Take a breath!

I kept thinking time was getting away from me, and mentally counting up the days since the last post - hard to believe I let three weeks go by!

So - we've been busy with horseback riding, extra rehearsals, performance at the fair, fundraising for the ballet academy's fall production, preparations for school, repairs (and some more repairs) to my van, a couple of home projects, a day trip north to visit family, checking on Mom more often while her caregiver was out of town, helping my oldest daughter and her family move out of the house next door :-(

Yes, the last item on the list was hard - still is - and has been an interesting thing to experience on many levels. I tried to ignore that it was happening right up 'til the first night they didn't sleep in their beds next door, just because there was no way I could get myself emotionally ready for it to be real.  It took the kids even longer; Girlie mentioned a couple times that she was waiting to give something to her niece and I had to remind her they really didn't live there any more. It's been most of the three weeks now, and I'm less often thinking along the lines of running next door to chat, and getting used to not hearing the squeak of the gate and fast little footsteps on my porch.

Milo 7 months - 6/12

It's a good thing - shouldn't that make it easy? No; in fact, I just realized the three weeks of not writing here was a way to delay the very last reality of it, which is putting it down in black and white. And I may have just stepped away from the computer for a bit to grab a tissue. Of course we still talk every day in some manner, but I don't have access to an immediate fix of hugs from the grandkids. And no more giggles and squeals from the yard.

All right, enough of the maudlin, let's move on to the practical. When Girlie's schedule came in the mail I noticed immediately that she'd been assigned a locker. In considering for a while it seemed like a plausible way to work on a new life skill in preparation for starting high school (!) next year. I had Girlie sit down at the table to practice with a combination lock and found she could only open it on the first try about 50% of the time. I don't even want to know how that would translate in a hallway full of kids with a time limit, so no locker for Girlie. It wasn't a problem; the school counselor had assigned it by mistake and Girlie can continue to keep her things in a cubby in the life skills classroom. The problem with the combination lock is due to her dyspraxia, which is a huge variable at any time. Girlie can sit in her room and do some beadwork in a quiet, relaxed environment, but when she is stressed or in a hurry she still has difficulty manipulating buttons on her clothes. If she must have a locker at any point, it will have to be with a keyed lock.

School got off to a great start; now it's time to get all we can out of the last sun-shiny weekend of summer with one more road trip before the real extra quiet time starts for me next week. Well, it will provide the perfect opportunity to learn how to use the knitting machine a friend gave me last week...