celest help me by tugging on her hand (which once in a great while works). Or I might try to entice her with the promise of gum or candy. Most often I've found that I can get in on the other side of the car, slide across the seat until I'm sitting right next to her, and then I'll use my body to push her out of the car. Then I have to hurry up and close the door and lock it so she doesn't just hop right back in.

By this point I've usually lost most of my energy and patience for the park trip. However, I stick it out for a least a few minutes so that we get some play time in.

The biggest obstacles seem to be: getting both girls out of the car and heading in the right direction; keeping both girls close to me; and having one of the girls either lay/sit on the floor/ground/parking lot and not being able to get her to stand up and walk for a while. It's frustrating. It's exhausting. Occasionally we become a spectacle and I get to hear the wisdom of my fellow humans about either my kids or my parenting ability. I usually have a strong desire to curse them out, but I don't.

Since I no longer have a gym membership, I really have no desire to go anywhere. And when I did have a membership that's pretty much where I spent all of my time outside of the home. I usually don't have disposable income, so shopping isn't an option (I'm not much of a window shopper). I don't care too much for watching movies at a cinema (and again, that costs money). I don't really have the urge to leave the house and do anything.

Maybe that's sad and/or pathetic, but, at present, it doesn't bother me. I just don't have the desire to go out. I figure that some time in the future the desire will come back on its own. If not, I think the hermetic lifestyle of dwelling in my suburban home is okay. It's not quite the woods or a cave, where I might picture an actual hermit living. So that makes it okay, right?