Sad

My friend died on Thursday and I found out today. She was an older friend from my Friends Meeting who had been moved into a nursing facility in the state in which her son lives about a year ago. I felt very close to her when she lived here...she was the Wise Woman in my life. I was a good friend to her several years ago when she had a stroke and lived here and could be visited and checked on, and she was there for me as I needed when I was feeling stir-crazy after having the Lone Star Baby (she taught me how to crochet!), but I wasn't a very good friend to her once she was moved away. My life has been so crazy this past year that I haven't kept up much with anyone, but I knew she was dying and I wish I had been in touch more often. I drive by the apartment where I used to visit her here in town everyday and I have thought of her daily and often since she left it...I have missed her so, and now I always will.

Lest You Think I've Disappeared...

I am still hanging on to this mortal coil and I do miss everyone and am sorry for my lack of time for posting lately. February has been rough. We meant it to include large amounts of fun family outings as it is the month when our museum membership has reciprocity with lots of other cool venues, but it has mainly been a month of illness and stress, although we did have a very nice 12-year anniversary of the marriage of Lone Star Pa and myself on the 12th, which we had fun celebrating the previous weekend.

The Lone Star Baby has had an on-again-off-again mystery bug since about the 2nd and the Lone Star Girl had a mild case of Flu A as well, in the midst of it all. I have missed 4 days of work in February and Lone Star Pa has missed two, one of which was the day we were both supposed to be administering the high-stakes TAKS writing test to our seventh graders. I did administer it, but he was on taking-baby-to-doctor-again duty that day.

In the meanwhile, school is still very busy and I have tons of stuff due for my certification classes. I am currently off to take my big Social Studies 4-8 exam. Please wish me luck!

Orlando, Florida Passes Ordinance....

....outlawing the feeding of large groups of homeless persons in city parks.
Good gracious God.

Lone Star Baby Picasso

On a happier note, in addition to her virus, the Lone Star Baby brought her folder home from school on Friday, for us to take out the artwork she has recently done at school. It is always so nice to get to see what she is working on...they do sewing cards that they make themselves, paintings, masks, puppets, they play with stickers...the works. This isn't one of those AMI Montessori programs that discourages free flowing artwork. As Lone Star Pa and I were exclaiming over all her work, we came across a lovely painting that clearly involved a more organized technique that just brushing paint onto paper, although we did not know quite what technique they had taught her to use in order to produce the effect. We were telling the Lone Star Baby how much we liked it and she nodded serenely and told us "Pablo Picasso". I love her school.

Bug Winter

The Lone Star Baby came home from school on Friday with a slightly elevated temperature, which later turned into a bonafide, if not too scary, fever. She said her throat hurt, which mine does also, and did not seem very sick. She seemed fine yesterday, except for a slightly elevated temperature still, but then the fever shot up past 103 last night and she felt very crummy indeed. Today, she's okay again, but we'll see about tonight. I took her to the doc today and she's negative for strep with a red throat and ears, so it is probably another virus. It seems she has had some manner of bug every single weekend for weeks. The Lone Star Girl was not prone to catching every little thing like this when she was a toddler; it is quite frustrating.

Bubbles In The Water

Last night was the Science Fair at the Lone Star Girl's school. She is in the 5th grade and this is the first year she has done an experiment with a partner. Their experiment (done with some equipment at the local university that I would not have known existed had the girls not set the whole thing up with someone there) proved that there was more dissolved oxygen in water that had been chilled than in not-chilled water...to the best of my understanding. They won a medal for Honorable Mention! I was very proud of them, though the Lone Star Girl was in a bratty mood because she wanted to advance to the district-wide competition. The competition at her school is tough, though. She skipped entering in 3rd and 4th grade - her school only requires 5th-graders to enter - but also won Honorable Mention in first grade when she attacked some audio recordings with magnets and monitored their degradation. Her highest award was in second grade for her project on sargassum and beach erosion. I am totally impressed by her scientific prowess, regardless of her snottiness, and am very proud of her. I'm counting on her to get folks to Mars someday.

Molly Ivins...

She will be missed!