my life

Elizabeth's World

Andrew's World

Susie's World

Jim's World

benicetobears

Thursday, May 9, 2002 08:02 p.m.
It's been an exhausting week so far. I hadn't realized how much of a routine I'd gotten into, even with kids who require constant mental energy, until my routine was suddenly turned upside down and inside out this week. My new student started on Tuesday, she's a very sweet, very troubled 12-year-old who has been through more abuse and upheaval in her life than I care to think about. She takes a lot of energy, and I've been really tentative this week, not wanting to set her off and not knowing where her boundaries are. So she's gotten away with a lot of crap, which has, in itself, been exhausting. Knowing that next week I'm really going to have to start putting actual demands on her is even more exhausting, just in anticipation.
In addition, my routine has literally been turned upside down, because I work with her in the morning and my little guy in the afternoon. It used to be the other way around and it's kind of weird for me to have the difference.

Add trying to move to this equation, and getting much less sleep than I'm used to and you will see why I squeezed my eyes shut when I woke up this morning and prayed that when I opened them it would be Friday. Sadly, it didn't work.

And now I have to do the dishes. Yuck.

Monday, May 6, 2002 05:57 p.m.
I have ventured back into the land of Bryn Mawr and survived to tell about it.
I actually had a very nice, though extremely short, trip down for May Day, which was a perfect and beautiful day as May Days always are. I got to see lots of people who I haven't seen for a year, and extracted promises from many of them to come visit over the summer. Whether or not anybody will actually come remains to be seen. :) Somehow most of my friends seem to think that Maine teeters on the edge of the earth and if they come up here they're liable to upset the precarious balance and go plummeting off into the void. Or something like that. That's the best explaination that I've been able to come up with for why no one but Shera, Heather and Mary have ever come to visit. I applaud their bravery and hope they will come again, and bring friends. :)

And now I must prepare myself for work tomorrow. Kind of wish I didn't have to go, so I could have some time to relax, but I don't have a choice. Tomorrow's a big day. I'm getting my new student, and I'm very excited/nervous about it.

Friday, May 3, 2002 05:48 p.m.
So I finally decided I'm going to Bryn Mawr for May Day. I'm leaving long before the crack of dawn tomorrow morning and coming back Monday evening. I'm only going to be in PA for about 36 hours. I think that will be enough of Bryn Mawr for a while though. Just wish I didn't have to travel so far.

I suppose I ought to pack, since it'll take me a while to find things to keep me occupied for 12 hours worth of train riding. It's too bad I'm not a bird and I can't fly there myself.

Sunday, April 28, 2002 10:10 a.m.
So the big stuff is all moved in now. Even the sofa, and the ugly gold chair. :) (which really isn't so ugly in my apartment. And Elizabeth, even the couch doesn't look so bad!) Much thanks to Elizabeth and Andrew, who kept me sane, and to Ethan who drove up from Boston, and to Ryan, who brought the moving van and helped with all the great big stuff like the sofa. ;) It all worked out great. Now I just have to get all my stuff into the apartment, and possibly get a new matress, and I will be moved. Hooray!!

For future reference however, I am never letting my mother be a primary assistant in moving ever again. Moving with my mother brings out the worst in both of us. Something no one should have to see. And I'm very sorry to Elizabeth for having had to go through it twice now. :)

Monday, April 22, 2002 08:43 p.m.
Every day I become more and more convinced that my little brother was deposited by aliens on this planet. How else to explain his existence?

Monday, April 22, 2002 07:05 p.m.
I need to move in to my beautiful new apartment. The only problem is that none of my furniture fits into my sad tiny little car. I knew there would come a day when the size of my car would be a problem. (Truth be told, the size of my car has always been a problem. But now there's a reason beyond my fear of losing in a dust-up with a tricycle.) So I have to wait until Ethan comes home (hopefully this weekend) and drafts his friend with a big truck. This makes me sad. I have an apartment. I want to do something with it. It's not very much fun with nothing in it.

Elizabeth and Andrew, I'm very sorry to hear that your plans were unsuccessful. That is a big disappointment for you I would think. But now you have lots of time to help me move!!! :) I know you'd both much rather do that. Hey, if we get me moved in in time, we can have the margaritas at my place! Wouldn't that be fun? :)

Thursday, April 18, 2002 05:16 p.m.
Item #1: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSIE!!!

Item #2: I think (I'm not going to really truly believe anything until its final and legal and everything) I got the apartment. :) The woman, who is rather strange and seems to be running a housing business as a receptionist in an eye doctor's office or something, called me back this afternoon and said that her gut feeling was to go with me and that I should go and sign stuff in the morning. ;) I think this is in part thanks to whoever the wonderful rugby player is who was answering phones in the Res Life office this afternoon. She told me you said I was a wonderful person. Thank you! :) So I'm crossing my fingers and I may soon have a new place to live for me and my poor pregnant cat. By the way, does anyone want a kitten?

Wednesday, April 17, 2002 09:25 a.m.
To Kim: You should definitely move up here for the summer! It would be the funnest thing ever!

In unrelated news, my brother is officially the most out-of-touch individual in the world. My mother took his tax returns down to him at Tufts to sign over the weekend, and told him to be sure to put them in the mail on Monday. Not so complicated, pretty obvious instructions, don't you think? Apparently not. My mother called Ethan on Tuesday and, just as a precaution, asked him if he had remembered to mail his taxes. Ethan's response: "Why, are they supposed to be in by a certain date?"

Please somebody tell me how you live a reasonably normal life in this country for 20 years (and file taxes for 3 years previously) and somehow not register that, yes indeed, there is a certain date that your taxes have to be in by. How do you completely miss that? I don't get it.

Oh, and for those of you not living in Maine or Massachusetts, and who are therefore not familiar with the Patriots Day phenomenon, Ethan's taxes were not late even though he mailed them on Tuesday. One of the great bonuses of living in the great state of Maine, or the not-so-great state of Mass. is that you get to celebrate Patriots Day, and when Patriot's Day falls on April 15, you get an extra day to send in your taxes. :)

Saturday, April 13, 2002 02:52 p.m.
I haven't been on in a while...this past week was definitely all about surviving until the end. :) But I made it, and now I'm on vacation for a whole week! What in the world am I going to do with myself for so much time? (Please don't submit suggestions. I actually have plenty of plans, most of which I probably won't even get to.)

On another note, we need to have margarita night more often. And although I did like the hand-blender product, just think how much drunker I could get with a properly blended and strained drink. :)

Monday, April 1, 2002 05:46 p.m.
Somewhere, amongst the vast piles of junk mail that threaten to take over this house, is a cell phone bill that belongs to me. I will never find it. I consider this to be a problem. My mother does not. It is a problem, not so much because it means that I'll have to call up Verizon to find out how much I owe them (although that will be an exercise I will not enjoy in the least), but because something like that could happen at all. Why is there so much junk mail in the house that it is impossible to find practically anything vaguely important written on a piece of paper? If this were my house, I would solve the problem by resolving to either a) immediately throw out all junk mail because obviously I'm never going to look at any of it anyway, or at the very least b) separate the junk and important mail as it comes into the house. Unfortunately, this is not my house, this is my mother's house. So nothing logical like that will ever happen. My mother forbids the throwing out of junk mail because she swears she's going to look at it (which is a blatant lie that you'd think she would have caught herself in by now, after 25 years of throwing out giant piles of junk mail that she's never even sifted through, much less looked at), and separating the mail doesn't work either because someone (to be fair, its me as often as anybody else) always just throws the piles together when cleaning off a surface.

So basically, my house is a pigsty, that's never actually going to get cleaned, and I'm very distressed because I can't find this damn bill, and my mother doesn't care. It brings me right back to high school. I can't wait to move out.

Wednesday, March 27, 2002 06:08 p.m.
How cool would your life have been as a child if someone had taken you to a toy store and just said to you "pick out what you want" and everything you said you wanted you got? That's exactly what my co-teacher and I did for our little guy this afternoon. We went to the toy section of Kmart and walked up and down the aisles asking him, "do you want this? do you want this?" and anything he said yes to, went in the cart. :) It was actually kind of fun, and now our favorite little devil-child has $200 worth of new toys to play with. (To be judiciously given to him two at a time, since from past experience we know that he tires of toys very quickly and will almost never play with them again.) I can't wait for tomorrow, when he'll finally have something at school that he really likes, so maybe we can bribe him again. All our work is really about bribery. We teach the kids that if they do the right thing they get what they want. It works really well. Unless you don't have anything your kid wants. Then its really tough to convince him that its worth it to do what you ask. That's been the problem with this little guy for the past month or so. And boy has he been a devil-child.

Saturday, March 23, 2002 05:14 p.m.
My whole family spent this week up at Sugarloaf skiing, while I had to work. So it was just me and the cats (I get more cracks about being a crazy cat lady, by the way, and I only have three) and Grandma most of the week. It was kind of fun to have her around - it kept me from getting too lonely - but it was a little weird too. Mostly because I'd never been in the situation of being the one in charge when Grandma was around. Either we're up in Farmington and she and Grandpa run the show or my parents are here. But the other weird thing is that I feel in a very ambiguous position as far as family dynamics are going on right now. I think several adult family members aren't sure whether to assume that I'm an adult too and therefore converse with me and give me all the relevant details, or to assume that I'm still one of the kids and so I have the right to limited information and they're supposed to continue to shield me from the harsh realities of life. This ambiguous position is amplified by the fact that I'm not always 100% sure which role I want to take either. I think consensus is coming out that I'm an adult. When did I ever say I wanted to grow up? I think the last time was when I was 13 or so.

On another note, I have discovered this week that significantly more people are tuning in to this fragmented life story than I had thought. Three different people have told me that they enjoy reading the babble that I post here, beyond Elizabeth and Susie, who I was pretty sure were the only ones who were reading it. It kind of gives me that I'm-being-stalked feeling, since I can't check up on these other people in return, but in a good way, like stalking on Telnet. :)

Tuesday, March 19, 2002 06:09 p.m.
Bad days are getting to be routine. I don't like it.

On another note, certain people who work too much can be terribly annoying. Especially when they think I'm just kidding when I tell them it would make me happy if they took a day off. And I'm not talking about my workaholic parents.

Sunday, March 17, 2002 10:16 a.m.
Elizabeth, I think you should know that you missed a nice little family reunion in the hospital waiting room yesterday. Susie and Kali left about five minutes too early, but if they'd stayed, you, Ethan, and Andy would have been the only ones missing. I think the only time in recent memory that our family has been that complete was at the wedding. This was funnier because it was in the hospital and was probably the only thing our family has ever done together that didn't require months of planning. :)

Friday, March 15, 2002 08:40 p.m.
i like family.

i also like thin mints, and my mom brought home lots and lots yesterday.

Wednesday, March 13, 2002 06:26 p.m.
My life is not all bad.

But sometimes it gets to the point where you have to just laugh hysterically for a half an hour or so, or you will sob for the rest of the day.

I reached that point at about 4:15 this afternoon.


I went to see "I am Sam" last night. It was very well done I thought. However, I don't recommend the movie to anyone who works with people with autism and MR whose life isn't going perfectly. I cried through the whole second half of the movie last night. Sobbed actually. In the movie theater. I've never cried in a movie theater before. The damn movie was far too realistic to be uplifting, until the end, when it was supposed to be uplifting, but that's where it stopped being realistic, which made it that much sadder.

Next time I've had a bad day at work, I'm gonna go see some stupid teen movie instead of something sentimental and work-related.

Tuesday, March 12, 2002 07:07 a.m.
Isn't it funny how your life stays pretty much the same forever, and then all of a sudden your whole world gets turned upside down all at once?

I'm not very good at assimilating two new people into my household at once. Life gets confusing.

Sunday, March 3, 2002 02:06 p.m.
I'm feeling kind of disconnected today, like somehow all of the pieces aren't quite where they're supposed to be. But that's okay. I've had a pretty good weekend up until now, so I can get over today being merely okay.

On Friday night I got talked into going to a little party that two of the women from work were having. I'm glad I went; I had a really good time, for 6 straight hours. It was such a positive thing for me to hang out with "the girls" and have it not be Bryn Mawr, but like Bryn Mawr in enough ways that I didn't feel like I'd entered a different dimension. (It kind of reassured me that, wacky though it is, Bryn Mawr does exist on at least a parallel plane of reality to the rest of the world.)

Wednesday, February 27, 2002 07:45 p.m.
Sometimes I feel like 6 beers would really solve all my problems. Then I realize that there aren't 6 beers in my house.

Tuesday, February 26, 2002 05:15 p.m.
What a wonderful day!!!

Tim, while certainly not an angel, was not a devil-child either. It was lovely. And for today, we figured out a way to get him to do work with us. He had a super awesome day.

In addition I was already kind of on a high from dinner last night, but that's another story (that I'm not entirely comfortable with within myself yet - i.e. the fact that I'm on a high is not 100% a good thing).

But it made for a great day.

Friday, February 22, 2002 08:55 p.m.
Elizabeth, thank you for your sympathy. And I take back blaming you for my obviously congenital disorder. I just never paid any attention to it before.

Today was a good day at work. And I got Michelle to pay Jamie and Sara and I overtime to come in tomorrow to finish the book project. So although I am still obsessing over these damn books (word to the wise - never allow me to work with books in any capacity. Jim do not hire me. You will hate me.), I now have help on the project (from two people who I do not feel intimidated by and therefore can freely tell them my vision for the project and trust that any criticism will be constructive) and I'm getting paid time and a half to do it. :) Sometimes life really is good.

Wednesday, February 20, 2002 08:08 p.m.
I'm developing an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Today my boss got me started on a project to catalog and centralize all the kid's books at the school. This is a HUGE task, because there are roughly 800 books in the school, all hidden in various places and there's no record of any of them. I can't stop this task. Michelle is going to regret ever assigning the project to me. I'm never going to be able to leave it until its perfect. I want to be the one to finish the project (because I know no one else will do it right) and I want to be the one to keep track of the books once they're cataloged (because I know anyone else will mess things up). And this is only the most recent example of my complusions.

I used to think I was a pretty laid back person. Now it's becoming obvious that I have inherited my father's hidden compulsiveness. Elizabeth, I blame it on you. My compulsiveness all started to come out when I did your dishes. Now, I just can't leave things.

I'm afraid.

Monday, February 18, 2002 08:02 p.m.
I have a cold.

Again.

I really hope this one goes away before I begin to look skeletal. Who would have guessed that a simple head cold could cause you to lose 10% of your body weight? (And yes, that's actually how much I lost in the month of January, unwillingly.)

Thursday, February 14, 2002 08:22 p.m.
I know I'm always writing stories about bad stuff at work and this is going to be another one, so I have to reassure everyone before you read this that I do love my job, and lots of good things happen there, even if I don't always tell you about them.

So anyway, this morning goes swimmingly (figuratively and literally - Thursday is swimming day) and I'm thinking that I'm really going to make it to vacation without killing myself or someone else. And then it comes to be lunch time. Tim is in the second lunch wave and there was much screaming and crying going on in the first one. So already things were not looking good. Lunch is not exactly Tim's favorite time of day, and he hates lots of noise. But Tim did fine at lunch today. Unfortunately the boy sitting next to us didn't like his carrots, so he made himself throw them up. That wasn't pleasant.

Then, a short time later, due to a variety of reasons that I won't get into, Richie picked up his tray and threw it at the ceiling, along with all the food on it. That made kind of a mess too. I was really glad to get away from lunch today.

And as much as I love them, I'm really glad that the kids are on vacation next week.

Wednesday, February 13, 2002 06:36 p.m.
So Tim did his horrible nasty really frustrating opposition thing again today. Why? We have no idea. I told him to do a puzzle and he refused for 2 hours. It really wasn't the most fun way I could have come up with to spend 2 hours. He finally did it, but I don't really want to have to go through that again. Luckily we decided this afternoon to stop doing puzzles with Tim for a while and try to work on his many other problems. So at least the next fight won't be over a puzzle - it'll be something more important, nominally.

On another note, tomorrow is Valentine's Day, which is officially the unluckiest day of the year for me. At least in the romance department. I have been single every single Valentine's Day of my life (except for last year, but I should have been single then, since my relationship had by that point been on the rocks for approximately 8 months so last year doesn't count anyway), even though I have often been not single the week before and the week after Feb. 14. I remember particularly one year when I was dating a singularly unsavory person whom we'll call Ben. In early February I realized that this relationship was going nowhere and that was a good thing, but nevertheless I was determined to break my Valentine's Day curse and stick it out until after the day had passed. On February 12 I decided that Ben wasn't worth the extra 48 hours of pain it would take to break the curse and I broke up with him. And so the curse continues.

Notice I am currently single.

Tuesday, February 12, 2002 08:36 p.m.
To quote myself: "Someday I will be glad that I went to work tomorrow. Tonight, I'm not so sure I'm going to make it to work tomorrow."

To put it briefly, today was not such a wonderful day at work.

Monday, February 11, 2002 05:51 p.m.
Somehow I always end up in the middle of arguments between my parents and my siblings. I think it has something to do with the fact that I am the adult child living at home. Yet another reason to move out soon.

But seriously, I always do end up in the middle of these things. Like when my Dad didn't want Ethan to stay at Tufts because he thought he was just wasting money there - I was in the middle of that one. And that wasn't fun.

And I'm constantly in the middle of Abby and my mom. That's the least fun, I think because Abby's relationship with my mom is very similar to what mine was when I was 17. So I really do sympathize. The problem is, even though I still think my mom doesn't have the first clue how to deal with a teenage daughter (she does better with sons I think), I can now see how Abby (and I at one time) could do a better job of dealing with her. So I try to defuse the tension by giving Abby some ideas of how to get my mom off her back, and I just end up in the middle of a mess. Not because I have bad ideas though. Its because my mother doesn't know when to quit, so my ideas work for ten or fifteen minutes and then my mother gets out of control crazy and they both stop listening to me.

I should really learn how to stay out of other people's problems.

Saturday, February 9, 2002 08:58 p.m.
A waitress at the Ground Round gave Abby, Tommy, and me all kids menus tonight. I really hope that I don't look like I'm still 12. I thought even Tommy had passed that stage. The incident put me in a bad mood for the rest of the meal.

Friday, February 8, 2002 05:24 p.m.
Wow, I just realized that I haven't given anyone any new interesting news about me all week. Mostly because there really hasn't been any new interesting news about me all week. My life continues on as before. I continue to be quite lonely in my singleness. I continue to have cats that fight with each other. I continue to work with two kids who sometimes are truly wonderful and other times are truly terrible.

Tim yesterday took three hours and fifteen minutes to do a puzzle. Actually he took 20 minutes doing the puzzle and the other 2 hours and 55 minutes refusing to do the puzzle. Why? I have no idea. But it was not really the most fun way to spend 2 hours and 55 minutes for me. I could think of many better things to do. Unfortunately, I couldn't just let him not do the puzzle, because if I did that once, there's no way I would ever be able to get him to do a puzzle for me again. He would have won. That's the problem with kids with autism - once you start a battle, you'd damn well better win it, or the rest of your life will be hell for all eternity. Which is why yesterday every 20 seconds or so for 2 hours and 15 minutes I sat on the floor and said "Tim, it's time to do the puzzle." And finally, I won. Sort of. Tim never really gave up. He just figured that it was time to watch TV (because after the other kids in his classroom come back from lunch and right before Tim's lunch every day they watch a movie) and he knows that he doesn't get TV until he finishes whatever is going on. He didn't actually get to watch TV, but I still didn't really win the battle. I just hope it never happens again. At least he did his puzzle today. :)

Monday, February 4, 2002 05:06 p.m.
I have to say, I'm still kind of delerious. I mean, Ty Law got it right when he said that nobody believed in the Pats. Let's be honest - we were all hoping for a miracle, not that they would actually play well enough to beat the Rams. So it's super cool that they won totally legitimately, and not even on a weird call. Gotta love the Pats. And all the coverage about how amazing it is that they won.

I have to admit though, I'm getting a little tired of sportscasters talking about Ty Law interceptions and saying "He fought the Law and the Law won - Ty Law!" Every time he gets an interception they say that. And yeah, it's cool and funny, a couple of times. But its about time they came up with something else to say.

But the Pats won, so life is good.

Sunday, February 3, 2002 10:47 p.m.
YAHOO!!!!

Could anyone have asked for a better Super Bowl? Pats Rule, there's no getting around it now. I do feel kinda bad that Drew didn't get to play at all, but they won. They Won!!!

I am happy for a good long time now.

Sunday, February 3, 2002 05:47 p.m.
Life is clearly not fair.

All of my friends are either married, practically married, or dating so much that they don't have time for anything else.

Okay, all of my friends except Susie.

But the fact remains that life is quite unfair, especially in February. If the Patriots don't win tonight, I may have to do something drastic and bizarre.

Saturday, February 2, 2002 10:19 a.m.
I didn't watch much of Days yesterday. Just enough to know that Lexie ratted on Sean and Belle who were trying to hide J.T. so that he wouldn't get taken away from Bo and Hope in a ridiculous custody battle.

Why didn't I watch Days, you ask? Well, partly because I was really hungry and I needed to get something to eat. But mostly because I found myself way more interested in Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections". I finished reading it yesterday. I didn't actually hold out much hope for the book at first, partly because of the media frenzy surrounding it, and mostly because of the obvious arrogance of Franzen himself, who had the gall to think not only that he was too good for Oprah, but also that he of all people had finally written the quintessential American novel. Once I got into it though, I decided that despite Franzen (whom I still think is a big prick) the book is quite good. I recommend it.

I'm gearing up for the game tomorrow. Nerves are setting in. :) I have full confidence in Brady - as much as I love Drew, I think his Patriot days are behind him now - but the Rams are really good. Its going to take the kind of luck only the Pats have to win this game.

Friday, February 1, 2002 08:48 a.m.
Snow Day today!! Once again, I must reiterate how much I love working in the school system. Of course I have tons of work to do that I brought home with me, so I shouldn't be bored.

Bonus of having a snow day: I can watch Days of Our Lives and get caught up one what's happening with the baby swap situation. :)

Yesterday afternoon, Richie, who finally seems to be on a semi-even keel, laughed at me during his work session. Ordinarily this would be a bad thing, because Richie laughs as opposition. However, yesterday it was a good thing because it was a real honest-to-God laugh because he thought his work was funny. It's way too easy for him, which I think is why he thinks it's funny. But then he did the coolest thing: four separate times during the work session Richie completed the next level of whatever we were working on all by himself. An example: one of his programs is to match a written number (like "3") to an amount of items - to show that he understands that "3" means three things. The way we've been running the program is to present him with two piles of items - one with 3 things and one with 2 things maybe - and then give him a card with a 3 written on it and tell him to match. He's had no problem with that. But yesterday I gave him a pile of 4 and a pile of 2 and told him to match 4. Richie put the card with the pile of 2, so I told him to try again. Instead of moving the card to the pile of 4, he took two from that pile and moved them over to the card to make a pile of 4. That's WAY more advanced than just matching! It was so funny the way he did it, and so cool, that Wayne, Richie's other teacher, almost fell out of his chair laughing. :) So we're going to make Richie's programs a little harder from now on. It'll be great.

Wednesday, January 30, 2002 06:15 p.m.
"Tim's verbal stereotypy was so out of control today, it got in the way of his being human. It got in the way of his being anything." -LH

That should give you an idea of what my day was like.

Something to think about: if you had a son whom you knew became so out of control around strings that all shoes in your house must be hidden in closets, would you send him to school in pants that have a string tie around the waist?


Elizabeth I really like your drawing. I think it's excellent.

Monday, January 28, 2002 06:49 p.m.
Hooray for the Pats!!!

I tried to write that yesterday but I couldn't get logged on. So I'm writing it today. Pats Rule!! (which was a big sign up at work today) And how cool is it that NE has a back up QB who's a three time Pro Bowler? Bet the Steelers were upset when they found out Brady wasn't coming back, even though he would have won the game anyway.

Update on my health situation...my appetite seems to be returning. Things still don't taste right, due to my lack of a sense of smell, but at least I wanted to eat today. In addition, I am now on antibiotics for my sinus infection, and hopefully I am finally on the road to recovery.

Now I just have to get back to the gym so I don't gain back all the weight I've lost. :) I haven't weighed this little since middle school. :)

Elizabeth, I hear your twiddlebug voices. I love the tiddlebugs. My favorite episode is when its cold in their milk carton home and they decide to close something, only they can't figure out what to close, so they close the book. :)

Saturday, January 26, 2002 06:57 p.m.
I just found out that Maine has a new professional women's football team!!!

How excited am I?!?! Not that I play football, but I'm super excited about the new team. And it was totally random that I found out because I just happened to be watching the Channel 13 news because there was a bball game on 6, and I never watch 13, and I just happened to tune in right when they were talking about the new team! It was fate. :)

A bit of background, since I'm sure you're all mystified by my frenzy: Last year a new women's pro football league started up (there have always been 2 or 3 leagues running around the country but they've never been very successful). This new league, the NWFL, actually looks like it might make it. The teams last year had really good attendance, and they play during the NFL off-season, so they even managed to pick up a few die hard fans who were lost without football. Anyway, the way I got into it is that my rugby coach, Alissa Wykes, is one of the stars of the Philadelphia Liberty Belles (yea, they have some stupid names, but so does the WNBA) and they won the league championship last year.

So I can't wait for the Maine Freeze (I know, another stupid name) season to start up - I think they start the end of April. And I especially can't wait for May 18 when the Belles come to play up here. I'll get to see my coach play again!! Who's coming with me?

Wednesday, January 23, 2002 06:44 p.m.
I'm reasonably certain that my youngest brother is either the secret love child of Ronald Reagan and Archie Bunker, or is an alien invader from the planet Right-Wing Conspiracy. I honestly don't have any idea where he came from, but I'm afraid that he can't possibly be an Austin. He could be a Metcalf, but Andy has proven that that the Reagan genes are recessive in that family, so it can't be proven. Seriously, my brother, who has had, to the fullest extent possible, the same upbringing as myself and the rest of my siblings, acts half the time like white trash and the other half of the time like a blueblood, but always like a Republican. Dinner conversations generally come close to fistfights, mainly because Tommy has adopted all of the stupidest Republican beliefs, but doesn't understand them well enough to actually debate them. So he fights instead. There are lots of times when I don't really like my little brother very much at all.

Monday, January 21, 2002 04:14 p.m.
I got up and went to work today, still kind of feeling like I was walking on the moon because of my dizziness, but I needed the money. But when I got there it turned out that neither of my kids were there. Actually 2/3 of the kids in the school weren't in today, proof positive that we should have had today off, just like the public schools. But anyway, so I didn't have any kids, so I decided that I would take my work home with me and do it here. I have a lot of computer work to do: entering data, plus there's a new monthly progress report we're doing that's due for the first time on Friday and that's going to take some time. So I get back here and the first thing I discover is that the disk that I picked up for the progress report, which was supposed to have the template I'm supposed to use on it, is actually a blank disk. So I couldn't do that. Then I tried to do all the data entry, for which we have a great big Excel file. Only problem was, when I opened the file, everything looked beautiful but I couldn't do anything. The program kept freezing. So I don't know if there's something wrong with the disk or if it's my computer or what. But now it's 4:15 and I have nothing to show for my day. It's very frustrating. Especially because there's really a lot of stuff that I need to do by the end of this week and I had all day today and I couldn't get any of it done. So I basically just wasted all of today and I'll have to do the work after I get home the rest of the week. Grrrrr.

But it's still snowing and that makes me very happy.

Sunday, January 20, 2002 08:19 p.m.
I seem to finally be recovering from the miserable disease that has confined me to my bed for the past two days. Now my nose is just clogged, and I'm still kind of dizzy, but at least I can stand up. Boy do I wish I had tomorrow off to continue my recovery.

Watching the Ravens offense self-destruct today was less than satisfying. I think if the Steelers had left the stadium at half time, the Baltimore offense would still have managed to lose the game. Which is not to say that the Baltimore defense was stellar, but at least they looked like they were playing football. I'm not sure what game the offense was playing. Tiddlywinks maybe.
So now the Pats have to go to Pittsburgh next week. Its too bad. One more game at Foxboro would have been nice. But if anyone can beat the Steelers at home, I'm sure the Pats can. Or at least they can find an official who can make some crazy-ass call in their favor. That's been working well for them too. God I love Patriots football! (By the way, Abby says she finally figured out football during the Pats game last night, so now I have a football watching partner. So exciting!)

Sunday, January 20, 2002 11:06 a.m.
I'm very pleased with the Pats performance last night. I wasn't sure things were going to turn out well going into the 4th, but I should have known that Brady and Vinatieri would come through....in a typical Pats ending to a game I might add. How many weird calls do you think the Pats can possibly get to go their way in one season? At least this one was better than the unconcious guy on the sidelines grounding the ball. I can't wait for next weeks game. Just think - if the Ravens win today (I know, unlikely possibility, but weirder things have happened) there will be yet another game at Foxboro. It's the stadium that just wouldn't die. I hate to see Foxboro go. Mainly on principle - I've never been to a game there, so I don't have any sort of personal attachment to it - but I hate corporate named stadiums. How much sentiment can there really be at a place named CMGi Stadium? What the hell does CMGi mean? Stuff like the "Tostitos Fiesta Bowl" and all the other corporate bowl games piss me off too. Couldn't Tostitos just be content to plaster their logo all over the place without having to rename the game?

Thursday, January 17, 2002 07:52 p.m.
So Tim really likes to masturbate.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. There is definitely a time and place for masturbation in everyone's life. However, Tim, being only 6 1/2 years old, and autistic on top of that, hasn't really figured out that the time and place is not in school during the time that we're doing schoolwork. It's becoming a problem that his other teacher and I are going to have to deal with. Today he was having so much fun that we didn't actually get anything done from 11 am on. It wasn't so much fun for Lori and me.

On a happier note, I've finally found a place where I can get decent quality yarn, so I can start knitting again. My favorite yarn place went out of business in Lewiston 2 or 3 years ago, and there really hasn't been anywhere to get nice yarn in the area. But I discovered this afternoon that the new Craft-Mania has some nice stuff. They don't have anybody working there who knows anything about it, which was one of the benefits of the old place (it was owned and run by and old French memere who loved to talk about anything and everything including what yarn you should use for any particular project) but it will have to do. Maybe this summer I can go hunting for cool yarn with Aunt Kathy. She loves to do that.

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