Thursday.
Trials are over. Two days now of my daughter just being home — sleeping in, glued to something on her laptop, no exam voice in the house. There's still the formal to get through before October's real thing, but for the first time in weeks nobody in this house is racing a clock.
Shop was quiet today. Carol came in for her usual fish oil, and we ended up talking longer than either of us probably meant to. Her son bombed English too — slammed a door over it last week. She'd had him with a tutor two months before the exam and it still went sideways, so now she's stuck somewhere between worried and just tired of worrying. Then she laughed and said maths is the one subject she's never had to think about with him.
I don't know why, but that made something in me unclench a little. Not because her son's bad day made mine feel better — it wasn't that. More that I'd been carrying this feeling all week like we were the only house falling apart over an exam, and she said it so plainly, like it was just another Tuesday. Maybe that's all you need sometimes — someone saying the ordinary version of your own mess out loud.
Driving home, I kept turning over whether to call Ninuo about a massage for my daughter — her shoulders have been like rock for months and she's never once mentioned it, I just noticed on my own. Haven't texted yet. Might tomorrow.