Where Everyone is At

Jeff has fallen asleep on the couch with a copy of Homes for Sale in [Our Town].

Summer is learning to read. The other day she saw a Babar book on her bed and said, "Mom, I know how to spell Babar: B-A-B-A-R." Today she wrote "Summer Dad Mom Movie" on a sticky note and put it on my laptop; she says she wants a family movie night. (She copied the word movie from a "Disney Channel Original Movie" icon on the American Girl movie she was watching.

Charlie's speech pathologist came today for his weekly session, but we ended up ignoring Charlie and spent the whole time discussing the upcoming IEP meeting. I asked her point blank if she believes Charlie needs speech. "Well...." she hesitated. "If he didn't have hearing loss, and if he wasn't just about to transition, I would have discharged him. But only in the past couple of weeks." In other words, his speech is now age appropriate, but because he has hearing loss, he is at risk for difficulties, and she didn't want to drop him right before the town took over. Our plan is now to ask for half an hour a week, but the more important part is to ask for the hearing loss consultant to monitor him once a month, at least for a little while. We'll see what the evil despotic pupil services coordinator thinks of that.

The chicks are doing well. They are now all together again, in a guinea pig cage. Annie, the biggest one, is roosting on a stick, while the other four still splay out in the pine shavings like rubber chickens when they sleep.

Neither my sinuses or my house situation has cleared up, except to say that I do not want the Pottery Barn Schoolhouse at all, and never did, and only posted about it because Jeff was so dazzled by it. Today I walked down to my realtor's office and picked up some paperwork including an accounting of oil usage in Big Blue over the past three years; it really doesn't seem bad.

I think it's down to this: can I leave my neighborhood, and how fabulous do my bathrooms need to be? I would think the answers to those questions are no and not very.

While on that walk I ran into my yoga teacher, who told me she bought a house and then could not sell her condo for six months and then finally rented it for a year. "That's a cautionary tale," I said. "Yes," she said, "But my friend put her house on the market and it sold in like two weeks." I said, "Are you talking about the one-room schoolhouse house?" and she said "Yes!" I guess she hadn't heard that offer fell through. Nutty market.

This afternoon I put off the kooky builder but made an appointment with Crazy Dave about the bathroom.

Summer had a bad day at school. She didn't have her boots so she wasn't allowed to leave the blacktop at recess, and then she had to go to the reading specialist during snack and could not finish her pudding. I thought that actually sounded pretty bad too, so I took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who to turn Summer's day around, and it worked. I didn't even have to pay for Charlie.

Then we walked (as you can see, we have a theme here) to the market for a pint of Ben & Jerry's.

Tough, tough call. I'm thinking someone else is going to buy Big Blue while I dither.

Comments

[shaina]

i want to know where big blue is! tell me!

[cate]

Every time you write about being in walking distance to stuff, I get insanely jealous. I love my house but we can walk to nothing. (I have to keep my emergency Ben & Jerry's in the basement freezer.) So my vote (are you collecting votes from strangers on the internet?) is to hold firm on location.