Smooth Sailing?

I don't know about your neck of the woods today, but ours here was wet - very wet. And cold too - almost felt like a brisk but wet fall rain. I know rain is an absolute necessity to life but boy, my joints just don't like this kind of rainy day very much as it tends to make them stiffer, sorer than normal. I don't really need any help in that direction as my ankles and knees tend to stay on the stiff and sore side all the time but this kind of weather just aggravates it.

This morning, we had the folks here to do the IEP for Princess Maya. She got to meet Pam, the lady who will be her teacher in the pre-school class she will begin attending on the day after Labor Day. All went quite well today with the psychologist, the teacher and the representative from the agency working with us, with Maya. The psychologist was very pleased to see how many more things Maya has learned since he was here back in May - vocabulary is increasing very nicely as are her play skills. Her behavior in some other aspects has been taking a bit of a downturn lately though as she has recently begun to express her anger at little things very quickly and doing it by either throwing whatever happens to be handy to her or having a lot more mini-meltdowns it seems like every day. Tonight at supper, she took a bite of the vegetable we had, chewed it about five seconds if that, and then, leaned over to the side and spit it all on the floor. That's the second time she's done that now in the past four days and it's a bit unusual for her to do things like that with food. Usually, she just would ignore things she didn't care to eat - or try, if it was a new item. For the most part, her eating has never been really problematic but tonight happened to be a meal that didn't have any of her favorite components. Actually, I think she was expressing that she was upset because I didn't have "chicken and sketty" for supper because when she came out to the table and sat down, she announced that was what she wanted. Too bad she didn't tell me that several hours earlier when I was asking for meal suggestions! She doesn't like certain foods -like roast beef because of the texture there - require more chewing than a lot of meats. She also doesn't care for mashed potatoes and gravy much either -which was another thing on tonights menu. I had made a pot roast tonight with onions, baby carrots and cabbage cooked with the meat in a crockpot and with a nice gravy. She generally likes carrots though so we figured, well if she eats a tiny bit of the potatoes, fine but the carrots will be ok in her book. She kept looking over the table and asking for "sketty" or "noodles" so we lied to her and told her the cabbage in with the carrots was noodles. The funny thing there is it was the carrots she spit out but she picked the cabbage out and ate that! Learn something every day there with her, so we do!

One of my son's good friends, who will be getting married this October, stopped by today with his fiance to introduce her to Mandy and me. She seems like a really nice young lady and we're all really happy that Clate's friend is going to "tie the knot." They are having a Scottish wedding where all the men in the wedding party have to wear the full Scottish garb - kilts, jackets, special shoes, the whole nine yards! So Mandy and I are looking forward to attending this event but it's going to take some manipulation as to how we're going to get there since they are getting married down in Hummelstown, which is near to Harrisburg. No way are we going to try to go to that wedding and cart Maya and Kurtis along with us so it's either going to be that Bill will have to remain home all day with the kids or we'll have to make other arrangements for the kids - maybe to spend the weekend with my older daughter and her fiance. Just not quite sure how we're going to work that out yet.

My son has been on the road since last Wednesday now and has no idea right now when he'll be getting home! When he left last week, it looked like he would be doing runs from Wednesday thru Sunday between Harrisburg or Hagerstown and some terminal in Tennessee but things got changed and he and his co-driver got sent to Phoenix and from there, to Los Angeles and then, that's where things bogged down. They didn't get a run out of Los Angeles till yesterday afternoon sometime - supposed to be going from LA to New Jersey. THis is good on one hand since it is a lot of mileage and he gets paid by the mile so he'll have a good check for the week. But it was also bad for him because of a couple things - one being he had scheduled dental appointments for this morning and for tomorrow morning, so he had to phone the dentist this morning and cancel both of those. He was supposed to start tomorrow morning on a "Dedicated" run - meaning he would be going out every week starting the same day of the week and running to the same terminal too so now, that won't take place until probably next week. And finally, this threw a monkey wrench into our plans here too because this Wednesday will be his birthday - he'll be 34 - and we had hoped to have a nice family get-together dinner for the occasion. Oh well, we can always have the dinner anytime I guess, can't we?

Last night was a momentous occasion here - the little boy went to sleep just before 1 a.m. and slept through till almost 10 a.m. this morning! I was really ecstatic over that. However, my joy is short lived I see because as I am typing this now, he's bouncing around the playpen, up and down, playing with his "bear" pillow and his "bunny" pillow too in between watching Conan O'Brien! At least he doesn't object to the programs Grammy here likes to watch which is a bonus for me any way. But boy, I wish he'd start crashing a bit earlier in the night. Hopefully, he won't still be up and rooting around till 3 or 4 a.m. like he did several nights last week.

My good friend and high school classmate, Nancy -out in Colorado - sent me this little bit of humor today and I just thought I'd pass it along here. If you've already heard this one, my apologies. If not, hope you get a little chuckle out of it.

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out.

She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a Game Warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, "Good morning, Ma'am. What are you doing?"

"Reading a book," she replies, (thinking, Isn't that obvious?)

The Game Warden then tells the woman he is going to have to fine her for fishing without having a license.

" But I'm not fishing. I'm reading." She responds.

"Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I'll have to take you in and write you up."

"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault," says the woman.

"But I haven't even touched you," says the game warden.

"That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment."

"Have a nice day ma'am," and he left.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It's likely she can also think!

Till tomorrow - or Wednesday or whatever day it is that is the next time.
Stay dry -and warm too!