Happy Valentine's Day

It's over, of course, but it feels like Valentine's weekend is ongoing. Tomorrow is President's Day and my niece's birthday, and Tuesday is just an extra vacation day for the kids (Rocket Boy will go back to work), when we can catch up on homework. But it's also Lunar New Year and the first day of Ramadan, and then Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, none of which we really celebrate, but I like to acknowledge them anyway. 

This should be a pretty easy week, I hope. Just three days of school. Rocket Boy made his famous mac & cheese last night for dinner, and there's plenty left over, so we'll also have that on Monday. Tonight we're going to eat out somewhere. So I don't have to cook until Tuesday, and I already know what I'm having, a lemon tofu dish over rice (nice for Lunar New Year). Then I'll just have to figure out Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sigh. Sometimes I think about ALL the cooking I'm going to have to do, in what's left of my life, and it is rather horrifying.

On the other hand, after Rocket Boy cooked last night, the kitchen was an absolute shambles. I think he used almost every large pot we own (all of which have to be washed by hand). I worked and worked to do the dishes this morning. When I cook, it's not quite so horrible afterwards (usually).

The week after this one is "Tech Week" rehearsals for the musical, so I have signed up to bring something each night (since Teen B won't be eating with us). Brownies, lemon bars, fruit salad, a vegan casserole, and then on Friday for Taco Bar Night just some add-ons (guacamole, sour cream, shredded cheese). Last year I signed up to bring 10 baked potatoes on Baked Potato Night, and then I got sick and it was a disaster. So I'm bringing simpler things this time, except for that vegan casserole, which worries me. But it'll probably be fine.

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This past week was pretty intense. On Monday night we went to our last parent-teacher conferences ever, which brought a tear to my eye (well, kind of). Both Teen A's math and physics teachers said he's doing better this term than last (when he got D's in both classes). Paying attention, asking questions in class, that kind of thing. Hmm. 

Teen B's math teacher insisted that he was doing great. Teen B thinks he's failing, keeps asking if he can drop the class. I think the truth is somewhere in between. 

We told two of Teen B's teachers about the autism diagnosis, one of whom had helped by filling out questionnaires. (We didn't tell the oblivious math teacher. No point.) I still haven't figured out who else to tell. His counselor? Probably. His doctor? Probably. Maybe I'll work on that this week.

While we were talking to Teen A's "Interpersonal Relationships" teacher, the teacher sitting next to her overheard us mention that Teen A wants to study aviation science at Metro (maybe). This other teacher had gone to Metro, said it was a great school, and also mentioned that his daughter was trying to become a pilot, but she was having trouble passing her FAA Aviation Medical Examiner (AME) test, which you have to do before you're allowed to "solo," because she has ADHD and at one time took medication for it. You have to be able to prove that you don't need medication to function. The medical examiner found out she has ADHD because she's been on an IEP and it mentions ADHD on the form. Of course, Teen A has also had an IEP and a 504, and both mention ADHD as a reason. He only took medication VERY briefly, back in 2018 -- we didn't even finish one bottle of it (I still have it). But according to the teacher, it can be hard to prove that you stopped taking a med. We may have to provide years of medical records.

We did not know about any of this, so it was good to hear about, though worrying. The teacher also said that the dyslexia diagnosis may be an issue. I had wondered about that. We'll just have to see.

Tuesday night was the Synergy Concert, which I love. All the different musical groups at the high school perform together in various combinations. I really liked one piece the choirs did, called "Golden Field," and also a jazz piece called "Walking by Flashlight." The younger band and orchestra played Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets" from "Romeo and Juliet," which I love, although Teen B told me they did a terrible job of it compared to when HE played it, two years ago (sitting up in the balcony, I didn't notice). And then they finished with the advanced band and orchestra and all the choirs doing some of the "Polovtsian Dances" by Borodin, which was a favorite of my mother's and which I love love love. 

After this, how many more performances do we get to attend? The musical in early March, and then the spring play at the other high school in April, and then the final band, orchestra, and choir concerts in late April/early May, and then graduation in mid-May. And then it's over.

I will try to go to everything.

My book group met on Thursday, finally, after much rescheduling. We read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, which I liked but did not love. The member who listened to the audiobook loved it, and she played some of it for us so we could hear. There was a different voice for each different character who wrote a letter, and I could see how that made it better. 

Next month we are going to read Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I suggested Hamnet once before, but one member strongly nixed it because it sounded sad. This time I had it on a list with five other books and she picked it out and voted for it strongly. I'm happy -- it sounds like a good book. I am #71 out of 75 on the waiting list at the library for it, but we don't meet until March 24th, so there's a good chance I'll get it in time. And if not, I'll buy it, no big deal. I bought The Correspondent, but I don't really want to keep it, so I gave it to the member who listened to it, to give to her partner, and I told her he can pass it on to someone else.

Finally we got to Valentine's Day. It was a sweet day. Everybody slept late, which was nice. We worked on the TAXES, which I have been stressing over, and we actually finished them! All I have to do now is get Rocket Boy to sign a form, and then I'll scan it, and then I'll just wait for our tax preparer to "open the portal" so I can upload everything. Our taxes seem terribly complicated this year, but at least we don't have to file in MISSOURI.

Rocket Boy and I exchanged cards. We are always amused by how our choices seem to dovetail. This year we both got cards that said that the other person was our "better half." I'm not sure Rocket Boy really is my better half -- I think we work together pretty well, and I do not leave my towel on the floor as my card implied -- but because we both said the other was our better half, it seemed fair.

Rocket Boy mailed my card to Loveland, so it could be stamped there, which I thought was so sweet. I'm not sure I'm capable of being moved by things like this, the way I would have been moved if he'd done it 20 years ago. But I still thought it was sweet. I'm going to save the envelope.

I was more moved by the fact that he agreed to cook dinner. We did a Trader Joe's run to get the cheeses and such beforehand, and the whole store was full of flowers. He asked me if I would like some -- which I think might be the first time he has ever offered to buy me flowers, he doesn't like cut flowers, thinks it's like somebody killed the flowers -- but I said no. I appreciated the offer, thought it was very sweet of him, but I think I'm just a little too sad these days to get joy from flowers.

The house is filled with sweets, still. Candy, cookies, one last doughnut, half a pie that we bought at the bake sale after the concert on Tuesday. It's funny -- earlier in the week I made a batch of sugar cookie dough, except I ran out of flour, so I added things like dry milk powder and flaxseed meal to get it to solidify. It looked really strange. I put it in the fridge, planning to bake heart-shaped cookies later in the week after I bought some flour that I could use to help roll them out. And I never did. The cookie dough is still in the fridge, in a bowl, and when Rocket Boy goes back to work on Tuesday, I'm going to transfer it to the compost bin (along with the really old frosting left over from Christmas and the weird "Thai pesto" that I made to go with a weird soup that I made last week that no one liked). 

It's OK. We had all these other sweets and some other year I can make heart-shaped cookies. It's just that this is the last year of high school and it seemed like I should make them. But I didn't.