First grade orientation/Back To School Night

Thursday afternoon, I took MM to meet his new teacher and see his classroom. He was so excited. He loved the classroom, loved that he gets his! Very! Own! Desk! With his name on it, even! He loves that there's a shelf underneath it with books! Already! He loves that his teacher put together a get-to-know-your-classroom scavenger hunt and that he was one of the few kids in the class who read it and wrote his answers without any help.

On our way there, I asked him, "Do you think Miss B will be tall or short?"
"Short."
"Thin or fat?"
"Thin."
"Glasses or no glasses?"
"No glasses."
"Freckles or no freckles?"
"Freckles."
"Nail polish or no nail polish?"
"No nail polish."

He was right in every respect except freckles. She hasn't got any. She also looks a lot like his music teacher from Posh Place, so he feels comfortable with her right away and feels like he's got the ability to predict what life will be like in her class.

It seems that the curriculum may be more laid back at his new school than it was at Posh Place, but that he will be given more responsibility. That's fine with me as long as he remains excited about learning and mastering new things. The focus will be on literacy skills, which he already has in spades. They only get music, art, and Spanish once a week each --- Posh Place has them every day --- and art is really something he loves, so I'm hoping that they'll get time to draw in class as well.

And that's all there is to report at the moment...We'll know more after Tuesday!

Three Years

And The Post seems to have nothing to say about it if you look at just their home page. A search finds articles in their B section, but that's it.

Three years ago today, Katrina hit. Today Gustav is on its way. Has anything changed for the better about how the governments will respond?

"Marc Anthony! Have you gone insane?"

What we watched this morning:



MM just about died from the cuteness.

Loving my new employer already

Got an email with a link to a website where I could fill out all the paperwork (direct deposit, W4, I9, yada yada yada) on-line. And then I printed it out and also saved soft copies. All that's left is for me to bring proof of citizenship with me on Tuesday.

This place is on the ball.

Once they got all the probing done, that is.

Updates

• The lamb turned out really good, except that I over-cooked it. Next time I'll put in the probe thermometer.
• Speaking of probes, my past has passed muster and I'm starting work Tuesday.

Cooking from the garden - making it up as I go along edition

Today's experiment: Boneless Leg o' Australian Lamb in the Slow Cooker.

Ingredients from the garden: Mint and Parsley

Other ingredients include:
A 5.5 lb boneless leg o' lamb (including juices from the packaging)
6 cloves of garlic
1 can sliced carrots
1 cup wine
3 cups water
1 pkg onion soup mix (what's a slow cooker recipe without onion soup mix?)*
Olive oil

I put the olive oil in my largest skillet and heated it up. I took the Leg o' Lamb out of its package, poured the juices into the slow cooker and put the LOL into the skillet to brown on one side for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, I rinsed the mint and parsley and began taking their leaves off their stems and putting them into the chopper attachment for my stick blender (mine is older than this and didn't come with a whisk).
Then I turned the meat over to brown on the other side for another 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, I added the garlic to the chopper attachment and pulverized the garlic, mint, and parsley into a lovely aromatic mash which I scraped into the slow cooker. I added 3 cups of water and one of wine. I added the package of onion soup mix. I stirred. Added the carrots. Stirred.

I brought the slow cooker pot over to the stove and placed the meat lovingly therein.

I scraped all the brown yummy bits off the bottom of the pan and added them to the mix.

Put the pot back into the slow cooker base. Covered. Set to low.

I don't know how it's gonna turn out, but it sure smells delicious.



*I didn't add any salt since the soup mix is waaaaaay salty.

Gimme Fever

MM's had a fever since Tuesday night. Finally, finally, he's back to normal today so that we can go on a bloggy playdate with a fellow Whiner and her two children.

His illness made me miss lunch with APL, darn it, but we're rescheduling for next week.

His fever was one that the pediatric NP we saw on Wednesday says is going around and lasts about 4 days. It had no other symptoms (although now he's got sort of a phlegmy cough). He wasn't even very grumpy.

Thank goodness my job DIDN'T start last week so that staying home wasn't an issue.

Oh! And my job won't start next week either, because they haven't finished digging into my past yet. The things we go through to get a job around here.

Practice makes perfect

I don't know if I've told you folks, but MM will be riding the Big Yellow Bus pretty soon. Kind of ridiculous since his school is within walking distance of our house, but necessary since it is beyond where the sidewalk ends. To get to school using a path with sidewalks would mean walking a mile around the school and coming in from the opposite direction.

Thus, the bus.

It will arrive on our corner every weekday morning at 0729 starting two weeks from today.

We are used to waking up at 0730. You see the problem.

So this week we're practicing. We all wake up somewhere around 0700, get dressed, eat breakfast, walk to the bus-stop (right across the street from our house), wait until 0729, and then go back indoors to play with PlasticBricksFromHolland until it's time to go to day camp.

It's already pretty obvious that we're going to have to move the wake up time up a bit. MM was unable to finish eating breakfast within the time-frame we've currently got.

This means an earlier bedtime. Which means an earlier dinner.

Feh.

But he's pretty darn excited about it all. Come to that, so am I!

I've heard differently

I had to go pee in a bottle again because the lab goofed and did the wrong test.

The good news is: I don't have gestational diabetes. Which is truly a relief, since I'm not pregnant.

Start date a week from Monday, unless I hear differently.

I seeb to hab a code.

Bery bery addoyig.

I stard by dew job Mudday, udless I hear differed.

How's by you?

Yes, I counted

We just bought MM a 700-piece box of Legos. They fit into a smallish shoe-box. Who'd've guessed?

Eerie silence

My computer has been snarling at me, despite many reboots. MS comes along, reboots it, now it works.

Must catch up on email and whatnot. Be back soon.

Whoa

The world is spinning too fast.

MM, who is now sporting the classic 6-year-old smile (great big gap there in the middle where two teeth used to be), is going to sleep over at DeepVoicedFirstGrader's house tomorrow night. The following three nights he will spend at my SIL's house. Because MS and I will be at a conference in CityWithFamousIslandPrison, 3000 miles away.

For four days.

MM is staying at DVFG's house tomorrow night because MS and I are leaving on a 0705 plane and MM's daycamp doesn't open until 0630. DVFG's mom will take them both to daycamp later in the morning.

He's been looking forward to staying with SIL for months. MONTHS. And not just because my BIL has every Lego Star Wars kit known to man-kind.

But I am sitting here, filled with wonder that my baby is a gap-smiled six-year-old who is going off on sleep-overs, and wondering what the hell I'm thinking leaving my baby for 4 days. MY BABY.

He's such a big kid now.

Is it just me or is blogger being difficult today? UPDATED

It's coming up as a Windows Explorer error for me. I can't read anybody's posts from today. Is it just because I'm the last to still be using Uncle Bill's software instead of Firefox?

Update: I downloaded and installed Firefox and everything is now hunky-dory. However, I think Blogger would do well to check that puppy out.

I GOT THE JOB!!!

I'm gonna work Five Minutes From My House!

Squee just doesn't even say it.

Thank you all for thinking of me during the interview. It really made me feel supported.