Inadequate Materials

The silicon chip inside my head is officially switched to overload! After Firstborn's diagnosis and Rosemary's Baby's return to gluten (which is actually not going too badly, by the way!), we had yet another setback! Rosemary's Baby's tutor, who works with him five days a week for just over six hours a day has gone on a sudden month-long medical leave. At present, I think I'd better not say any more than that because I might live to regret it, but rest assured, I am not happy about this. Not at all. Because she waited to do this until her job became legally secure, and because she has a set return date (which could change at any time, and probably will), and because we live so far from the nearest city, the centre she works for can't hire a replacement right now. Instead, they've trained ME to do the work until the end of September. So I have two kids, two dogs, a cat, a crazy falling-down house, an overgrown farm-sized vegetable garden, and now her jo...

Well, my first week as a 37 year-old woman has left me a little shell-shocked. After my wonderful birthday, things went just a teensy bit downhill. Last Monday, I had to take Firstborn to the Children's Hospital in the big city for a full day of developmental-type assessments. When Rosemary's Baby's pediatrician suggested I have that done "just to see", I thought the whole thing was a bit silly. Firstborn is doing better than well in school, has a nice tight-knit little group of friends, and aside from a few mild tantrums of late (school starts up again in 2 weeks--isn't this happening to ALL parents right now?!), he has really given us no reason to worry. But he does have some odd little quirks, and I wasn't going to pass up the chance to hit the city for a bit of shoppi ng , so we made a day of it. The neuro -development specialist started out by playing some games with him and asking him questions while I filled out several reams of paperwork. When she...

Today is my birthday, and I'm having a much better one than last year! I started out my day by putting Beatles Rock Band on at full-blast and treating my family to a noisy 7:30 AM performance of "Birthday". Then I splashed a little Irish cream in my coffee, pigged-out on a sugary, fatty breakfast and opened my presents (presented to me still in the mailing package they arrived in, and with a festive "I didn't wrap anything, or take the tags off." Aren't men great ?!). It seems that the way you start your day is the key. Last year, I woke up to a day that was grey and miserable and raining. I'd had to make my own cake because the Captain had been away all week and I'd just plopped it on the kitchen counter to decorate it, when my sister called to wish me a Happy Birthday. I wandered away. When I came back to the kitchen no more than ten minutes later, the Captain was where I'd left him, drinking coffee and surfing the net in the dining room. ...

I actually have nothing to contribute to the superstition that is Friday the 13 th , but I thought it was high time I posted again. I think by now my regular followers know that I frequently lose my mojo and disappear for days or weeks at a time, but I do like to post an update before everyone forgets all about me, and Friday the 13 th seemed like a fitting day to reappear from the dead. To start with, I've been reading a very interesting book called Entr e Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl . I assumed this book would be much like all the other self-help-for-your-most-superficial-closet-related-problems kind of book (and for the record, I love those books), but it is actually very much not what I expected. It's what I'd call half-fun, half-philosophy. The ideas in this silly-looking little book are actually quite challenging. The author deconstructs the lifestyle of the French and ends up presenting her reader with such a common-sense approach to...