oh deer me

And it has happened again. I've been accused of bloglessness. Apparently my weekly blog-ventures are not enough to satisfy those who live them along with me. So here is the latest: yes, I hit my first deer. Really, the deer hit me. Deer stories are like birth stories, and mine follows.

Driving along a 40mph road with B's school on one side and a county park and community college on the other, B had just told me that he may become friends again with a certain friend from his past about whom we have had concerns. I was lost a bit in thought, and made some random comment, never taking my eyes off the road. Well, never until B exclaimed, in someone else's deep voice, "MOM MOM MOM MOM!"

If you are driving in a car, and someone calls out to you in such an alarmist tone, what do you do? Do you turn toward this person, or do you think, "oh! a deer must be coming from my left peripheral vision, let me look AWAY from this person!"??

Well, I'll tell you what I do. I look at the person who is yelling at me. And then, when I look back, as if in a dream, a deer sails across my windshield, like a movie playing in hyperspeed. I slam on the brakes, but then I feel a crushing blow and what look like feathers fly up in the air. But the car moves on, and a van behind me slows, then picks up again. I pull over and find what seems to be a deer's tail in my headlight, which no longer has much of a plastic covering. In my rear view mirror, there is no sign of my victim.

So there is my deer-tale, in all its entirety. I believe that the deer was probably just bruised...the car sustained no apparent damage other than the cracked plastic and subsequent trips to the scene (where I noted a deer crossing sign when I came from the other direction) yielded no sign of an injured beast. I fear I may have weakened the poor thing just in time for the shootout at the park, scheduled for next weekend.

Anyway, animals aside, this is a nice short week! B is done, thank goodness, as he had taken to failing quizzes again. At the teacher conferences, most of them said he forgets homeworks, but three of them said he has been participating a lot more this second marking period. So that was good to hear. Hopefully he's getting the confidence we had hoped he would get from this school.

And M continues on her usual way: swims and does homework. We are trying to lean on her to enjoy her senior year a little more by participating in school activities. This year she isn't even going to go to the homecoming dance, and she had to forego the powder puff game because (a) she couldn't make enough of the practices due to meets and (b) the game is tonight and she had a paper left over to finish for tomorrow.

So she didn't even go to watch, which we don't like to see. She has distanced herself a little too much from the extracurricular life at school. Swim team has started but twice they sent the club swimmers home because there wasn't room for them on the bus to practice! They only have to go to six practices, but those six are their only chance to actually be part of the team, except at the meets.

Anyway, in other news, PetSmart has stopped carrying the litterbox liners that I like, and I'm really mad! I might just not change the litterboxes ever again. I am also troubled by the high cost of absolutely everything. I still cannot believe how much money I have spent on the pets in just the one month that passed. Wilbur must understand what I am writing because he stopped chewing his bone and is just looking at me. Oh yeah, and I discovered a crime map of Boston that shows the worst part of the city just on the outskirts of M's campus-to-be. Just great.