Impending

Summer school has been over for about 2 weeks, and next week I start up again with the regular school year. My classroom is nowhere near being ready, and this week I am stuck in a three-day autism workshop. Here I go, starting off the new year unprepared again... What else is new?

On the upside, I get a fresh crop of little behavioral darlings. This year's cast:

TantrumKid - 7-year-old known for toddleresque tantrums that include table-flipping and chair-throwing
OCDKid - Lines things up. All things. Crayons on the desk? Must be lined up. Legos? Line 'em up. What? It's time to put this away?? BUT I CAN'T UNTIL I GET THEM ALL INTO A STRAIGHT LINE!!!
ChowDownKid - Loves food, and often amuses himself by listing a list of things he'd like to eat; "chicken cheesesteak, french fries, meatballs, chicken fingers, ice cream, peanut butter and jelly... etc." Frequently pulls up shirt to expose jiggling middle while dancing.
BillCosbyKid - Looks like Little Bill, talks like a cross between big Bill and Bob Dylan's singing voice, and has been known to bring leftover fried shrimp to school. In his backpack. Loose. As in without a container or baggie.
TBD1 - Not sure about this kid, as he entered the other behavioral room toward the end of last year.
TBD2 - Another wild card; first year in a behavioral class.

I'm actually really excited, because I think I needed a change, and I think the personalities of my kids this year are much more quirky, and less angry than last year's group. Hoping for lots and lots of hilarious Kid-Bits to share.

*****

I was excited to find a Chinese delivery place in my area that has ONLINE ORDERING!!! I was able to order dinner tonight, complete with Alex's special-order lo mein (no veggies, pork and egg only-- god forbid there be something healthy in his meal), and pay for it with my credit card, without ever leaving the house! The only disappointing part was the Chicken with Almond Ding, which sounded fun but was disappointing. The veggies weren't cooked enough to accomodate my food allergies, and the chicken was cut too small to make it easy to pick out. Also? I think there might be peanuts instead of almonds. Still, it beats putting a bra on. Uh, which I'd have to do in order to leave the house and pick up the food. Duh.

*****

I've been using Firefox for awhile, and loving it. It made me (too) happy each time I could click on "Open in tabs" and all of my gajillion blogs would open up at once, tabbed right across the top of a single window. Likewise, when I could do a little online shopping comparisons simply by opening "in a new tab." However, during the last month, it has been super-slow, and I have to wait too long for a page to load and for links and menu bars to be clickable. I have tried to uninstall and reinstall without success. I was forced to return to Explorer, which works fine, but only had old blogs bookmarked.

Consequently, I *gasp!* stopped reading my blogs for awhile. I missed them, but was also too lazy to look up all the old addresses on my speed-retarded Firefox.

The silver lining: I have discovered Google Reader. I took the time to get the addresses and add them to my subscriptions, and now, each time I open Explorer, I am greeted with a fresh list of all my IIF's updated blogs on my iGoogle homepage. Dear Google, I love you.

I'm the Silver one

(If you were ever a Brownie, you might get the reference in the title. If not-- really, who cares anyway?)

I've turned into a bad friend. I know, I've always been slightly too self-absorbed to be a really thoughtful, great friend. But lately I've just been negligent.

I'm not sure what the reason is. I guess I could blame it on being distracted by TheBoy, the new house, the new puppy, work, my family... But the truth is, I spend most of my time sitting around on my ass watching reality TV (or should I say: CelebReality?)

I'm not just being bad with phone calls (like for Meg's birthday), either; I'm also being Super Lame-o (does using the phrase Super Lame-o make me even more lame?) when it comes to having a social life. I do not want to sit in all the time, yet it seems that it's all I ever do. When I actually feel like putting in the effort to look presentable for the outside world, I can't find anyone to go out with me. When I do get invited out, I end up feeling too lazy to get myself ready, or anxious if I don't know about it days in advance. Example:

Friend: Hey, just wondering if you want to go out for drinks tonight?
Me: (Oh god tonight?! But that's so soon! I have to take a shower and find something to wear and put makeup on and put the dog in her crate and Alex is working and...) Oh, uh, I can't because [insert excuse here].

What IS this? Depression? Anxiety? Old Age? Pure Laziness? Maybe I'm just in a rut about moving and living 30 minutes + from anyone I'd want to hang out with? I feel like a Desperate Housewife, except without the hot body or the murder-mystery, or well, you know-- the husband. Is anyone else feeling this way? Any suggestions on how to bust out of it?

*****

Kid-Bit

CursingKid has been walking around saying "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!" for the last few days. (Autistic kids tend to pick up phrases from nowhere and repeat them over, and over, and over. And over...) He said it today, and then his face lit up, and he screamed "SHITTY SHITTY BANG BANG!!!" and then without missing a beat, "Did I say a bad word?" "Yes, CursingKid, you did. And now you're going to have to lose A Mouth*." CursingKid: Oh, shit.

* This particular kid has a card with three Velcro mouths on it-- each one represents a Bruce Springsteen song he gets to listen to at the end of the day. He loses mouths for cursing and inappropriate language.

*****

Coconut has more than doubled her weight since we got her, from 2 lbs. to 4.7. Fatty. Here are a couple pictures because I can't escape her cuteness, so you shouldn't be able to, either.

Sometimes when she hears a dog barking on TV, she stops to check it out. Today I put on Eight Below to see what would happen. She sat captivated for a good 10 minutes. That's what I like: a dog who watches as much TV as me.