Monday, June 21, 2010

summer starts soon!

The party is over! The big surprise :-) It was a lot of fun. Lots of cousins, and long lost friends, and some we have not seen in decades. To me, everybody looked exactly the same, especially Koke, the birthday boy. And now the balloons begin to deflate and we are polishing off the leftovers and pouring the flat soda down the drain and following the adventures of those were lucky enough to move on to Cape May rather than work, finals, and tennis camp.

So, back to reality. Molly has Cushing's disease, whatever that is. She's starting her medicines tomorrow morning, she'll take some adrenal-gland-killing drug and then, ironically, some cortisone as well. She goes back in a week for more testing to see if it helped. Meanwhile, we're just glad the huge disgusting bloody growth she had on her eye rolled off right in the middle of the party! She looks great now!

And for M, one more final: physics. As if the year could end on a more stressful note. But I'm glad it worked out this way, she's able to study and spend the time on her own. And ew, now she has ringworm. Good grief, can she not get a break. After weeks in the podiatrist's office for an unsuccessful attempt to eradicate the return of the plantar warts I spotted a bright red circle on her calf.

"What is that?" I ask. "I got a pimple from shaving and scratched it," she responds. But I'm not buying it. It looks like ringworm, but I treat it for eczema and staph. Yeah, not the right thing. It gets bigger and uglier. We go to the EMO, and it's ringworm. He tells her to put OTC medication on it for up to six weeks, four times a day. I think, great. We'll take his advice for exactly six days, which is when we have her regular appointment with the dermatologist, thankfully. And it looks stable for now, on the Lotrimin.

And B started his tennis camp today. We were lucky to have cousins and aunt and uncle here this morning, to pick M up from school so she didn't have to stay for the time when she would have had a history final, and B led himself across to the tennis academy. He said he had fun, and knew one kid there, as well as met a bunch who will be freshmen next year. By the way, his report card did arrive last Friday, and although I was prepared to say, "I never thought I would be so excited to see so many Cs," this is not quite true, as there was an actual 85 in the midst! In Spanish, of all things. The rest, sigh, were Cs, but one was a 77 so that was encouraging. Of course, these are year-grades, and include the first semester when a lot of work was just review and there were some higher grades.

So now it's time for the summer reading. Apparently they are doing things differently, and the books are being applied to the first marking period grades in the various subjects rather than to a random score which, if you fail, means you have to take gym your senior year. I find that bizarre, but - whatever. You fail summer reading and have to take gym? Not a real strong motivator to try too hard. I'm going to try to make him study guides; I told him after each chapter to stop and write all the new characters, the main things that happened in the chapter, and what he thinks will happen next.

Anyway, as for Kevin, he is back from Europe yet again but carrying on that he needs to fly 3,000 more miles before September to maintain his status with SAS. Maybe we can go to London again ;-) That'd be worthwhile!!

But really, there will be no big trips this summer for us. Maryland for M, maybe Colorado in August, and B will go to San Diego if we can work that out. I'm saving my (unpaid) holidays for the fall to take M to visit some colleges. The next few weeks should be interesting with a lot of important milestones: she starts her job next weekend, gets SAT scores this week, ACT scores possibly next week (although I accidentally registered her with a 1983 birthdate), colleges can begin calling her July 1, and she'll get her AP test scores in July. So stay tuned!

And in other news, I am committed to my job through the end of summer, which is when I figure my boss will break even on his buyout of me from the agency, and hopefully he will pay me enough to make it worth my while to stay there and do the work I have been doing for less than it's worth! I am just happy to be able to hack away at bills, knowing there will be another paycheck along in a couple of weeks.

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