Whew! Finally a moment to sit down and write something. We had our co-op here today and it seemed to go well, although I am feeling like the Worst MOther on Earth because Rutledge was outside in 20 degree weather for about an hour with no shoes on and it was off my radar. How could this happen??

Tonight was the LLL meeting, and it went really well. I'm energized by the number of people who have been coming and by how talkative they are and how the meetings carry themselves. It was true support going on, which makes me feel strongly that I need to keep doing this, that it's not a lot of commitment from me, but the returns are huge! Sometimes I start to wonder if I shouldn't sort of start to move on in life, but then I reconnect, and I know I'm not ready to let this go.

Tonight on the way home I heard Mary Chapin Carpenter's version of Grow Old With Me. Oh my gosh, how had I missed this song! She is just amazing on it. I was kind of flooded with this sentimentally goofy clarity about musicians I really like and authors I really like (today I was talking with Adena and Hilary about Madeline L'Engle, who is probably my favorite author). Here were some of my favorites:

Singers: Natalie Merchant, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith, Alison Krauss

Authors: Madeline L'Engle, Annie Dillard (though I'm having some trouble wading through her most recent book, The Maytrees), Jane Austen. These come straight to mind.

I've kind of lost my momentum from earlier this evening. I think it has something to do with coming back into the house where there's all the regular noise and crying and hurt feelings and he gets to do something special and I don't. I managed to go to the Northside without having any inkling of any kind of "panic attack," so I had a bonding moment with the minivan again, or at least with the open road. I found myself wanting to drive around just to enjoy the sound of the music on the radio (even "Sweet Home Alabama" was inspiring tonight), though of course I didn't with gas being near $3 a gallon.

My laptop is still down. $1317 in repairs later, I'm hoping that it will come back to me in some form where I can think about trusting it again. Today we got the news that the geeks at the Mac Pro store who claimed they could work wonders reached the same conclusion it took the Apple Store people 2 minutes to reach--the hard drive is so screwed that no data recovery is possible. I had to take a few moments to grieve this today. Now I just want my computer back...or a new one...a PC. I'm using the boys' laptop, but it's just not the same. It's hard reading my mail from the web, hard not having my own mailbox with its preferences and sub-boxes set.

Here's a topic in my life right now. Age ranges--is it a given that we fudge with them? And is that right? This came up again in relation to a homeschool center here, where I have been "dealing" with having a class with a huge age and ability and attention range of participants. It seems the norm is to skew upward. If the class is for 7-10 year olds, put your 6 year old in it. If it's for 11 and up, put your 10 year old in it. So far, I haven't pulled this card at all, but now I'm thinking, wait, when is it my turn to ask the favor, to ask for my brilliant child to be accommodated? I don't think that my children are brilliant, but I'm struck pretty hard lately that they also aren't 6 or 7, and they're not slow for their age. Why not skew them up every now and then? Why not occasionally have one of them be the member who slows the class down? Why not put them in a position now and then where they aren't the oldest, but where they're the one who is challenged, who has to work a little harder.

I'm also not unaware that when Ollie is motivated by wanting to please another person, he reaches beyond where he is. It scares me. It reminds me of me, and not of the good parts. But I don't know--there's a certain allure that I can't deny. What if he wasn't weak in handwriting, writing, spelling, and whatever else he's weak in. What if he really isn't learning disabled but is just disabled by my lack of motivational power? What if this isn't even my responsibility--to be his motivational power? I do believe that. I want to throw in that disclaimer. But I also feel like, is it part of my responsibility to leave him openings to motivational powers? Hmmm.

I've been reading this book about boundaries, and like with many books, I'm nodding along, going yeah, yeah--this is it! But then I step away from the book and can't even define what is meant by a boundary. But I'm wondering, am I really confused about what is and what is not my responsibility? I have to believe that in some ways I genuinely am.


One thing is true--I don't go to bed early enough. Here it is nearly midnight and I'm still up, and I still think I'm going to play "just one game" on Webkinz, and we know how that goes.