Fall break

So, it's Thanksgiving week. The kids have the week off; Rocket Boy doesn't, but his job is going so strangely that he probably mostly does have it off. The person who's supposed to be telling him what to do has flaked out, he did manage to have a Zoom call with someone who used to work there who knows about the project, but he could barely understand her Scottish accent, and now he's been referred to a third person, who we think is probably on vacation this week, because she hasn't responded to his email yet. 

A more cynical person might say that perhaps this agency needs the Musk-Ramaswamy treatment, but I think actually the employees are freaking out due to the election. At my parent group meeting this week, I was talking to someone who works there, and she got all choked up and said she couldn't talk about it. She's afraid her job is over. I felt terrible and tried to reassure her: "we don't know what's going to happen, no sense getting too upset until we do," stupid things that I don't really believe, but she calmed down.

Aye yi yi, as Ricky Ricardo would say. This country. What have we done?

This week I moved on to a new stage of grief: Anger. I was reading an article about how the Trump clown car plans to dismantle the civil service, and I felt pure rage boiling up inside. I had to set the article down, and even so I was furious for the rest of the day.

So I decided I would have to be careful about the news again. I read it, but very lightly. As soon as an article starts to bother me, I set it aside. I refuse to read ANY articles about "Mistakes Democrats Made" or "What Democrats Should Have Done," even when they're by writers I normally read. I did enjoy the humor piece by River Clegg in this week's New Yorker (I'm still way behind on New Yorkers, but I glance at them before putting them at the back of the pile in the bathroom): "This Election Just Proves What I Already Believed." 

"I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris's loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think."

It made me laugh because that's what all these articles are saying, more or less. We obviously should have done X, even though at the time it seemed like it made perfect sense to do Y. I say, screw it. Donald Trump won because more than half the country were unable to recognize that he's a nasty, horrible liar and/or didn't care. And so here we go.

It was nice to watch the downfall of Matt Gaetz this week. But now he's going to be replaced by some dreadful blonde person. I'm already missing Matt. And I'm not reading the descriptions of Trump's new choices too closely. I mean, OK, it's funny that the Dept. of Education is going to be run by the World Wrestling founder or whatever, but that's all I want to know.

When I had trouble sleeping one night this week, I came up with a wonderful fantasy, actually a few of them. In one, at least a dozen Republican senators came to their senses and blocked all Trump's attempted crimes. In another, the House had too many Republicans on leave or whatever, and Hakeem Jeffries was elected Speaker. In a third, Donald Trump Jr. took a lot of drugs and went running into the ballroom at Mar-a-lago with an AK47, which he proceeded to use to assassinate his father, JD Vance, and other unpleasant people. And then Hakeem Jeffries became president. I was able to sleep after that.

***

This past week was very busy for our family. We attended both the orchestra and the band concerts (Teen B was of course IN the latter), and we also went to the Open House at Teen A's vocational program, which was a lot of fun. We got to meet some of his friends and see the amazing projects they're working on. 

Oh, and we took both of our hybrids to Boulder Hybrids for service this week. Rocket Boy's Highlander needed new struts, among other things, to the tune of $1500, and the Prius v just needed an oil change ($90). Plus they were able to turn off the beep-beep-beep noise it makes when it backs up -- now it just makes a single beep.

Friday was Teen B's IEP reevaluation meeting, and not surprisingly his case manager decided to end it. He'll probably get a 504 instead, which means he'll have accommodations, but he won't be considered Special Ed and he won't have a case manager anymore. One nice thing: Teen B's language arts teacher attended the meeting and advocated strongly for keeping him on the IEP. I thought I didn't like this teacher, but I changed my mind after hearing her. The case manager basically told her she was full of shit, but I appreciated the fact that she tried. I also tried: the case manager had written in the evaluation that Teen B "advocates for himself when appropriate." I said, this is ridiculous, he's never advocated for himself in his life. The case manager said no, he advocates for himself in my class -- he occasionally asks for help. I pointed out that the three teachers who had provided comments for the evaluation all said that he did not do this, which is also what every teacher Teen B has ever had have said. Hmm, said the case manager, but he didn't change what he'd written. It was kind of a pointless meeting.

It's OK. It just means that I'll have to continue to be heavily involved with everything Teen B has to read or write, for another year and a half (and perhaps beyond, if he goes to college). It's OK. Not like I have a job or anything.

***

Moving on, we had nice weather this week. It's actually been quite warm the last couple of days, in the high 50s and even 60s, although that's about to change. Teen A has been driving a lot, basically any time I let him. He complains about the Prius v being "too zesty," whatever that means, but he's attached one set of its keys to his school lanyard and we're starting to think of it as his car.

Time for the Mounjaro report, I guess.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 232.8
• Weight this morning (after 22+ weeks on Mounjaro): 231
  

So I lost 1.8 lbs of the 3 lbs I gained the week before. Not very impressive, but this was only on 5 mg. Even though I didn't have full appetite suppression, my energy level went back down to basically nothing. I only took two walks, one of which was last Sunday and the other was yesterday, and in between I managed three stretch videos. Tonight I will go back up to 7.5 mg, so we'll see how that goes.

Rocket Boy wants us to do an activity tomorrow, maybe go to Denver and do something, or maybe somewhere else. I'll do my best to participate. We all got vaccinations yesterday (flu for me and the boys, Covid for RB), so we're taking it easy today. I feel OK, but it was hard to sleep last night. I had body aches like what you get when you have the flu.

Tuesday we're supposed to have weather, so we'll probably stay home, Wednesday night we're going to Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botanic Gardens (it's going to snow during the day and get down to 17 that night, lovely). Thursday is Thanksgiving. And on Friday afternoon, Rocket Boy and I are planning to go to the funeral of someone I used to work with. That may be a little weird, if we run into a lot of people from ITS, but maybe not too many will come.

We planned our Thanksgiving menu today, finally. We'll have swordfish as a main course, as we've done for several years, assuming all the bad weather this week doesn't prevent the stores from having it (it's not the kind of thing you can buy ahead of time, like a turkey). Mashed potatoes and gravy, made by Rocket Boy. Spinach dish, which the kids like. I decided to mix things up a little bit this year and make a different sweet potato dish and a different cranberry dish, both of which sound much easier than our usual dishes. And of course pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Considering that I'm going to be feeling nauseated and extremely low energy, I wanted easy.

Well, maybe I'll finish this up and go to the library and the grocery store. And then maybe later a nap.