The Great Experiment (and a catch up on homeschool)

Hmm. This is the end of the first week of my Great Experiment. Mostly, this means that I'm trying to see what my brain will do without any carbohydrates.

So far, so good. I have this strange, oddly lucid feeling, especially in the evening. Of course that may be the extra caffeine. Yeah, yeah, I know -- Atkins says that coffee has carbs. That was reason #1 I didn't go with him. Seriously, it's enough to elbow out pasta, but coffee and tea? Bite me!

I read the greatest thing in a book last night called When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair. It says that a diet becomes a non-diet when saying no to selected foods feels more like blessing yourself with health and vitality, rather than depriving yourself of onion rings. Wow. I actually feel that way sometimes.

On the school front, I've given up yelling at kids. I've been doing too much of it lately. The neighbors are going to call the little guys in the white suits if they hear me scream, "Stop screaming!!" one more time. Seriously. I'm disengaging. Wish me luck...

GET BUSY, BOY!

It would be nice if The Boy would just frickin' DO THE WORK without complaining once in a while. Apparently, just the thought of writing a paragraph or doing a page of grammar just sends him into a coma.

I switch between several ways of handling it, which is, of course, the worst thing I could do. My inclination is toward logical consequences, rather than nagging: "You can do your work when you want, but you won't get any 'screen time' until it's done."

But then I ended up teaching an eight hour day, so I went to plan B: "I can work with you on science and reading from 9:30 to 10:30; otherwise, you have to get your independent work done yourself."

But you KNOW I'm not missing my play date on Wednesday afternoons, so that messes up the whole "prisoner of his own work" thing. I dunno. I just feel like I'm fishing now.

Honestly, how can one kid sleep 9 hours a night and still be able to pass out during school hours? Oy.

Big news... ;)

Well, the cats are fine and are adjusting to getting their antibiotics. Half the time, I don't even have to hog tie them for it. They're starting to feel better and are behaving like kittens -- chasing strings, carrying toys around, sleeping on us, and wrestling. They're so affectionate toward us that they border on needy. And they've stopped stinking, so it's all good. ;)

Patrick is starting to get math anxiety. He took two hours agonizing over math that took us 7 minutes to actually do. Oy. I've offered a deal -- I'll work on all his math with me if he'll stop freaking out. Just STOP FREAKING OUT.

In other news, well, there is no other news. I vacuumed the house today. Yeah, that's news. ;)

Oh, and I went outdoors this morning and didn't gasp at the heat. Maybe, just maybe, the solar imperative will again push our weather inexorably toward cooler weather. Such as it is, anyway.

A balanced life...

Well, the cat still stinks. But The Boy did really well on his "Lesson 20 - Test Day" for his Calvert curriculum. Does that balance out?

We're taking the cats to the vet tomorrow to try to get them to stop sneezing snot all over the water dish and the sliding glass door. But I started The Girl on Mirilax today. Does that balance out? (Expect more on THAT one later in the week!)

I've signed up for two-months-for-the-price-of-one Weight Watchers because it was cheaper than two months of online support. But no one around here will give me enough peace and quiet to work out a menu online. Or to go to a meeting. It's very frustrating. But I did get a new bolt for the toilet so it doesn't rock anymore. Does that balance out?

Tomorrow's Thursday already. That's good. Thursday is YMCA PE day for us, so I pack up The Girl's language curriculum and take off right after lunch. While the boy gets some exercise, I get to educate the general public on autism. Does that balance out?

Funny thing about YMCA PE -- the class has picked up three new boys who are so undisciplined that they make The Boy look like a West Point cadet. He doesn't seem to bring home any of their bad behavior, so that's one in the "good" column.

Oy vey, it's midnight and I'm still not in bed. But The Girl is still in her own bed, unlike last night. (I insisted on taking her back to bed every time she wandered into my room last night and started a major riot. It did not make me a popular person, to say the least.) But she's quiet now, so that's good. Gotta run!!

Long weekend...

Well, what a busy three days it has been. I've been through a major fit of "Why me?" combined with "God, I'm tired of being a continual public spectacle." Yeah, it was a long weekend. Can you say "cub scout awards dinner"? ;) WHADDYA MEAN IT'S ONLY BEEN TWO DAYS?!

I'm seriously considering trying The Girl on Sertraline. What the heck -- the rest of us are on it, so why not? Seriously -- the apparent terror, the clutching at her ears, the reeling and staggering, the immediate request to go home or to the bathroom. It doesn't matter where we are. If it isn't a place she's been to before, you can forget it. I'm not sure when the cutoff was, but there seems to have been one.

She has a love/hate relationship with church. For some reason, she likes going to Children's Church, even though all she does is hide on a couch for 45 minutes, but church holds such horrors for her that she won't even go past the lobby. Fortunately (NOT!) the rector's lapel microphone is piped directly into the lobby. If she would stay home, I would let her, but her compulsions drive her on...

Where does this all end?

Requiem Aeternum, Harry. Poor baby.

Well, Harry didn't make it. He turned up half-dead on the back porch Saturday morning. The animal hospital tested him and told us that his kidneys were completely gone. Poor little guy. We had to let him go. The Boy and I bawled like babies for the rest of the day, and I was so incredibly puffy-eyed that I skipped church on Sunday, lest they think The Husband had been beating me.

We decided that we really missed having creatures underfoot, and went to "look at" the cats in the animal shelter on Sunday afternoon. Yeah. You saw it coming, didn't you? We are now the owners of two mostly-grown matching cats:




We still miss Harry terribly. The Boy started crying this evening. "These cats make me think of Harry!" Poor thing. But these are apparently lap cats and don't bite, so they're already two steps ahead of poor Harry. But for pure spastic joy, you just couldn't beat Harry.

I did find out the hard way not to shampoo that one on the left, though. The one on the right complained but didn't fight too much. (Hey, they smelled of nasty animal pee from the shelter -- I had no choice!) Anyway, the short version of the story is that I dropped him from about seven feet off the ground because that was as far from my face as I could hold him. But everyone's dry now and most of the bleeding has stopped, so I should toddle off to bed. Long day tomorrow.

Harry, wherever he may be

Our cat is missing. He went out yesterday morning at his usual 5:00 but didn't come back in at his usual 5:30. In fact, he didn't come back at all. Uuuuuugh. My sweet little cat. What, oh what am I going to tell The Boy.

We brought this cat home at 12 weeks old. The kids screamed in terror every time they saw him for two full weeks. Just as I was about to give up on him, The Boy realized that he played tag. He's also a fool for anything whippy and feathered. His favorite toy was a plain blue cotton catnip mouse. I've seen him poking through the bin of cat toys to find just the toy he wanted. At a year and a half old, he was still playing with fuzzy toys tied to door knobs with elastic cord.

If it seems like I keep switching from present tense to past and back, it's because I still hope he's okay. Maybe someone took him in, thinking he was homeless. I put up signs on the mailboxes. Maybe he strayed into the woods behind the house and got injured. I hunted down the address, name, and phone number of the house behind us and called. I asked the neighbors. I searched the ditches around the house. Nothing. The little thing just vanished.

Oh dear. It's not like he's a terribly affectionate cat. He wasn't the type to sit on a lap or worship. He tended to stalk, grab, and lick. We think he was weaned too young and not socialized, but my dad found him in the shrubs, and he was ours. He pet-broke my kids. He amused them. He did keep us company many an evening. But he treads softly on this Earth and on our hearts, leaving just faint prints.

This morning, The Boy was already saying, "Can we get a gray cat now?" But now, late at night, he's woken me with, "Mom? I'm worried about Harry." Oh dear. I assured him that Harry is one of God's little creatures, and he'll be okay. But secretly, I'm not sure he's coming home to us.