Thanks

It's been a hard 3 months or so.

The school year started off with a bang. The night of the first day of school a parent told me he used Daisy as the example of how not to act when he was teaching his daughter how to do the right thing. And then he said how he hoped he could help me become a better parent over the course of the school year together.

Many things about school are upsetting and frustrating this year; none of them have to do with the teachers or head of school. Who are fabulous. But things did not start well and so.


I never got any tomatoes. Neither did Zelda. It wasn't me.

Bleys died. The day after my birthday.

Jake had two root canals. I had a tooth crumble in my mouth. Crumble. Teeth aren't supposed to crumble.

Jake had a minor car accident. But it was an old car and it totaled it.

Billy was diagnosed with apraxia. There is no way to know right now whether this is childhood apraxia of speech that will go away with intensive (also expensive) therapy, or if this will be a lifelong condition.

But on the other hand...

The family that hated me and my daughter so so much moved away.

I'm volunteering 5-6 hours a week in classrooms at school teaching art and practical life.

I figured out how to play my professor's game and now have a 96% in her class.

I have gallons of salsa verde in the freezer.

We have a decent dentist, and the pain I was feeling that I thought was a tooth going bad turned out to be an inflamed jaw/cheek muscle from stress and tension. Flexeril seems to be working, although I overdid it yesterday and my speech was slurred (I took 1. The dentist suggested 1, or perhaps 1/2. I will do 1/2 from now on). It was amazing, the morning after I took the first one. I could close my teeth together on both sides of my mouth. I haven't been able to do that...I don't remember when.

The car may be totaled, but I have so many friends and relatives who have volunteered to help us with transportation, including my parents who are giving me their truck for a whole month. We'll replace the car in late January or so. The car was worth a lot more than we assumed it would be. And we've been overpaying the note on the mazda for two years, such that they've decreased the amount we owe each month. We're going to take advantage of both these things and get a small loan on a decent used car and take a deep deep breath.

I miss the cat, but there is no longer any poop on my dining room hearth. The other two cats seem to fill the space left, too, and I don't think we'll get a 3rd for a long time. Perhaps after Hickory goes (she's the same age Bleys was, but you'd never know it).

And Billy? What will be will be. He doesn't have autism or something else global and mystifying. The apraxia mostly involves just speech, with a little fine motor, but he's started to imitate. The professor was very positive, and not in a "we'll see" kind of fake way. She thinks he will probably be done with therapy before kindergarten (when, ironically, it would be free through the public school instead of $400 a month this semester).

It's been a year since Daisy's seizure.

Fiona is fine. She's upstairs with her sister playing with Bree, who is probably her best friend, and we are so blessed that they live two houses away.

The treehouse is 99% done. A friend on the next block is giving me the parts of her son's, now outgrown, to use for the swingset extension on the side.

Jake is scheduled and billable through late January already.

I will be certified again to teach at the end of this semester; I will be certified K-9 to teach art next semester.

Weather has been mild enough we didn't turn the heat on until last week. I will probably turn it back off; it's going to be 60 today.

I have often said we are the luckiest unlucky people in the world. My brother pointed out that this runs in the family, and I suggested we needed to translate it into Latin and make it our family motto. Using google translate, back and forth and tweaking it as best I can, I came up with this:

infaustum familia maxime fortunata

It's not a bad thing, really. Whatever doesn't kill you...makes a good story over bourbon slush.

Happy Thanksgiving. Here's to a good advent.