Look Out, Fort Lauderdale!!

So here I am. I'm 42 years old and finally making it to Fort Lauderdale for spring break. And on a year during which I neglected to start my diet as of this writing, March 29. AND spring break is over - a little late on both counts! I hope the shorts I have packed will fit.

Yet here I sit, trying to figure out how I will survive the next forty eight hours with Brian, who is just beside himself with excitement and anticipation of the trip. Having Megan and Kevin already down there is certainly not helping. He just tried to read Kevin every rating ever written on our hotel, while Kevin sat trapped in our hotel room, trying to escape to the beach.

Megan left Friday night with her team, the weather cooperated despite forecasts to the contrary, and the flight was delayed by about 40 minutes. Once there, some sort of controversy ensued, and all the pre-assigned roommates were re-assigned. This worked out fine for Megan, she was happy enough before, but now she's with a good friend, and she has only to worry about herself in her bed. In the other room, they would have either had to share beds, or they would have had to put someone on an uncomfortable pull-out at an old hotel. I can't wait to hear what the event was that precipitated the mutiny.

Kevin, ever the considerate, booked himself on a 7:30 flight out of Newark this morning. I had to drive him. We left shortly after 5:30, and I was home around 7:00. So now he is on the beach in Florida, and I am here packing, cleaning, and dealing with an obstinate preteen with an apparent hormone imbalance.

Our Florida hotel, which is right on the beach, shows beautiful pictures of pristine beaches lined with palm trees in an unobstructed view from the guest room window. Fortunately, I will not have to bear disappointment, as I have already been warned that, no. OUR guest room faces the other building. If you lean your head really far to the right, and knock your heels together three times, you can probably catch a glimpse of the ocean. Well, no sun glare.

Oh, speaking of sun glare! There's rain in the forecast for every day!! We are supposed to fly out Monday night, it's supposed to rain Monday night. Lovely. And Brian has baseball practice today, and a game tomorrow. I think I heard a chance of SNOW for tomorrow. This is just insanity. And even in Florida, the forecast high is 81 for the week, and chance of rain or ::gasp:: t-storms every day of the meet!

Megan swims Tuesday and Wednesday in her two events, will do time trials on Wednesday and Thursday, and probably swim in a Thursday relay. She should be done with her races by Friday, although she will still have to accompany the team to the pool. The boys are ranked fairly high, and will probably be coming back to swim finals every night. No such concern for Megan. Her rankings: 200 freestyle: 109th of 128 total; 500 freestyle: 95th of 116 total. A big difference from these little state and county meets! She swimmin' wit da big fishes now!

Well, I did have more to say on the topics, but I think I hear Brian pacing outside the door. I just lost my temper with him when he insisted on arguing with me when I told him that perhaps he wants to wear a baseball shirt to baseball practice, instead of a brushed cotton surf shop shirt. He became very belligerent, so I yelled, slammed the door, and threatened him with spending the rest of the weekend in his room. He has yet to do one thing I have asked of him: pack up his school work for Monday, his only day of school; put away his laundry; FINISH said homework and not wear the baseball pants that the travel team gave him to the rec team practice, as he will probably need them for the travel GAME tomorrow. Not to mention it looks like he stuffed a melon in the front of his pants. He said he was trying a new kind of cup. God only knows what kind THAT is.

It even took him about two hours to eat anything, because I have refused to buy Fruit Loops. But he must be eating something, because the Size 14 shorts I got him at Kohl's barely closed. I am going to return them, even though I washed them both (who would think they'd be too tight? A similar pair by the same maker purchased last week at Costco fit fine). So I am off to do that now.

Hang Ten!

Spring Break

Again, a while! I've been working on the ads for the banquet book for the swim team banquet, which this year occurs just one week after the return of the Nationals and Zones swimmers, meaning I must turn the book around in record-time, as normally there is about a month in between. Also, I have never personally attended the event, doing so this year will set me back a bit as well.

So, Megan got the second cut for Nationals at Junior Olympics, but not without the usual drama. Of course, she will not do it in the morning, so we must wait until evening for the Big Drop in Time. We got there with all relatives and friends in tow, and sat through an hour plus of warm-ups and then a good half hour of Other People's Races (boring, long ones.) before the 500's even started. The boys went, and then the first heat of girls.

Megan was at the block, and just as they announced her name, Olympic style, the place erupted in a deafening roar. It took several moments for all of us to realize that this was not a horde of her newly acquired fans, but that the fire alarms were going off. White lights and buzzers were everywhere. After a bit of hesitation, everyone began to file out of the building, where we stood for about twenty minutes. They think someone pulled a fire alarm in the gym. We were glad we had Brian at the seats with us. He might have been a prime suspect.

Once back inside, the same eight girls went back to the blocks, and they started the race like nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. For a while, Megan was slowing down relative to her pace from the morning, but then she picked it up at the end, I guess swam the race the way her coach likes for her to do. So she took off nearly two more seconds, and has a comfortable position to swim in the morning event down in Florida, rather than the afternoon time trials.

Otherwise, school is wrapped up. I worked two of the four days last week, and spent the others working on the banquet book. Megan had to be in church Thursday night for the Washing of the Feet, which was an eternally long service, as they tend to be in our church of pomp and circumstance. She was supposed to be there last night, but the priest excused her for swim practice. She has to go tonight, and again tomorrow morning. Then we have our annual brunch with the Doll, at 3pm. I will consider that our dinner.

Yesterday, I took Megan out shopping. This Nationals trip is going to cost us a fortune! I had to buy her new clothes for summer anyway, and I had a coupon for 40% off from American Eagle, but I had to spend $250. I figured that was not a bad deal, so I amassed $270 worth of merchandise, and only had to pay $160 with the discount. Then another $125 in sundries from Harmon's. Most of that - sunblock!

So that is that. We have no major spring break plans due to swim practices every day and homework that the kids must complete so they can miss a week of school. I'd like to get to Philadelphia for a day, maybe Tuesday morning, if I can swing it. Wednesday practice will be early, to be followed by a traditional pre-meet pasta party and distribution of meet merchandise; on Thursday I must escort the Doll to her long-awaited colonoscopy. So it looks like it will have to be Tuesday.

In other news, Rusty broke an heirloom lamp last night, by knocking it off of the piano when we had all gone up for bed. He shows no remorse. Baseball has begun for Brian, and the Old Fat Men's Softball League is kicking off as I write this post. Moles are beginning to take over the yard, and the other morning after a rainstorm, Brian and I emerged from the front door to find the walkway and doorstep covered in slimy worms! Being the original city girl, I had no idea that these worms were now stranded. Therefore, the driveway is now littered with worm carcasses. Even the birds don't want them.

Emerging from the Shadows

Well, it's been a while!!! Things just really picked up, and I found myself working every day in one way or another. What was supposed to be a one day assignment turned into four, and that went into another full week. I had to actually take off a day to leave for Y States. Then I was switched to a different assignment for this week, which I had already agreed to do. Now all assignments have ended, and my calendar is clear for the next week. The week after that is spring break, and the week after that we go to ...

Nationals!!! That's right, she got her time! We drove out to PA on Thursday night, checked into the hotel, and went to bed. The next morning, the 200 free was the first event. Megan was in one of the later heats, and with circle-seeding, she didn't get to race her best competition in the prelims. She beat her time by half a second, but needed another full second. Her coach scratched her out of the 1000 for that day, as well as out of a 100 backstroke swim-off for first alternate, and I brought her back to the hotel to sleep.

That night at finals, she was seeded first, and was next to the top-seed from prelims, so we knew this would be the make-or-break race. It was so exciting! Megan was ahead for most of the race, and at the end the other girl kicked it up. Megan tried to hang on, and they were so close that you couldn't even tell which had touched first. I looked up at the scoreboard and saw the exact same place and time for both girls! They tied for first, and qualified for nationals with nearly half a second to spare!

And it was a good thing, too, because she failed to qualify in the 500, the one they all thought she would get. I wasn't surprised, though, as she had no real competition in that race. Her time was the top time by nine seconds. She ended up shaving milliseconds off her time at finals, after a bad swim at prelims due to nausea. The next place time was five or six seconds slower, she had no push at all in that race. She is going Sunday to swim it again at Junior Olympics, where she has the seventh seed position. Hopefully that will go better, but, no matter really. You only need one event to go to Florida!

So that's where we're headed in two weeks. Megan flies with the team Friday night, and Kevin will go down on Saturday. Brian and I will follow on Monday night, so that he can go to school and I will have more time to get things straightened out with the house and pets, and less time to have to worry about them being pet-sat. Her event will be on Wednesday, but they allow them to swim three time trials in four days, and she will be in a relay or two as well.

In other news, Brian's progress report showed indications of slight improvement. Two teachers said that he had missing assignments but I'm afraid that fails to rattle me anymore; if anything it gives me just a headache. I don't really want to hear it anymore. Most of the time, he has done the work, and he loses it. That's the best part. I almost want to put it into his 504 plan that he is allowed to forget homework, but that seems like it would defeat the purpose of homework in the first place.

Otherwise, I am just glad to emerge from the shadows that have been my substituting life for these past few weeks. I'm not used to having NO time to procrastinate, and no time to get anything done. I have decided to use this afternoon to do the former, and tomorrow I will try to be productive.

Migraine Menace

So I was off today. Kevin, always sure that I am just lying there waiting to be awakened by some shocking statement that I am not expecting, came in and announced that two of the girls on the Y team made National times at their high school tournament meet last night. This rattled me, not only because I wasn't even thinking about national times OR expecting either of them to do it (although had I thought about it, I would have known it was quite possible), but because I know that this will increase the pressure and the stress that Megan feels going into the state meet, in a little over two weeks.

Then, to top it off, he didn't tell her. So when we talked about the times, she asked if that was a best time, and I said - well yes! She didn't have a national time before. At which point, Kevin says, "oh great. She didn't know."

Which, of course, draws more attention to the fact that there is pressure, or why wouldn't he just have told her? It's not like it won't be all over the media wires and the pool by sunrise anyway; better that she should know already than to walk in and find out at the pool.

But, that is that. So, as I cruised through my morning websites, all of a sudden I got a blind spot. I blinked. It went away. It came back. I blinked again. It got bigger. Damn!! This is the first 'aura' I have had since September! And that one represented the end of the three month long cycle. And there went my day off. I spent the day in bed, watching the History Channel. Now I am up and have showered, but must go dry my hair. I have to work all day tomorrow, and hope that this will be completely over by then. I still feel spacey.

I have to wonder what brings on all of these attacks, and this time, there is no food culprit, or lack of sleep. I've been feeling little hints of one coming on, like flashes of light here and there, or yesterday my mouth felt cold while I was drinking hot coffee. But what is is that sends me over the edge? Perhaps, this time, again, it was Brian.

Last night the school tensions came to a head again. I sat down to help him with science, he gave me nasty attitude, I yelled at him. He cried, he went up to his room and slammed the door so hard that it went to the OTHER side of the door jamb. Kevin followed him and yelled and slammed things around. Brian hyperventilated. Kevin knocked my vacuum down the stairs. I gave Brian a paper bag. Kevin left the house. Brian sat down with me and studied science.

I just don't know why it has to happen like that. We want to help him, and he doesn't want to be bothered. I guess we should just be glad that Megan never put us through this with school. It's very difficult at the middle school level, because I don't even know what the work is that they're grading. Half the time it doesn't make it home; whether it's in the locker, or if it's in the classroom; I just don't know. And then I have to wonder if his 504 plan is being followed. I feel like I need some more help in this situation, and I'm just not getting it.

That school is the biggest joke, with their Mr. Rogers principal and his Mickey Mouse cheering section. All they do is tell you how great their teachers are, how wonderful the student body is, and how everyone just has the best time at that school. Sure, that's probably true in some cases. But if you don't fit the mold they're trying to present, they don't even want to know about it. Certainly, there are exceptions, but if I hear one more time from a teacher how they have so may students that they can't do this, or remember that, for my child, I am really going to scream. And I still want to know why Brian came back from the dance with his jacket smelling like smoke.

But, at least I didn't have to work today.

Report Card Randomness

Yes, that's right. Report cards arrived on Friday. Since I was in the kindergartens all day (having quite a lovely day, who would ever think that kindergarten would be my favorite assignment, ever?), the kids got to take them out and open them before I saw them. First, once again, Megan had straight A+'s. In honors classes. She had A+'s on all midterms, except for two A's - in Spanish and Language Arts.

Allow me to dedicate an entire paragraph to Brian. Sigh. Science went up. C+ to B+. at the expense of, yes folks, everything else. Well, aside from the A+ in Computers. He had two C+'s: Social Studies and Spanish. But wait - there was an additional grade in Spanish, for the midterm, administered to all students district-wide, regardless of their grade level. Brian's grade on that exam? An A. Go figure. I just don't know how to proceed with this kid.

So I went to look through his backpack for evidence of deterioration in social studies. The teacher says he needs to work harder, but she keeps all his graded work at school. I don't see what she is talking about, and she isn't clear. Quite frankly, if that's the level of my involvement, we'll take the freaking C+ and put the year behind us. Eventually all of this has to take its toll on his conscience. Doesn't it? Anyway, I found no such evidence. What I found was his math notebook with stick figures depicting brutal shootings and suicide. Great. And he thinks this is funny, and normal. Sadly, it may be. (Normal.)

So that was the Great Tragedy of the End of the Week. Other than Buddy's voice, which is slowly coming back, and the broken seal in our kitchen window, which overlooks the pool and backyard and is now, forever, permanently, hideously filled with condensation and droplets of water running down the entire length of the glass. We replaced all of the other windows a year ago, but that one still looked good. Well. No more. The good news? The neighbors won't be able to see the cats sitting on the kitchen table and eating off of our plates anymore.

Finally, I am trying to come up with The Great President's Day Caper. I have ideas, but alas they will enter into the triple digits in terms of expense. I have considered Franklin Institute and a visit to the new cat in my parents' house. I have considered the ferry to NYC and a trip to the bodies exhibit at the Seaport. I considered, but had to reject, a trip to the Poconos to visit my college friends, who planned a trip their for the weekend. I declined because I thought Megan had to fast, but she doesn't. It's next weekend. But she did have swim practice every day, and I don't want to risk her getting hurt before states, which is now just three weeks away. And still no dog sitter.

So that's the end. This laptop is burning my lap, and I must get it off of me. A random end to a random blog. Oh, the excitement!

Thursday, Already?

I can't believe how fast this week has gone by. First, I had the debacle of the cracked filling, which did have to be partially refilled after three shots of novacaine, which left my jaw sore and numb at the same time, for hours. Then, as that wore off, I felt what I thought was a sore on my tongue but soon realized was an actual cut from something he must have done accidentally, either with the tool that holds it out of the way or when the tooth isolator thing was stuck and he had to wrench it out when he was done. So, that's still healing slowly.

Then came Tuesday, when I got a call at 9:05, as I watched Regis and Kelly while lying in bed with Rusty the cat, to go in to work for the morning. I had to be there by 9:30! well, I made it. After which I had to come home and get ready to take Brian to the neurologist for his check-up. At least, thankfully, that went well. We may not even have to go back for the MRI in the summer. I'm really hoping!!

Yesterday I worked all day in the special ed kindergarten class. So few students, and they can be such a handful. And then Brian had the orthodontist, then a basketball game. So we went to Chili's for some extra calories which I DON'T need at all. My diet starts tomorrow.

Yesterday morning, at breakfast, Buddy the cat had a strange meow. I forgot about it, since I was in such a rush. But this morning, it was worse. The big tough guy has this raspy little scratchy meow, like a kitten! He seems ok otherwise, except for a little rough breathing when I go close to him and he gets nervous. I'll give it a couple more days, but I just spent $135 on Molly last weekend for her hot spots (which, at least, are gone and she has stopped chewing since getting an antibiotic). This is just crazy.

Now we face the weekend. President's weekend! We have no special plans, although Megan has promised to babysit Saturday, which means she has to miss her swim practice. Oh well. It's Y Silver States this weekend, so the coaches will mostly be down there watching those swimmers. The cats are away! Let the mice play!!

Weekend Update

Thank goodness this weekend is over. The pressure on Megan, and then on all of us, leading into the meet on Saturday was just too much. In the end, she swam fine. The only thing was that others swam better. But she did great. Apparently some teams take this meet more seriously than her club team does, and they taper their swimmers. Not her team.

The boys and the girls meets both had a common thread: swimmers from one particular area team all did exceptionally well. Which means they were tapered for the meet. Megan got third in one event, and second in another. It's still respectable for a freshman, and she beat her time in the 500, and swam right on it in the 200.

We had to go to another long but unimportant meet yesterday, so that was just tiring. That same tapered team was there, all shaved and in their fastskins, while everyone else had hairy legs and 'slow' team suits on :-) ... but sometimes it's nice to have a meet with low pressure.

The bonehead's newspaper coverage of Saturday's meet started with a paragraph on how two senior swimmers had a "friendly conversation" and agreed to win their events and take the meet back for seniors. One was the one Megan had to race twice, and the other was the one who had hoped for the MVP award at the county meet. Obviously, the latter is still harboring sour grapes, because neither of the two has lost their events yet, so they had nothing to take back, except for the one wanting to see Megan get beaten. In a nice twist of justice, Megan's club coach had seen the article, and made fun of the girl for actually giving that kind of information to the paparazzi.

And who still has that MVP plaque, anyway?

Brian started with his new travel baseball team last week, and they had an indoor practice yesterday. Apparently it went reasonably well but he got tired at the end. Tonight he is supposed to have a basketball practice at 9pm! I am not sure if he's going, because it's so late, it's freezing cold and windy, and he has the neurology appointment tomorrow, where they check his reflexes and muscle tone. I might send him, though, because I noticed one of the other kids wasn't passing the ball to him at all last weekend. I didn't like this, but can't really complain if he skips practices (which he hasn't done yet, but I don't like him to either)

Well, I must wrap up my wrap-up, because the other night, when I was flossing my new back filling, two small pieces of it came off on the floss. I am terrified. This filling hurt me for days, then was sensitive for weeks. It finally stopped hurting, and now it has broken. I hope they can patch it, but I am not optimistic. I am off to find out now.