This and That

Random stuff on my mind tonight:

• I can't keep up with B's conversation.  That girl can talk . . . and talk and talk.  I just got treated to a ten minute long commentary about our house breaking down and us running out of money and having to move into a hotel.  I couldn't follow a lot of it.  (I think it came from this video we watched the other day showing the lovely decrepit houses of Detroit's more hard hit areas.)

• Maybe, just maybe, I can do something like homeschool.  At least, K and I have had little preschool sessions every morning, short but fun with a couple of different activities.  Maybe I'm not as hopeless at this as I thought.

• Attempting to read Archimedes as the next stop on my study of the classics was waaaay too ambitious.  Might as well send it back to the library now.  Besides the fact that the editor randomly sprinkles phrases of Greek and Latin through the introduction, I flipped to the back and realized that I'm not ready for the math in this book.  It's been 13 years since I took calculus, and it wasn't my strong suit back then either.  Maybe there's a math classic on basic algebra out there?

• Drowning toddlers are one of my very worst nightmares.  And when it happens close to home, it gets hard to function normally even with my primary coping mechanism of escaping into fiction or denial.  I don't know the family, but I just can't imagine the heartbreak they are going through.  Horrible.

• Does it take anyone else five hours to get your bills paid and money budgeted out?  Sheesh, it feels like I lost my whole afternoon to crunching the money numbers.

• July is too early to go back to school.  In the past I didn't care, but it's really bothering me this year.  I've been thinking about why, and I'll probably devote a blog post to my thoughts and what I might be able to do to cope.

• J is going to wither away to skin and bones.  The older the boy gets the less he eats.  He never used to be so picky.  Is it part of his autism spectrum showing up?  Does he has something physical going on that making eating painful for him?  Or it just J being unreasonably picky?  Where do I draw the line?

• S is adorable and a  thorn in my side.  Typical toddlerhood.  We are going through the readjustment of getting used to the gym child care again (I reveled in going to the gym early without kids all summer break).  So far we are 50/50 when it comes to crying inconsolably or calming down so I can get a workout.  Fingers crossed she's calm tomorrow because I need to swim, and I have to do it at the gym.

• I need to be more grateful.  My husband reminded me this morning that gratitude will help me beat off the blues.  Maybe between my gym version of prozac (endorphins!) and some serious focus on being grateful I can banish these stupid blues before it blossoms into something much harder to function with.