A special sort of difficulty

It's that time of year when kids are graduating, having parties, getting accepted to college -- and parents are proudly posting photos and announcements on Facebook.  That's natural, of course, and it's wonderful and fun to see the kids I knew as toddlers and kindergarteners and goofy elementary school kids looking so adult and launching into the big wide world.

But for those of us with special needs kids, it's a trying, emotional time too.  We're happy for our friends and we delight in hearing about their children's successes.  We understand the pride and excitement and desire to share their kids' accomplishments.  But at the same time, seeing those announcements and successes brings up some sharp and difficult feelings of pain.  They remind us of what our kids aren't yet capable of, of what we wish they could do. We wonder if our kids will ever be able to experience those life milestones.  Some parents know their kids won't ever achieve them.  We know that our kids take a different path, with different milestones.

A while back, I slammed hard into this situation.  I was getting together with a bunch of friends with whom, years earlier, I'd been in a very fun book club.  We'd met when our kids were in preschool together, and we'd met monthly to eat out, chat, talk books.  But as our kids got older and our lives got busier, the book club fell by the wayside. I was so looking forward to the reunion we'd planned. I really, really like these women.  Naturally, the evening involved everyone catching everyone else up on what they and their families were going through.  It was all about college applications and acceptances and scholarships and what kid was dating whom and what career paths they'd chosen.  I sat there, feeling both glad for those wonderful kids and their moms, and struck dumb by how dreadfully it all hurt.  I felt like I couldn't participate -- not that I wasn't enormously proud of my daughter's accomplishments, not that she didn't have wonderful accomplishments. And, to be clear, not one of those women in the room would have judged me or my daughter, or viewed her as "less than" in any way.  It was me, confronting my own pain and jealousy and feelings of grief.  I felt a bit like I was on the far side of a deep gulf, and just couldn't even begin to reach the other side. 

It's tricky, negotiating the minefield of conflicting emotions we experience every day as parents of kids with special needs.  We love our kids. We're enormously proud of them.  We understand how hard they work and how much they tackle every single minute of every single day.  We know how something that looks like a tiny, ordinary thing can be a huge, significant accomplishment. But that doesn't make it any less painful when we see how our friends' and families' kids seem to sail along doing all those normal things that, for our kids, aren't "normal" at all. And then there's the guilt.  How can we NOT feel happy for our friends and their kids?  Does it make us bad parents if we feel sad that our kids aren't "normal?"

Years ago, I read a novel about a woman who died and had to learn about what happened next.  After a series of tasks, she met with her guiding angel, who explained to her that because she'd been so good in her life, she could choose to return to earth in the highest form of being there was, to do the greatest service there could be on earth. It would be a hard path, the angel explained.  But it would give her the most opportunity to teach others and make the world a better place. When the woman agreed, she was reborn on earth as a baby with special needs. 

I think of that often. I think of how amazing our kids are, how much they struggle in ways that aren't even visible to most people.  And how for us, their parents and friends and families, they help us to understand so much at a truly different level. We experience compassion and patience we didn't know we had.  We see people differently, understanding that everyone has struggles that aren't visible on the surface and that we may never know.  We see the world in a different way, too, and end up choosing paths we never expected to travel. We learn gratitude, and how to live in the moment, because sometimes that's all we can do, all our kids can do.  Yes, our kids teach us so much.  And, on our best days, we can help share those lessons and grow.

Which is not to say that every parent doesn't feel and experience these things.  I'm convinced that that's what parenting is about, mainly -- learning patience and compassion and understanding for some separate person that, no matter how much you try to shape them, is different from you.

But for those of us with kids with special challenges, you know what I mean.  It can be easy to forget, especially as we're watching other kids forge ahead.  It's hard not to wonder "why couldn't my child's life been like that?  Why couldn't my life have gone so normally?  Why are things always harder for me?"

So at times like this, I try to remember how lucky I am.  I have an amazing, creative, funny, smart daughter.  She's taken me places I never could have imagined.  She teaches me so much all the time.  Because of all of it -- the pain, the difficulty, the uncertainty, the struggle -- I've become more patient, more tolerant, more open to different approaches and ideas.  Parenting has stretched me more than I ever thought possible.

If you're feeling all of these things, there are places where you can share your frustrations, your pain, and those mega-accomplishments that, to folks with NT kids, would seem like little ordinary things.  There's a great book called "Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid: A Survival Guide for Ordinary Parents of Special Children."  It's written by two moms of special needs kids, who write with great humor about the ways things can be tricky and how to cope with them.  And, even more helpful to me, those same women run a facebook group here where parents like me share their joys and frustrations, their tricks and strategies, their good days and bad days.  There's a lot of humor, a lot of help, and most of all, a whole lot of understanding. 

Blooming and Growing

A friend called me the other day to ask if I was okay, because I've been so quiet here.  Rest assured that I am fine -- I have just been immersed in daily life and family stuff.  Which, I'm afraid, does not make for interesting blog content.  You don't really want to hear how I struggle with removing stains from clothing and what I made for dinner, do you?

We did have two birthdays in the past week, mine and Miss C's.  Thank you to all who sent birthday wishes -- I had a lovely day and my birthday gift will be to spend a few quilting retreat days at my favorite retreat site, Bishop's Ranch, next week.  And Miss C turned 15, which has us in shock.  But we had an action-packed weekend with birthday events, seeing friends and family and celebrating with lemon cake AND chocolate cupcakes.  Guess which ones were for me!

And I fell down a big homeschooling hole this past week, as Miss C and I worked on adjusting the new biology and world history curricula to make them more fun and interesting.  I am pleased -- you have no idea how pleased I am -- to report that we have settled on an online Biology curriculum that is not only interesting but wildly entertaining, and that I'm finding great history resources to liven things up along the way.  I have discovered that Miss C is a visual/auditory learner so I've had fun hunting down videos from the library and Netflix and other places to keep us stimulated.  I get so excited when I start cruising the websites at the History Channel and the Biography Channel and PBS.org -- there are wonderful, wonderful educational tools out there to make things interesting.  For the current ancient China unit, for example, along with textbook reading and some written projects, we'll watch "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo," and another video that tours the inside of the Forbidden City and another video about the emperor who had the terra cotta warriors and the great wall made.   I can hardly wait, actually.

So, nothing dire here going on, just school and paperwork and laundry and grocery shopping and all that sort of thing... not to mention the occasional bit of time outside, as it has been in the 70's here and everything in the yard is starting to bloom.

Happy February!

Meerkat Monday

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There is no reason for the meerkat picture, other than I wanted to open with a photo and this was in my photo archives.  I snapped this fellow at the SF Zoo. There is something so appealing about meerkats.

I've not had much to say lately (as you may have noticed) and it occurred to me it's partly because I'm tense.  Yes, tense.  And I think it's related to the start of the school year.  If our history with Miss C has shown anything, it's that things don't seem to go the way we plan.  Which is not a bad thing, although it's unsettling if, like me, you find security in having plans.  Over recent years, September has found us launching into a new school situation, and we've tried all sorts of alternatives in an effort to find a good-fitting academic hole for our square peg child.  That has led us to home-schooling, as I've described here, and things are going just fine.

But I have this sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop... As in, this is going well but what could go wrong?  And no wonder, as in recent years we've started off great and then have watched as things slid slowly and painfully and inexorably downhill.   No wonder I'm a bit nervous.

Parenting teaches all sorts of lessons.  Patience, for one,  Finding resources in yourself you didn't know were there, for another.  And the current lesson that keeps whacking me in the head?  Just enjoy the moment.  Take where we are right now and go with that.  I'm  really trying to just relax and enjoy where we are RIGHT NOW.  But for a person who likes to plan ahead, and sort things out and then sit back and relax, it's strangely difficult.  I remind myself (even while I'm mapping out lesson plans for the next several months) that all that matters is what happens today, and tomorrow will be another day.  If things need to change, we'll change them.  If not, we'll keep going. It's that simple.

The only part that is not simple is me, resisting and trying to anticipate Plan B, Plan C and Plan D.

Here is another thing I'm thinking a lot about.  It's typical of moms, I think, to feel unsettled and a bit distressed when their kids aren't happy.  That mother thing kicks in and we do what we can to make things better.  And here's a big challenge I keep bumping up against as the mom of a child with Aspergers:  I can't make it better.  I can't fix it.  Miss C is struggling with things I can only glimpse, and I can't change that.  I can try to understand her needs, and I can try to help her cope, but there are certain things she faces that I can't change.  When Miss C is overwhelmed or struggling with life as she sees it through her particular lens, I can't reason her through it.

When I talk to friends who ask about how our homeschool routine is going, I can honestly say it's going great.  We're feeling our way, but things are going smoothly.  I just need to relax and accept that it IS going smoothly.

I think I need a massage and some chocolate.  All this peaceful living in the moment has me stressed out.

It's a backpack, baby

Fourteen years ago, when Roger and I were preparing to travel to China to bring our baby daughter home, I looked far and wide for some practical travel diaper bag.  I finally settled on a wonderful black backpack from Eddie Bauer, with zillions of pockets, and it was perfect.  It looked like a backpack, so I didn't have to haul around a cutsie blue and pink bag with ducks and bunnies, and it held all of the requisite baby supplies PLUS all of the gear I'd have had in a purse.  It really was the ideal traveling bag.  (Eddie Bauer doesn't make it any more, and the one above is the closest picture I could find to what I carried.)

In the years since I carried that bag around China, it's doubled as the vacation bag to hold books and magazines and sketchbook on vacations.  It sits with me at the beach at Tahoe every summer.  And the dang things shows virtually no wear.  It's amazing.

I pulled it out of the closet today because Caroline has been packing for her first overnight summer camp, this coming week.  (She's headed off to a week-long camp to learn all about 3-D modeling for computer animation.)  She needed a pack she could carry around to hold her journal and her cell phone and her sketchbook and maybe a beach towel if they're going swimming.  She didn't want to bring a school backpack, and it occurred to me that "the China pack" is the ideal solution.  We've loaded it with her necessities, and it will be ideal.

So everything is perfect, except that Mommy is getting a little teary-eyed at the the thought of my BABY heading off for a week (her first time staying more than a night without mom and dad!), carrying the very bag we hauled around China to hold her diapers and bottles.  She's so grown up.  She'll be there with the other computer graphic obsessed kids, strolling around a university campus and learning new exciting things with other teens and even eating dinner without being burped afterwards.

Roger and I are taking the opportunity to have some kid (oops, I mean TEEN) free fun together with a list of things we've been wanting to do in San Francisco.  But I think the week will be harder on us than on her.  

Teen Time

We are officially in Teen world, and I have discovered that I am suddenly no longer my favorite daughter's person in the whole world.  Evidence Miss C's description of the movie "Up" to a friend of ours recently:

Judy:  So, did you like it?

Miss C:  It was horrible.  Boring and horrible.

Judy: I thought you'd like it!  What was horrible about it?

Miss C:  Mom kept laughing!

Judy: What was she laughing at?

Miss C:  Oh, I don't know, parts that weren't even FUNNY.  And she would gasp at parts that weren't even surprising.  It was (said with big Teen glower) really really annoying.

Me (unable to resist defending myself): But there were funny parts!  LIke how that funny bird kept hissing at the guy he didn't like!  That was funny!  And it was just like Jasmine (Miss C's cat) and how she loves you and hisses at me.

Miss C: Well, that WAS like Jasmine.  And it was kind of funny.  But YOU (said accusingly) were so annoying!

Judy: So  it wasn't the movie you didn't like, it was that your mom was being annoying  by laughing at it?

Miss C.  YES.

*** Sigh.***  I guess Roger and I will be watching our movies alone now...

Unschooling

It's kind of amazing how many different attitudes about school there are out there.  I've written here before about our explorations to see what options there are when your child doesn't travel the traditional institutional school path very easily.  As we are rapidly approaching the high school years, I've been doing a lot of research.

Lately, I've been reading a lot about the idea of "unschooling."  At its core, it's the philosophy that every child (and adult) is primed to learn naturally, and at an individual pace that may not match the pace of her buddies.  The idea, as I understand it, is that there's no real reason a child has to learn algebra at age 14 or physics at age 17 or multiplication tables at age 8.  One child may be ready for multiplication at age 6, another might not be ready until age 11.  And, the thinking goes, that maybe it's better for kids to learn more naturally, following their interests and curiosity the way adults do.  If a child is interested in outer space, say, she'll be inspired to want to read books about space, maybe learn about the planets and science of the universe, maybe even figure out the mathematical calculations of light years and the physics of projecting a rocket into space.  The theory is that people learn best when their learning is self-directed.

And yet most schools are structured to teach kids, grouped by age, in lock-step, giving the clear message that you are Different if you are interested in other things, learn at a different pace, or don't learn best from sitting at a desk reading a textbook.  I'm beginning to realize that a lot of folks who home-school their kids do so because they want the learning to follow their child's pace, not vice versa.  This article from Psychology Today has some very interesting thoughts about this. 

Once you start examining the idea that learning needs to be internally motivated, and not externally motivated,  it seems an obvious point.  Something I read gave this example:  Say your favorite thing in the world to do is knitting. But your husband tells you that you are only allowed to knit for one hour a day, and that you have to spend every afternoon out in the garage learning carpentry.  Even if you had a glimmer of interest in carpentry to begin with, having it imposed on you like that would probably make you dislike the process and maybe even make you hate going into the garage.  And  you would probably become obsessed with knitting, jealously guarding that hour and trying to add whatever minutes on that you could.

There are all sorts of reasons that imposing that externally motivated learning on kids is practical and efficient, even while it not be ideal for most kids.  Probably some kids fall in love with carpentry, and a lot of kids don't mind what they're doing as long as their friends are out there in the garage doing it alongside of them.  For those of us with kids who don't seem to thrive in that sort of learning environment, however, looking at school-teaching versus independent learning opens up a lot of fascinating possibilities.  

So as we are exploring options for our situation, we're learning more ourselves.

If you are interested in learning more about "unschooling," this site and this site have a lot of interesting information.

Time to Cuddle

I had a good lesson in attitude adjustment yesterday. Here's yet another fact I'm learning about our new unschool world: I feel better and get more done if I'm more relaxed about my own agenda. I'm discovering that it's not terribly realistic to expect to oversee Miss C's daily lessons, while also doing laundry, cleaning the garage, making phone calls, upgrading software on the computer, grilling chicken, and trying to get a bit of legal work done.

Don't laugh. That really does describe yesterday morning.

So today is different. My to-do list looks a tad more realistic. And we've already remembered to do something that both Miss C and I enjoy -- we take a "cuddle break" in the middle of the morning. We snuggle on the couch, or lie on the bed, and cuddle and read together or look at a book, or just talk. It's lovely quiet connecting time.

Sure beats recess on the playground. I highly recommend taking a cuddle-break with whom-ever is around your house!

It's all a spectrum

I know I keep saying this, but we are going through a sort of funny time in our household. Every day is a mix of good things and challenging things, of small decisions that mount up to feel big and exhausting, of falling behind amidst clutter and errands undone while feeling like we are making progress on the big important things.

Mostly it centers around Miss C. She has Asperger's Syndrome (or "AS" as a lot of people call it) which is is an autism spectrum disorder. It's quite common, and whether or not you know it, you probably know someone who has it. Most typically, it's apparent in extraordinarily intelligent people who have sort of awkward social skills. Think Bill Gates and Albert Einstein, and those computer/science/math nerdy guys you may have known in high school. There huge ranges and differences -- but one of the characteristic issues is difficulty with nonverbal communication. A counselor we know refers to it as "social deafness." All of the nonverbal cues we pick up intuitively during social interactions -- body language, tones of voice (ie, teasing joking versus mean joking) -- aren't apparent or easily understood by people with AS. Another AS characteristic is extreme sensory sensitivity -- being acutely affected by sounds, lights, smells, crowds, etc. On a plain sensory level, the world can be an overwhelming place to someone with AS.

So. Remember 7th grade? And how the social landscape of school suddenly changed? For girls, there is puberty, and body-awareness, and self-consciousness, and new crushes on boys, and trying to fit in, and noticing that some people are popular and others aren't... It's a minefield. And that doesn't even factor in geometry and history and writing essays.

All things considered, C is doing great. She's doing well in school academically. She has some good friends who mean a lot to her. She's incredibly creative, and she has an extremely strong sense of herself. She doesn't worry about fitting in, even though NOT fitting in can make life fairly stressful.

The upshot of all of this is that as R and I try to figure out how to help her stay on an even keel, we're learning to look at the world in a different way. For us "neurotypical brain" types, it's not easy to see the world from an AS point of view ... but we're learning. And because we're understanding more all of the time, we find ourselves realizing that the cookie-cutter, follow-the-mainstream routes may not be the best for Miss C.

Last week, we had the huge realization that there is no reason that C has to finish the school year in her current setting if it feels to us like it's not working. I know, DUH, you think. We'd arrived at the decision that we needed to change her school situation for next year. But in the middle of the night one night last week, as R and I lay side by side in bed staring at the ceiling and worrying outloud about C's migraines and her increasing misery about school, it hit us: we can take her out of there right now if we conclude that that's what would be best for her.

So I've been doing pretty constant research into educational alternatives. And you know? There are amazing options. We're thinking "outside of the classroom box" these days -- so I've been learning about homeschooling and distance learning and working with tutors and a host of different options that could lessen C's stress and improve her happiness and get her back to actually enjoying learning. It's been scary to allow ourselves to even think of wandering off of the well-charted paths (to use yet another cliche) but it's a source of huge relief. And we've come up with some really, really terrific options.

I tell you, parenthood is just one amazing process of education and humbling awareness.

It's no wonder that I'm behind on my projects, the clutter is piling up around the house, the yard looks like it hasn't had any loving care in months ... but the three of us are feeling like we've gotten a handle on a pretty big problem. We have options, and we have plans in place if we need them. We're all feeling a lot better.

Oh, by the way, if you want to learn a bit more about Asperger's from the perspective of an adult with AS who explains how the world feels to her, check out this blog, Asperger Journeys. For all of the books and articles I've read, this brings home to me most clearly what AS feels like from the inside.

Just Holding On

I took this picture in the backyard the other morning, loving how one vine had reached over to hold onto the tendril next to it. And when I was thinking about how, for some strange reason, I feel like I've been having trouble holding onto all of the bits and pieces of my life these days, I thought of this picture.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why I've been feeling so scattered. I mean, there's the usual stuff of daily life: ferrying Caroline to and from activities, trying to get work done, keeping the house clutter to a reasonable state, throwing a load of laundry in from time to time.... And we've all had colds here over the past two weeks, that hasn't helped... But somehow, I'm not managing to get time for quilting, or getting together with friends, or making it to a quilt guild meeting now and then, or doing a bunch of things that are important and fun and I've managed to make time for before now.

At any rate, my goal -- starting now -- is to remember what's important in terms of quality of life and DO THAT STUFF. Yes, work and laundry and such have to get done, but still.

And when I'll be doing that fun stuff? I'll try to blog about it, too. Things have been a little sparse here, I know.

With that said, I'm going to go get to work on a an idea for a quilt that's been haunting me for a while now. No time like the present, eh?!

One of these things is not like the others...

A childless friend of mine recently said to me, exasperation in her voice, "Don't people KNOW that raising kids is going to be hard?" She'd been frustrated by the complaining of a single-mother friend of hers, who tends to go on at length with some bitterness about how she can't do the things she wants to do because she has a small child.

Of course, I replied, people know intellectually that raising a child isn't easy. But knowing that intellectually is a vastly different matter than facing the day-to-day rearing of an individual with her own personality and ideas and opinions -- hard enough when you have a partner, probably harder when you're doing it alone. When I talk to my mom-friends, we always agree: the things that can be the most challenging are the unexpected things, decisions or issues you just didn't see coming.

I have been thinking a lot about this conversation with my friend lately, because over the past several weeks I have been immersed in sorting through the difficult business of advocating for our daughter. Figuring out what your child needs can be a very tricky business, I find. When she tells you about a problem she's having, or about something that she finds really, really hard, what is in her best interest? Sometimes just listening seems to be in order, and the venting is what is needed. Do you encourage her to keep trying, on the theory that conquering the difficulty will help her feel good about herself? Or will that make her feel that you're not appreciating the difficulty and seriousness of the situation? Do you suggest different ways of handling the problem, to offer new strategies? Or does that suggest that she's not handling it well or will she take it as sounding critical of her choices? Do you intervene? When do you decide that what she's talking about really *is* something a 12-year old girl shouldn't have to handle on her own? How do you make sure she feels listened to, supported, valued, empowered, and defended or protected if it comes to that?

Sorting out which strategy to use when is tricky, I tell you.

And lately, I have been grappling with another layer to the whole business: how to cope with the adults (like teachers and school staff and principals) who view YOU as a problem because you're standing in front of them advocating to get what your child needs. Some people are great, of course, and dedicated, and empathetic, and sensitive to the fact that not every kid is the same and some are pretty darned different from the rest of the pack. But some kids are pretty sensitive, and some adults are not.

I'm talking in generalities here, because I've been addressing this stuff in regard to a host of different issues. But one example crystalized the issue for me. During a recent overnight class field trip, one of the girls in her class (we'll call her Ann) had her birthday. And at dinner that night, some of her friends assembled a cake for her by putting a bunch of individual cafeteria-cake-squares onto a plate. We were in a big cafeteria, and as we started to sing Happy Birthday to Ann, the kids from all over the room -- not just the ones in our class -- gathered around to sing and watch. And just as the singing ended, two of Ann's friends reached over and shoved her face down into the cake.

There was much laughing and excited shrieking from the onlooking kids. And Ann came up, frosting everywhere on her face and hair, looking hugely embarrassed but smiling faintly, as if trying to see the joke and be a good sport about it.

Me, I gasped in horror. At 12, among a big crowd of peers, I'd have been mortified and humiliated if that had been done to me. The mom sitting next to me looked similarly aghast.

The teacher, sitting to my right, smiled affectionately at the group. "Ann is smiling," she said, "So I'm not going to worry about it."

Frankly, her reaction horrified me even more. It seemed pretty clear to me that the situation called for some immediate discipline -- at least the forceful message that those sorts of pranks are inappropriate and hurtful. I said, "I thought that was a really mean thing to do to someone they call their friend." But still, the teacher smiled, and again said that since Ann didn't "seem upset," she didn't think there was a problem.

So here's the thing: my daughter has been telling me about how this teacher just "doesn't deal with stuff." So when she, or any other kid, feels that they have a problem, they don't talk to the teacher because she doesn't do anything about it. That's my child's perception, anyway, and from what I'm learning from other parents, she's not the only one who feels that way. There are kids in that class who spend each day worrying about what's going to happen -- what other kids might do to anyone else -- and even though nothing happens on any given day, they're stressing out about it because as far as they can tell, the limits are pretty darned loose.

Now, my daughter isn't the sort of kid to let stuff roll off of her. She can fret and worry and get a pretty good stomach ache going over things. And, after seeing various episodes on our school field trip, I have a whole new understanding of why she's reacting the way she is. Just because she feels differently -- or is the only one who reacts differently outwardly -- doesn't mean there's not a problem with the classroom dynamic.

Anyway. Tomorrow I'm scheduled for a talk with the school principal, and I'm guessing (from past discussions) that she'll listen, and suggest that my daughter is unusually sensitive but that everything is under control, and I'll feel a bit patronized and not really heard, so I'll have to express my concerns a bit more emphatically to make myself understood.

It's just not simple, figuring out what is going on and knowing how to do what your child needs you to do. But you do the best you can, and that's all we parents can do.

Are you smarter than a sixth grader?

Caroline asked me for help with her math homework this afternoon. She's in the advanced math group in her class, and had a worksheet involving equations involving exponents. I know. SIXTH grade.

Well, it's been quite a while since I've done this sort of math, but I was a good student and figured I could sort it out. Plus, the worksheet had cute little fishies swimming all over it, so it looked like it was within my math range.

Here's a sample equation:

1.5^x + 8^y = 633

(That's 1.5 to the x power plus 8 to the y power ... so the challenge is to figure out which exponents fit. And it was in the instruction that it would be a whole number between 0 and 9.)

Yikes. Decimals and exponents? I don't remember encountering that. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how you could take any exponent of 1.5 and add it to a whole number to get a whole number.

Caroline had struggled until she was in tears, and after working on this, I felt similarly frustrated. I kept concluding that the worksheet HAD to be wrong. But every other problem had a decimal in the equation, too.

You should have seen the various ways I yanked algebra out of my ancient brain. We multiplied and divided and tried all sort of rearrangements of the equations. Yikes. And I simply couldn't figure it out. I was becoming alarmed, not just at my own inability to do the worksheet, but also realizing that Caroline will be shooting past me intellectually and it's starting NOW, apparently.

Caroline was beside herself at not being able to finish the homework. Finally, I figured I'd see if there was a simple instructional aide on the internet (Yay, internet!) and failing that, I'd write a note to the teacher reporting how hard we'd all worked.

The only thing I could find on the internet that showed how to do problems that looked like Caroline's involved logarithms. Yes, you read that right. LOGARITHMS. And, as advanced as Caroline is, I don't think her teacher is throwing those at her yet. Not with little fishie drawings, anyway.

While Caroline and I were continuing our calculations, Roger arrived home from work and jumped in to show us how to do these. He worked through the same steps I'd tried, coming to the same conclusions. "This has got to be wrong!" So, I wrote a note to the teacher and convinced Caroline that it'd be okay for her not to struggle any further.

We set the paper aside, down at the end of the table, to eat dinner. And while we were eating, I glanced over at it and realized.... Those weren't decimals. They were the problem numbers. So what we'd read as 1.5 in the first equation was, in effect, Problem #1: 5^x = 8^y = 633. And sure enough, once we looked we saw that they were the problem NUMBERS.

NOT DECIMALS. You think they could have made that spacing a bit more obvious, eh?

So... the math was still tricky but back down to reasonable advanced-sixth-grade level.

Phew.

I'm leaving the note attached for the teacher, because I'm sure she'll get a laugh over all of us working so hard with all of those decimals. I wonder if anyone else did what we did.

And while I'm sure that Caroline's school work will exceed my ability to help her do it sometime soon, I'm breathing a sigh of relief that I have a bit of a reprieve.

More from the Junk Drawer

It's been one of those weeks filled with a lot to do and the feeling that I have very little to show for it.

On the one day I could take time for quilts with a clear conscience, I buckled down and faced my least favorite quilting task: piecing the quilt back. I even figured that as long as I was doing one, I'd do another. I had a tolerable time piecing the backs for my newest fruit and veggie quilt and the garden quilt I'm making for a Christmas present, and I got them both fully sandwiched and basted and ready to quilt. I felt very virtuous at the end of that chore!

I've discovered that my library was wireless internet now, which is what is allowing me to post this very entry. I've just dropped Caroline at a birthday party at a nearby park, and I came inside to escape the strange October hot spell and to get a bit done on the computer. I love that I can sit here and have full internet access for free, and all via my powerful green library card.

Speaking of birthday parties, I am frequently puzzled by the etiquette and safety issues these events present. For example, Caroline is at a new school this year and we know very few of the families with kids in her class. This is the second party she has attended which is hosted by people I don't know. Why should I leave my child in the care of people I absolutely do not know? At the last party (a backyard party in a child's heaven of a backyard, complete with swimming pool, trampoline, rope swing dangling over the trampoline, and big jumpy house), I looked around and pretty quickly saw that there were no adults watching the kids in the pool (while they pushed each other in) or on the trampoline. The mom and dad were busy going in and out of the house, fetching food and beverages and generally doing party stuff. So, I hung around and watched the pool, feeling that it simply wasn't safe to leave my child (and the others) unattended around the pool. No other parents seemed the least bit concerned. I guess I'm over-cautious. Today, I introduced myself to the host parents, looked at the park area where the party is taking place, and noted that there are various parents there watching the kids. I've decided to leave for a while, but I'm sure I'll go back before the end-time of 4:30 to see what's going on. Do other parents worry about this sort of thing? What do they do?

I had a lovely book club get-together last thursday night. We, the No Guilt Book Club, decided that we were in danger of becoming the No Book Book Club. We're a bunch of working moms, and we love having dinner together and we always intend to discuss what we read. But we don't typically see each other in our day-to-day lives, so we always have a lot to talk about when we meet at our monthly dinners. This time, we read Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni. And since it was about the intertwined lives of two cousins in India, we met at an Indian restaurant and had a delicious dinner. Next month's book is The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks. I've just grabbed a copy at the library. It doesn't look like the sort of story I'd usually choose, but that's the great thing about the book club...it causes me to read books I wouldn't otherwise pick.

Unfortunately (and maybe coincidentally) I woke up in the middle of the night after that dinner with the worst stomach ache I remember having. I did not feel well AT ALL. I rallied to get out of the house on Friday, but I'm still on the edge of queasy. Saltine crackers are about all I want to eat right now.

On Friday, despite my weird stomach, I met up with my friends Janet, Pat and Pam to celebrate Pat's upcoming birthday and to wander around a few shops. We explored a yarn store (such tempting, lovely yarns!), a bead store (visual candy!), and a few "stuff" shops...you know, knick knacks and gifts and home decorating. AND we ventured off to find the new fabric store in our area, The Material Girl. At the moment, the shop is upstairs in a funny little strip mall building, but it is moving soon and the new space (right nearby) is large and well-lighted and looks like it will be great. Despite the tiny site now, we were all impressed with the great and interesting assortment of fabric. Lots of Kaffe Fassett and Amy Butler, a wonderful selection of black and white prints, some interesting vintage pieces of fabric on the bolt... I suspect I will return.

What's your Mon-tra?

Caroline's buddy Christopher came home with her after school for a play date. On the way home in the car, they were discussing the creatures they were inventing for their imaginary world, very much influenced by Harry Potter. Christopher's suggestion was a "spermit" which, he announced, would be like a hermit crab but with super powers.

A "spermit" brings other images and powers to mind for me, but never mind.


Caroline has recently discovered the world of Digimon (digital monsters--that's the sum total of my knowledge on the subject ... but why is it that those Japanese anime people always have big round eyes? That's what I want to know). And so from time to time she's announced her own digimon creatures...foalmon (a baby horse) that morphs into unimon (a unicorn with superpowers.) She suggested that Roger and I play along and invent some.

I'm Mommimon and I am known to morph into various characters, including Krankimon, Sleepimon, Happimon, Fatigimon...