A Non-Baseball Update!
So much has happened in the last 22 months. I'll get the worst out of the way first. My mother had a massive heart attack as a result of diabetic complications and died early on the morning of August 14, 2013. She was 67. It's been rough, far rougher than I could have imagined. I've already apologized to Kat for being so cavalier about her needing to get over her own mother's passing. I don't know if there's an afterlife. I do know that either way, she's not suffering anymore. No more dialysis for 4.5 hours a day, 4-8 needle sticks every day (I figured up that she'd had to have over 50,000 injections, blood tests, etc in her life), constant doctor runs, etc etc ad nauseum. That, at least, is good. But I still miss her. I miss her quiet dignity, her laugh, her little impish smile, her compassion, her resilience in the face of everything she had to endure. It's gotten easier, but I still have days where it hurts really bad.
Dad is holding up as well as can be expected after losing half of your soul after 46 years. He's trying very hard not to let on how much it hurts. He's slowly but surely getting out more, back to his retiree luncheons, to shows and movies, etc. He keeps talking about volunteering somewhere...here's hoping he gets on it. My grandmother, my mom's mother, is hanging in there at age 94. Her mind is in and out of clarity. The last time I saw her, she wasn't doing well at all, but Dad tells me she's rebounded since then. She often needs to be reminded about why her daughter isn't with us when we come to see her.
I'm still doing homebound and HCC. Both continue to go well. I'm teaching Intro this semester, and am slated to teach both Intro and Human Ecology next semester. Last year's homebound load grew to ridiculous levels. I had 7-8 and sometimes even 9 appointments scheduled every day, there were so many students...which was made more complicated by several of them canceling at the last minute. I had two middle school girls fighting the same rare (but thankfully treatable) form of cancer, both of whom are now back in school and doing great.
This year, less than a week before school started, I got a call from the superintendent all but begging me to teach chemistry at the high school until they could find a permanent chemistry teacher. With great trepidation born of not having taken a chemistry class since 1994, having absentmindedly inhaled a hefty dose of poison gas before that and having literally set a piece of lab equipment on fire before that, I accepted. I figured I could handle teaching chemistry for a week or two, before I'd have to get into the stuff that I really had no business trying to teach.
I was there for 2 months.
Although I was happy to get back to the feeling of being connected to the school and a large group of students at a time (including a few who adopted me and still make a point to talk to me every chance they get), going back to homebound was probably the biggest relief of my life. Between not knowing the subject matter, the uncertainty of if/when my replacement was ever going to get there and a higher than ever percentage of students who were just point-blank jerks (easily twice as many in those two months than in the previous 3 years in the classroom, I was ecstatic to be back to teaching homebound.
This year's homebound has gone well. It's beginning to get very busy, as usual around this time of year. I've gotten to work with one little girl, a first grader with autism-spectrum issues, since last year. Kat and I have gotten to know and love her and her family as she works with varying levels of success to overcome her issues enough to go to school for the first time. She is insanely intelligent, and can be the sweetest thing you've ever seen...and she can be a terror. She's come a long way since I started working with her.
As I write this, it's spring break in Union County and Kat and I are back from a 3 day jaunt to the Kansas City area. It's a great town with a lot of history and local color.
Here's the part where I say I'll write more...hopefully it'll take.
Dad is holding up as well as can be expected after losing half of your soul after 46 years. He's trying very hard not to let on how much it hurts. He's slowly but surely getting out more, back to his retiree luncheons, to shows and movies, etc. He keeps talking about volunteering somewhere...here's hoping he gets on it. My grandmother, my mom's mother, is hanging in there at age 94. Her mind is in and out of clarity. The last time I saw her, she wasn't doing well at all, but Dad tells me she's rebounded since then. She often needs to be reminded about why her daughter isn't with us when we come to see her.
I'm still doing homebound and HCC. Both continue to go well. I'm teaching Intro this semester, and am slated to teach both Intro and Human Ecology next semester. Last year's homebound load grew to ridiculous levels. I had 7-8 and sometimes even 9 appointments scheduled every day, there were so many students...which was made more complicated by several of them canceling at the last minute. I had two middle school girls fighting the same rare (but thankfully treatable) form of cancer, both of whom are now back in school and doing great.
This year, less than a week before school started, I got a call from the superintendent all but begging me to teach chemistry at the high school until they could find a permanent chemistry teacher. With great trepidation born of not having taken a chemistry class since 1994, having absentmindedly inhaled a hefty dose of poison gas before that and having literally set a piece of lab equipment on fire before that, I accepted. I figured I could handle teaching chemistry for a week or two, before I'd have to get into the stuff that I really had no business trying to teach.
I was there for 2 months.
Although I was happy to get back to the feeling of being connected to the school and a large group of students at a time (including a few who adopted me and still make a point to talk to me every chance they get), going back to homebound was probably the biggest relief of my life. Between not knowing the subject matter, the uncertainty of if/when my replacement was ever going to get there and a higher than ever percentage of students who were just point-blank jerks (easily twice as many in those two months than in the previous 3 years in the classroom, I was ecstatic to be back to teaching homebound.
This year's homebound has gone well. It's beginning to get very busy, as usual around this time of year. I've gotten to work with one little girl, a first grader with autism-spectrum issues, since last year. Kat and I have gotten to know and love her and her family as she works with varying levels of success to overcome her issues enough to go to school for the first time. She is insanely intelligent, and can be the sweetest thing you've ever seen...and she can be a terror. She's come a long way since I started working with her.
As I write this, it's spring break in Union County and Kat and I are back from a 3 day jaunt to the Kansas City area. It's a great town with a lot of history and local color.
Here's the part where I say I'll write more...hopefully it'll take.