...has been interfering with my blogging. In the last month, both of my kids have had birthdays (complete with ultra-messy chocolate-frosted chocolate cupcakes for their respective classes of 26 and 15 kids, not to mention extra for staff), we've had the always exhausting and enlightening annual IEP (Individual Education Program) meeting, to continue to educate my son's school faculty and staff about
Tourette's "Plus" (OCD and ADHD), and to brainstorm appropriate accommodations for a mysterious disability that is as unpredictable as the weather, four children's doctor visits (with one follow-up and a dental appt. coming up), one adult nurse practitioner visit (as a result I am going to buy a nasal irrigator, and hope it's easier to use than a Neti pot), teacher conferences, dead elm tree removal scheduled (only to have it postponed by weather) and driven to Chicagoland for Thanksgiving. If you're driving I-94 across Michigan through Indiana into Illinois, I recommend that you avoid the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. But the Friday afternoon following Thanksgiving is a great time to make the same drive (two and half hours shorter for our return to the Ann Arbor area).
Last week my son was riding his bike to school wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. It was 13°F this morning (with a windchill around 4°F), and we had to shovel an inch of light snow off of our sidewalk.
I haven't had much time for reading, though I did finally manage to finish
The Omnivore's Dilemma. I post-it-ed (is that a word? if not, it should be) a bunch of stuff to discuss, but I don't have time to do it now. Interested readers might want to check out Pollan's shorter essays on his
website - I was thrilled to find many of my old favorites there, including
"Weeds Are Us",
"Opium Made Easy" (warning: it's only illegal to grow the wrong kind of poppies if you read this article), and
"A Gardener's Guide to Sex, Politics, and Class" (you didn't plant magenta zinnias, did you? Cause that's just so ..... slatternly).
1 comment:
And I've spent more than an hour on each school day keeping my son on track with math homework. I'm so glad that I didn't have to learn partial products multiplication or the "lattice method" as a child. On the plus side, I now don't have to count in my head to remember than 8+5=13, or that 6x9=54. This unaccustomed math brainwork should help stave off Alzheimer's, right? Because I haven't done so much basic computation for about 30 years. Except for that unfortunate "Anal Methods" (aka "Analytic Methods" class in grad school, where the professor ranted how "god-damed stupid" we were until his froth of salivia started to choke him.
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