Just got Bella’s report card: two A+’s and four A’s. So for a treat we trekked up to Beverly Hills and got our hair done.
While we were there I got to see Yayoi Kasuma’s exhibit at Gagosian, and we all had delicious Thai food afterwards at Baan. Both are worth a visit.
Bella’s first week of summer has begun with a vengeance. Tuesdays and Thursdays she goes to her SAT prep class from 9 am -noon, and then her Art Appreciation class at the local junior college (Saddleback) from 6 pm – 10 pm. Starting next Wednesday, she’ll be volunteering at the Shea Center (horseback riding for kids with disabilities) from 9 am- noon.
In her free time, she’s in advertently begun a small dogsitting business. It started with a friend’s two toy poodles for 2 1/2 weeks and now a neighbor has asked her to do the same when she goes to Hawaii next week. People pay a lot of cash to have their dogs watched! Bella made $480 watching those toy poodles…(granted she did bathe and groom them twice, which was an additional $100)
And let me make it clear, that I’m not the one making Bella’s uber-structured plans this summer. The only thing I’ve organized for her has been three weeks to Thailand when all her classes and volunteering work is through. Although I suspect that she considers accompanying me to Thailand just barely in the realm of vacation, and more in the domain of familial obligation (as she considered going strawberry picking with us last weekend). HER vacation is a weeklong trip to NYC with her best friend: it’s her friend’s 16th birthday gift from her aunt to visit any city in the States and she was allowed to bring along a friend – all expenses paid! That will be fun for her and will surely include a lot of clothes shopping without any babies in tow.
I am encouraging her to take the time to relax though. Her schedule for her junior year sounds pretty brutal: Advanced Placement (AP) Language Composition, Honors Pre-Calculus, AP Psychology, AP Physics, US History and French III. The only way to make that schedule harder would have been to take AP US History, which Bella decided not to do, in view of the fact that she was already taking three AP classes. She even considered taking Pre-Calculus over the summer (in lieu of going to Thailand!) so she could be in Calculus as a Junior. Luckily, the Calculus teacher advised against it.
Bella had always been an intense and determined girl.
