By the numbers

Somehow I managed to essentially stay the same weight this past week. I actually am about a quarter of a pound down, but I'm just glad I didn't gain after all the holiday indulging I did.

And there's been another coffeemaker miracle at my house. It decided to cooperate with my programming efforts last night, so it's again willing to turn on whenever I tell it to.

The curse of the grateful heart

It's the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and two of life's little conveniences have given out on me. This, after I recognized them in my pre-Thanksgiving post. Ingrates.

For starters, my coffeemaker still works, which is good. But the auto setting only works at seven minutes past the hour. So I can have it turn itself on at 5:07, or 6:07, or 7:07, but not at any other time. This reminds me of one other time it acted up -- it somehow switched itself to 24-hour military time, and then one day I noticed it had switched back to 12-hour time with am/pm designations. I guess it had been feeling martial. Maybe it's feeling lucky this time.

But I'm not feeling so lucky, as my washing machine bit the dust on Friday. And, wouldn't you know it, Abby got sick on Friday night and vomited not one, not two, but three times in her bed. Thank goodness my sister and her super-capacity washer live close by. And thank goodness for after-Thanksgiving appliance sales. My new washer should be delivered tomorrow, and it will be put to good use immediately upon hookup.

Cash or charge?

It's time to pay the proverbial piper. I have no one but myself to thank for it, but I raised cheating on my diet to such an art form last week that I actually gained a half-pound.

This does not bode well for Thanksgiving week.

But Thanksgiving is only one day. One day won't kill me. I'll just be on the straight and narrow for the whole rest of the week.

Wish me luck.

Thank you for being a friend

Thanksgiving is next week. As I look at the blessings in my life, it’s a precious friendship that sparkles with extra brightness. Kathleen and I became friends nearly 30 years ago, and no one knows me like she does. She’s my BFF, as the young’uns text-message each other these days.

We met in fourth grade at Lakeshore Elementary School in Rochester, New York, long before the days of text messaging and cell phones. (That's Kathleen on the left, me on the right.) Both of us were assigned to the Delphi program, an experimental educational model at that time. We quickly became inseparable and were fortunate to be in the same class for three years. We spent an awful lot of time “socializing” as our teachers would say, yet for a good portion of those three years, we were seated near each other in class. Our sixth-grade teacher became so frustrated with our constant conversation that he told us we could talk in class only if we used sign language. So we learned the sign alphabet and continued to chat away.

As fate and school assignment plans would have it, we went to separate schools after sixth grade. We lost touch with each other and developed other friendships. We went to college, and grad school. She went to France, where she found her husband; I moved to Boston where mine found me. We settled into our own lives and our friendship, once so vibrant, lay dormant for more than 20 years.

A Delphi reunion brought us back in touch a few years ago, and now we’re as inseparable as ever – as much as friends living in Massachusetts and Texas can be inseparable. We email each other daily and chat on the phone a couple of times a week. Despite our separate lives, we still have a lot in common: we’re both teachers (she teaches French; I teach music), we have the same quirky sense of humor, and, most improbably, we both have children with autism. Her Patrick is 7 years old and my Abby is 6; Kathleen is planning their wedding already. When she gets too exuberant, I remind her that we need to get them to make eye contact first. (They’ll have lots of opportunity to practice when Abby and I fly to Houston in January.)

Kathleen inspires me with her single-minded dedication to Patrick’s success. Most evenings will find her making flashcards to help him study, or running him to therapy, or planning a social activity for him and his younger brother. How she does so much for him while balancing the demands of a full-time job and making time for her marriage and herself is beyond me. To top it off, she does all this in French and English, and her children are bilingual, so they can converse with her in-laws on their biannual trips to France.

Inspiration aside, Kathleen and I know each other so well from having spent three of our formative years together. We were both violinists – she very accomplished, me less so – and many of our extracurricular activities centered on music, including the orchestra her violist father founded and directed. So there’s the musician thing, and the Delphi thing, and the Rochester thing, in addition to the autism thing, that binds us across the years.

Today is Kathleen’s birthday, but her friendship is a gift to me, every day. So happy birthday, to my one, best friend, from 1978 to now.

Kathleen and I at the Delphi reunion, May 2006

Religion feature article

Here's my feature article on the Ministry of Mothers Sharing program at St. Mary of the Hills Parish, which ran in today's Patriot Ledger.

The little scholar(s)

Here we have Timmy and Brian, perusing the classic book "Are You my Mother?" Brian needed help getting it off our crowded bookshelf, but once he had it, he proceeded to sit next to Timmy on the couch and read it to him.

Brian definitely has some sight words, but he also has a good understanding of phonics and will sound out (or "decode") words he doesn't know. He's three years old and reads nearly as well as Abby, who is reading at grade level (she's in first grade.)

One difficulty that sometimes crops up with kids on the autism spectrum is that they decode well, but struggle with comprehension. I haven't really checked Brian's understanding yet, mostly because I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that he's reading. But I'll get on it, as soon as I'm done bragging.

The photo backstory: I tried to sneak up on the boys as they were enjoying the story, but they kept looking at the camera and saying "cheese" (and "broccoli," for some inexplicable reason.) So I told them to just keep reading and look at the book, and they both put their heads down and proceeded to say "cheese" again.

Anchors aweigh

Today is the weekly day of reckoning, and I somehow managed to lose a half-pound this week. This surprises me. I had one complete blow-out day, and three days where I was a food vampire -- I was very good until the sun went down, but then I owned the night, and all the food in it!

Thank goodness I get a fresh start every Monday.