saturday

It's quiet in the house for now. I don't know how long that will last, or what is going on. Megan had to be out at 7:30 for a pool club swim meet, and then she was asked to give a lesson back at the other pool club. So when I went to get her from the meet, I had to take her back to the home club, and then come back for her afterwards. She is going to charge $20 a half hour for a lesson, but she didn't know what time it was, and she ended up in the pool for over an hour! So that was a bargain of a lesson. The girl she taught is learning butterfly, she was all excited because Megan worked with her once for free and she took ten seconds off her time at the next meet. I asked Megan if she also explained the difference between a meter pool and a yard pool :-). (the first meet was in meters, the second in yards ... but ten seconds is not the normal difference between the two, so it's still good.)

Anyway, I had a chance today to go into NYC and meet up with one of my 'cyberfriends' from many years ago, but as usual with the life I lead, I wasn't able to swing it. So I think that Brian has a friend coming over and I am just sitting here doing laundry and tending to wayward pomeranians. I'm still not caught up on all the laundry from the broken washer era.

Also, nothing to report on the Fresh Air Fund. It's getting annoying. First, I feel a little duped that they sent us C when they must have known that there were issues from the family who had hosted him the year before, who didn't sign up again or just didn't take him back. He was a good kid but didn't seem to really want to be here. Second, the rep was supposed to call me back weeks ago and never did, and now I have been told I'm in the system for a different boy aged 10-12, which is not what I would have requested this time around. Third, here we are two days from the trip (because I doubt they work weekends doing placements) and I have a week packed with other busy activities that will cause disturbances to my schedule if they suddenly do spring someone on us.

I hate to back completely out of the program, but I don't even understand how the Fund operates. I understand they have a lot backed up, and maybe they want the host families to be on alert to a call the night before, but how do you call some inner city mom and tell her she has to have her kid ready for the bus by the next morning? Or is the delay on the end of the child? I just don't know, and I have no contact with the rep. I emailed her once, she wrote back, I emailed again, and she never replied. I feel so disillusioned. I'm sure it's a great program, but we haven't seen evidence of that greatness in our experiences at all. I wish we were able to talk to someone who actually DOES the placements, but instead, we talk only to a rep who claims to know no more than we do. I was so excited to have an experience like all the ones you read about in the press. But I guess that's why those stories make the press.

Well, there goes the washer beeping. Time to fold. but first, in other news, Megan is finding her hospital volunteering to be interesting. She didn't really think physical therapy looked like a lot of fun, and she didn't get to do anything there anyway. They mostly had her taking discharged patients down to the lobby. She also walked down the hall and a woman asked her, in Spanish, if she knew why the ATM wasn't working and if she could fix it. Megan, who says she doesn't know anything about ATMs in English, replied, "no se, sorry". Then someone else asked (in English) if she knew where radiology was. Again, she replied no, and then proceeded to walk by radiology. So she is learning.