This Situation is Only Temporary

A year ago last month, my son fairly exploded off his bus before sprinting down the sidewalk and into the house. 

“Mom,” he began, not noticing the plate of cookies on the table.  A string of incoherent words burst from his mouth.  I caught a few of them as they whipped by.  They were scary words.  Horrible words.  Words like service animal and demonstration at school and volunteer.  And the worst words of all: “Can we raise a service dog, Mom?”

This was clearly one of those “oh shit” parental moments: Despite the fact that what my son wanted to do was good and just and noble, I really had no interest in allowing him to participate.  Couldn’t he be a do-gooder another way, in a way that didn’t involve bringing animals into our home?

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Ptolemy’s Map

Part of my son’s homework today was to draw a map of his neighborhood.  Pencil tucked neatly behind his ear, he paraded up and down the sidewalks lugging a thick Williams Sonoma cookbook to serve as desk and a clean sheet of white copy paper.  At each driveway, he paused briefly to make a quick sketch of a house and to fill in the last name of the people who lived there.  The job finished, he returned home an hour later, proudly presenting me with his map.

I was so ashamed.

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Omelets or Hashbrowns: The Choice is Yours

Homeschooling is an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at an upscale hotel: As you rise from the table and pick up a plate, still warm from the dishwasher, you promise yourself you’re going to be good, to eat sensibly, to eat just enough.  You order a three-egg omelet made up with green peppers and mushrooms and…

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