My week thus far*

This has been a long week.

I started feeling bad last Friday afternoon. Headache, sinus drainage, sore throat, eyes hurting, ears painful just ready for my audition for a sinus medicine commercial. I hovered at just feeling yucky until Sunday when I turned feverish and achy. I spent most of Sunday asleep. I finally broke down and went to the doctor on Tuesday. He gave me $120 worth of drugs which I replaced today with another $50 worth of drugs cause the sinus meds just weren't cutting it. I'm beginning to feel better but I have a huge headache now. That may be because I've not been sleeping well (all that drainage causes me to wake up hacking and coughing all night) and I'm tired. I'm sure if I could stay home and rest for a day or two it would help but that's just not to be.

We had a big thunderstorm last night. It started about 4:00 a.m. I awoke to the windows rattling with all the thunder. A few seconds later my bedroom door flew open and the GirlChild came screeching into our room. Generally she can sleep through anything, but the StupidDog gets agitated when we have thunderstorms and I think wakes her. Normally I'd take her back to her own room, but last night I was so tired I let her get into our bed. Consequently no one got very much rest after 4:00 a.m. or so.


The rain was welcome. We've had more since Labor Day than we'd had all summer. Things are beginning to green up again. It's that sad coming back to life green tinged with dead brown burned growth instead of that fresh, new growth kind of green you see in the spring that is so vivid it almost hurts your eyes.

The DearHusband says Fall is his favorite time of year. Fall and winter are the saddest times to me; things are dying the days are getting shorter. Spring gives me hope. Summer, even with our oppressive heat, makes me feel hopeful and happy. One of the things I hate the most about Fall and Winter is sometimes I'll leave for work and it's barely light outside and when I leave to come home the daylight is fading or gone.

We had a terrible evening with the GirlChild yesterday. She had a test in Social Studies today and didn't want to study but couldn't answer the questions in the back of the book. We got into an argument, there were tears and she told me that she was stupid and just couldn't do the work and she tries and tries but she doesn't understand and needs so much more help than everyone else and she has to work so hard it makes her brain hurt. It broke my heart.

We tried to get her tested for learning disabilities last year but they didn't get to her before the year ended. They weren't doing any testing over the summer and I've not had a chance to follow up with them since school started. The DearHusband says he's not sure they will test her because they have kids at his school who need to be tested and they haven't done them yet; he thinks a kid outside the public school system will fall to the end of the line. I thought about having it privately done but I'm not even sure where I'd begin to get something like that done and I'm afraid it would be cost prohibitive. I've been reading up about learning disabilities on the internet so I can figure out what to do about all this.

Ultimately what we did about the Social Studies test was get up early today and read the chapter aloud to her. Sylvan has told us she is an auditory learner and retains what she hears. When we talked about her day this afternoon, she told me she thought she did "pretty O.K." on the test. I'm sure we'll find out tomorrow from the Friday folder.

Today I went to Continuing Legal Education. This seminar was on improving legal writing. It was very interesting. Generally with CLE seminars a certain percentage of the group bails after the first break, more leave at lunch and simply don't return and by the end of the day attendance is pretty sparse. This guy kept almost everyone all day and even went longer than planned and very few people left. I think that is an indication of how engrossing he was.

Tonight as we were getting ready for bed the GirlChild couldn't find Buddy. As you can imagine this was a tragedy of enormous proportions. While I think she is getting too old to have a security lovey, she can't, or won't, give Buddy up and I'm not going to make her. She was convinced the DearHusband had "hided her." I'm sure if I hadn't been there helping her look, she would also have included me in her accusation. She told me at one point that the only place we hadn't checked was the BoyChild's room, "and you know how much he likes to come in my room and get my things." We finally located buddy on the floor between her bed and the wall. When she went to sleep all seemed right with the world.

Sorry this is so rambling and unfocused. I guess I too should head off to bed.

Ciao

M&Co.