Friday, November 18, 2011

In the Eye of the Storm





1. So my parents' move-in day was moved up to tomorrow from Monday so they are already on their way here. My mother called about 7:30 Eastern time to say they'd reached Indiana. Apparently, they couldn't sleep last night so they left Madison at 3 am local time and expect to arrive sometime today or early tomorrow morning. And I have a long list of things I should be doing in preparation for their arrival but I can't seem to focus BECAUSE THEY'RE ALMOST HERE!

2. Also, because I'm crazy happy that my parents will be here, I volunteered to host Thanksgiving for 8 adults and 4 children next week, including both sets of parents. I think we will be having 3 different kinds of vegetables, in addition to yams, just so everyone will be happy and not forced to eat something they don't want. We may be skipping the stuffing entirely, though, because so many of the guests are eating low-carb. diets. I was never a big fan of it anyway; I'd much rather expend my calories on mashed potatoes.

3. Surely I must have done something else with my week? Saturday I worked on Thanksgiving cards. Sunday was church, raking pine needles, YG and the movie. On Monday, Miranda stayed home because she was too tired to go to school (she went back to bed at 10:30 am and didn't move for 3 hours). Tuesday was MOPS, a trip to the library and then I sat down at read Jim Butcher's Side Jobs cover to cover. Wednesday was Bible study, my visit to Miranda's class while Mimi went and visited Alex's class for American Education Week and making Baylis bars for Marshall to take to work Thursday. Last night was our parent-teacher conference with Miranda's teacher, case manager and speech therapist, followed by dinner out with a friend. And now it's Friday morning. Quick week.

4. We had a great conference last night with Miranda's teaching team. We were all agreed about what continue to be her challenges in the classroom but pleased with the progress from a year ago. We also agreed that even though she's been given the label of autism, she remains incredible difficult to classify, even though the teaching plan would've remained the same, regardless of her label. Where she will be placed next year for kindergarten depends on how much she learns this year and how she does in the extensive in-house evaluations the school staff will do as a part of Kindergarten Roundup in February. I am not looking forward to the paperwork; it's quite a pile. But we feel very secure that she is in the best place possible, continuing to learn at a good pace. In some ways, we just have to wait for her brain to grow to see where we go next. Early childhood development is hardly a path you travel in a straight line, although this sometimes feels like we're stuck in a game of Frogger.

5. I am not a Twilight fan. I did manage to sit through the first movie, but gave up after that. I do still read the movie reviews, though, because they make me laugh, like this one from Drew McWeeny of Hitfix, formerly known as Moriarty of Ain't It Cool.

6. If you missed this from my FB page, I'm posting it here: an excellent interview with Joss Whedon about his Much Ado About Nothing movie that comes out next spring. I'm actually considering a plan of seeing the movie once a week, when it arrives in theatres. I haven't done that since I was 17 and the movie was Newsies. Now if I could just get a hold of a copy of David Tennant's performance in the same play from the London stage last summer, life would be complete.

7. You can still order a copy of The Circle of the Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year, written by my dear friend, Kimberlee Conway Ireton, from her web page here. And if you want a copy of my mother's book, you can ask her for it in person, sometime next week! (It might take her a few days to find the right box of books.)

And here's Jen.

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