As of today, my boys have only 5 1/2 days of school left before summer vacation. And, as usual, they’ve decided to go out with a bang.

Last year, right before his preschool career ended, Jack insisted on taking the backpack he got at a minor league baseball game to his classroom. I wasn’t sure what was inside it, exactly, but when I picked him up, I found out he’d been carrying around this all day:

Luckily, they still let him graduate.

Then yesterday he came home from kindergarten and happily told me that he’d had a private picnic lunch with his teacher as a reward for something he’d done in class. “That’s so great, Jack!” I said. “What’d you talk about?”

“Well, not so much,” he answered. Then he pointed to a scab on his knee that he got a few weeks ago from falling down in the playroom. “Oh, yeah! I did tell my teacher that I got this owie on my leg from a rat bite. So that was pretty cool!”

“A RAT BITE?”

“Yeah. I’ve been telling lots of people at school that I have rat bites and guess what? They believe me!”

So now in addition to being stigmatized as a domestic beer drinker, people think that Jack lives in a 1920′s tenement building akin to something you’d find in Angela’s Ashes. I keep peering out the window expecting to see the Sisters of Mercy show up with some hot soup and a few rounds of tetanus shots to save our souls.

Meanwhile Sam’s been busy trying to be the best reader in the Second Grade. Last night when I went to check on him, I found him illegally reading under his covers with a Pokemon flashlight. “Wait, mommy!” he yelled as I pulled his book away, “I have to get the most reading minutes in before the end of the year so I win the prize!”

“But you’re already in first place with 9,000 minutes,” I argued. “How many does the next person have?”

“Thomas is in second place with 4,000 minutes,” he said, “but there’s a chance he could catch up to me in the next few days because he’s a really fast reader. Especially after he drinks some of his mom’s Frappucheetos. So can I have my book back, please? I want to get to 10,000 by tomorrow afternoon.”

Of course Sam’s competitiveness comes as no surprise because this is the same kid who yanked out two of his own loose teeth on the last day of kindergarten so he’d be number one on the classroom’s “Who Lost the Most Teeth This Year?” chart. His big smile after achieving that rather dubious victory would have been whole a lot cuter if it wasn’t so filled with bloody tissues. But still, we were happy for him. We take what we can get around here.

The end of school is also a milestone for me this year because it means I will no longer be serving on the PTA board. Yes, everyone, after two long years of going to meetings, making nice, volunteering for various duties, and hiding out in a bathroom stall whenever they bring up the Gift Wrap sale, I’m finally going to be a free woman. Free, free, free. Oh, Lawdy, yes, indeed I’m free! So watch out, Austin—there’s going to be a new Suburban Wanker on the loose and word is she really likes cookies.

But while I have a few really good ideas on how I can go out with a bang, too, it pains me to confess that after all of these 5:30 a.m. bootcamps I’ve been doing, my school year will probably just end in a whimper.

And maybe, if I’m lucky, a little light snoring.

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In other news, I’m now on “friendship probation” with Marinka over at MotherhoodInNYC. It has something to do with our wonderful friend Kelcey of MamaBirdDiaries who just gave birth to twins as well as some issue she has with me forwarding her Barry Manilow’s emails. She’s so touchy.