In case the word hasn't reached you already...then you can take this one-question quiz. If you answer correctly, then you have the correct newsflash.

1. Dan and Tracy are very soon going to:

a. sell all their houses and move to Tibet.
b. auction their kidneys on e-bay.
c. run for president and vice president, in whichever order.
d. have a microhuman.

If you answered D, you are correct. They are INDEED cooking a bun in the oven!!!! Bake at 98.6F for 270 days.

Micah spent the week in West Virginia where he got his math and science completed while Papa watched Fox news all day and Nana sewed quilts. It's incredibly peaceful where they live, surrounded by woods, punctuated now and then by a the blast of a hunter's rifle, but that is only during deer season.

There is only one thing my dad and Steve's dad have in common: they watch too much TV. Jim watches ONLY Fox news. ONLY. My dad watches EVERYTHING but Fox news; that is the one thing my dad will refuse to watch. Go figure!

Nathanael had a fun 17th birthday which probably isn't over. His friends gave him a mylar balloon decorated with Nathanael's favorite sayings: Line of Sight Toilets, Subliminal Message, I Never Carry This Balloon (a play off his "I Never Wear this Shirt" shirt),a picture of Chicklet. They know him so well and he's got a tight group of buddies- that's one of two reasons I'm not pulling him out of F-town. The other is that it is a disservice to have a student switch high schools right before senior year, for the academic record's sake.

I gave Nathanael some CD's and books: Oliver Twist, Ethan Frome, a Pachelbel CD, a CD by not-one-of-the-Gershwins-but-that-other -Jewish-guy- OK I'll think of it later (Nathanael's got lots of Gershwin already), uh let's see...The Grapes of Wrath, Night, and a couple of other books. He started off with O. Twist. Please sir, may I have some more?

Micah said, "Taco Bell?" No, Pachelbel.

LOL

Micah is in love. With Max.

Before you get worried, I will inform you that Max is a canine.

Unfortunately, Max's breed(s) doesn't do too well in confined spaces. He needs a place to run. Our backyard, though big, isn't fenced. Max would hate a chain. Max would hate not to be in the house at least sometime. Max is only 50% trained. Max and other dogs aren't easy. I have never owned a dog. Micah is a dog person. Me, as soon as I go into a house, my nose tells me if dogs live there. Unless the floor is tile or polished hardwood and the dog never goes on the furniture, it is DOG all through the house. Sorry, but every dog has accidents. Every dog pukes and pees and poops in the house sometimes. More so than cats and cats are also a pain.
Sooooo....
More looking at houses...eventually we will be in more rural place, where I will have ample land for a dog, and at least some kind of room in the house that will be dog-friendly. A nice garage or basement. Where he/she can be one of the family without being on carpets or couches. I am sorry but my brother has the most awesome dog in the world, I love the dog, as dogs go, and no better dog exists. HOWEVER, everything he touches, lies on, sniffs, sits on, jumps on...smells like him. The furniture and carpets reek of dog. Once you live with dogs long enough you can't tell. I know, because I grew up with cats. Only when I was away from cats for years and then went back into a cat owner's house, and eventually back to having cats, did I realize how much cats stink. They do stink up a house and if you have cats, a catless person will think your house stinks even if you do not smell it.
Anyway, Micah needs a dog. Right now he's got two hamsters named Io and C3PO. We think they are going to have babies because on the day they mated, they were hilarious. You pick up the hamsters and they try to mate in your hands. They ran up Micah's pantlegs and tried to mate there. It was a riot. But a hamster is just NOT a dog. I wish Micah could have Max because the match is perfect. They would be so good for each other and Max sooo needs a home. I almost want to get Max and take him to Dave's until I get a home. That would be asking too much, but he'd make a good friend for Phoenix meanwhile.... ;p
Max is a beagle and a breed-I -don't remember mix. But both are smart breeds. Friendly and healthy, and loyal. He's been at the pet store long after his sibs got homes and he soooo needs a home. :(...... Max...I can't take you now...I don't have enough room for you in this little house I'm trying to get ready to sell.

Un. Real.

Mom finally found out what I'm dealing with in that tank they call a school.

Here's what is going on for Micah:
Still expelled but able to do the work. Basically working off-site. Mom is teaching him using the materials given to him by his teachers.
I think all inallmaybe thisis OK. Even though we spentmajor $$ for a doc to say what we already know- Micah is no unabomber.

I've come to the conclusion that a couple of days ago during that drive, I went through a transition. Maybe I molted. Maybe we all molt several times during our lives.

I went from being an OLD YOUNG to a YOUNG OLD. Does that make any sense?

I remember a little more about that dream, too. It involved Micah. That messy room apartment house was in an urban place. This is a locale in my dreams I have dreamed about before. My dreams are so effexor-laced it's like another world inside my head. :) Nice trip. Anyway, we had to move. But for some reason Micah wanted to move by going on roller blades. That was his mode of transportation. So in the middle of the night one night in the midst of a driving sleet storm Micah and I took off to "move". Micah just skated along the sidewalk at the edge of a busy street while somehow I went with him too, whether I was running, or flying, or driving a car, I'm not sure. But we were travelling side by side north on that road into the darkness and I said, "Micah, I'm going to switch places with you. I'm going to take the place closest to the road" so I could protect him. He said, "Mom, I can take care of myself!" and I said, "don't argue with me. Move over." And he did-

The whole situation with Micah, school, etc. is extremely stressful. Driving to Oxford yesterday where Micah's been staying during the week to work on schoolwork with Mom, I had sort of a panic attack. I had taken a different way up so I could look at houses in different areas. Dan (my real estate brother) has dissuaded me from Ross saying it's too close t0 Fernald- d'oh! Point well taken. I was looking at other areas like Okeana. I passed through one small town that had a General Store right out of Mayberry. Even before Mayberry. Think Main Street. It was misty and foggy and surreal. My brain was expanding and stretching and I thought, I'm old. I am old. My kids are growing up and leaving and it's all just going too fast. I can't stand the thought of leaving the place Nathanael has grown up and yet HE wants to leave it. Micah has known only that house and HE wants to leave it. Steve has grown out and spilled all over the house. His S**T is everywhere and we have no basement. But man oh man the school, the school, I have got to get out of this district for once and for all.

Last night I had a dream that I was driving home and for some reason I no money and no gas and Steve had no money, no gas, and we barely made it home. When we got home we lived in, well, it was just a room about the size of a dorm room, and there were papers and trash and knick knacks and things all over and we all slept on bunk beds along the sides of the wall. We all lived in that one room which was part of some type of apartment house, on about the 10th floor. I walked in and said "I'm not living here!" I took all the trash and just threw it out of the "house" and the few things that were worth anything, I amassed in front of the front door. "I'm moving," I said. "I can't live here anymore." When I piled the stuff in front of the door I realized it wasn't worth much and whoever wanted to walk along and take them, I just didn't care, I didn't want the stuff, it was junk. I wanted my kids out of there. I said to myself I didn't care what I had to do, I was going to live somewhere else. So people came along and I said, "here, take a candle, take this brass figure or whatever, take that, I just don't want this stuff, I want to travel light, I just don't like 'stuff' ". Then a while later I was lying in a bed somewhere. I was watching a clock and I realized that I had some kind of credit card with about a zillion percent interest. The clock counted a nickel for something like every five seconds that passed, so I just laid in bed and counted the interest payment I was accruing on that credit card, listening to the dollars tick up, tick tick tick.

OK so I erased the very visceral reaction to my son's school. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm very, very disheartened and sad and OK I've let out a lot of four-letter words. So don't have a cow over it. No I didn't say these things right in front of my kids. D'oh. I had to vent. Do I have to be all susie sunshine all the time. Not in this place. Oh I want to leave here soooo badly.