Sounds of Silence

I'm home for the 2nd day with a sick child. Dominic has had a fever and upset stomach, and hasn't eaten in 2 days, except for 1 1/4 banana. Oh, and a few sips of ginger ale and glasses of water. He's exhausted. It crossed my mind that I should test his blood sugar, but he's not going to the bathroom all the time or thirsty ALL the time. But he is thirsty. But tummy bugs can dehydrate you. And he did just catch this bug from me, and I was exhausted & thirsty, too. I will try to quiet the worry monkey part of my brain. Listen to the silence of this house as he is napping, enjoy the moments of calm that have been few and far between.

I'm amazed that I've made it through the first year of teaching. It was both more difficult and more delightful than I expected. I am so happy to have the support of a wonderful team of educators & mentors. I also think that with this first year behind me, I'll have a supply of strategies in my pocket that I can turn to in coming years, when I'm looking for help. That supply will continue to grow as my experience grows.

Daniel has an endo visit this week, and I'm hoping his A1c will be better than the last time. His numbers have been pretty good, actually, with the exception of a spike last week when he caught this bug that's going through our family. I also want to talk to the endo about pump breaks, because we will be going to the beach a few times and we have to figure out how to deal with that. I don't think going to the pool will be a problem. Daniel can unhook from the pump for a while, swim, and check back every so often. I've read up on that enough that I think we can work that out. But it doesn't seem to be a good idea to be connected to the pump if we know we're going to spend a whole day at the beach, where he tends to be in the water for long periods of time... or digging around in the sand.

We also have to make sure we're up to speed about changing time zones, as we'll be travelling this summer. Lots to plan for, but all very exciting and fun.

The warm summer-like day is calling, but I can't leave the house. While Dominic was awake, I watered the garden, and took our potato experiments out of their small pots and put them into the ground. I don't know if we'll actually get potatoes, or if the squirrels/deer/bunnies will get to them first, but it's fun to try. The potatoes, one tomato plant, a couple of basil, parsley, thyme, chocolate mint, and rosemary - that's the extent of my summer garden. As it is, I could spend all my time weeding, and I don't want to do that.

Life's too short to weed.

Summer Trickles On

Noel Coward wrote, "What I adore is supreme professionalism. I'm bored by writers who can write only when it is raining."

Noel, you'd be bored by me. I miss my laptop! Perhaps if you had a laptop, you'd understand. Or not. I guess if you learn to do active writing longhand, then laptops don't matter. But then again, I've filled pages of journals in longhand. (Robert Benchley, a humorist, wrote, "I cannot write more than three or four lines of longhand without fainting." He composed on a typewriter.) But my little laptop -- it follows me everywhere! It's in the heart of the house, next to the kitchen, where I spend much of my time cooking, helping with homework, organizing art projects, entertaining humans large & small. I can pop on for a quick blog post or blog reading session, I can look up a recipe and then find a way to make it gluten free! I can post a question about diabetes, go water the garden, and then when I walk back inside, the answer is waiting for me on my little screen.

Mary Heaton Vorse wrote, "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." Okay, okay. I'm not getting paid to blog, so I'm not stressing over days going by without a blog post. But I miss my time at the keyboard when it's not easily accessible. The desktop computer is available. In the basement. Away from the action. What I usually think of as my husband's computer. It has a different vibe.

The good news is that I'll get my laptop back in a few days. The bad news is that it will be wiped clean. The hard drive died an unexpected, quite sudden death. The good news is that I backed up my documents about a month ago. The bad news is that I lost vacation pictures. *sigh* Have to just take a deep breath and let it all go.

I've been training for my new job these last couple of weeks. I feel, at times, like I'm taking a college course with the mountain of information that I need to digest. But it is all good. And when it is done, send me your struggling children. I'll help them learn how to read (teaching phonemic awareness) if that's what they need, or bring their grades up & brush up their basic math, reading, comprehension, writing, or algebra skills.

It's kind of funny that I got a job doing for others what I've been doing for years with my kids at the kitchen table!

Berries!

We picked seven pounds of raspberries today and a few pounds of blueberries. Last year when we went to Larriland Farms the blueberries were enormous and practically jumping into the baskets, while we had to search under every leaf to fill a bucketful of ripe raspberries. This year we had the opposite experience.

I picked up a copy of "Living Without" magazine at my local health food store the other day, and they had a recipe for gluten free blueberry cobbler cake. I tried it out today and it came out delicious.

Whenever I see the "Living Without" magazine, I feel like calling them up and telling them to change their name. "Living Without" is so negative! How about "Living Well, Allergy Free," or "Delicious Alternatives," or something like that?

I made a no-bake raspberry pie as well. Also a funny name, because something DOES get cooked. I pulverized some Enviro-kids Amazon frosted flakes cereal and mixed the crumbs with melted butter to make a crust. I pressed this mixture into a pie plate and baked it for about 10 minutes at 350 to set it. Then I scooped about 3 + cups of raspberries into the crust. While the crust was baking, I made a glaze to go on top. I cooked sugar, water, and cornstarch over low heat until it got goopy, then added a cup of pureed raspberries and let it cook some more. The goopy glaze went over the berries and the whole thing chilled for a couple of hours in the refrigerator while we went for a swim.

Once we got back home I really went crazy and made spinach/fish croquettes for dinner. THEN finished up the evening with blueberry pie, which is cooking RIGHT NOW.

Stick a fork in me. I'm done.