Fall

We've had two overnight frosts this past week. I actually had to pull out the extra-extra blankets, scrape my car windows almost every morning this week, and don the dreaded 'puff' winter coat. 

That coat was so the thing in high school, but it probably should have stayed in the days of MC Hammer and buzz cuts. I'll forgive its' fooginess though, if only for the fact that it is the warmest coat ever. But I digress. 

After three, four days of overcast, cold, generally colorless days, we get this morning: clear blue sky, sunny as all-get, and a nice almost warm bite to the air. I got the rosemary inside (I'm going to try to keep it alive through the winter this year), all the frost-killed vegetables out of the ground, and the rest of the front pathway in. Being outside, putting my hands in the dirt--- Kinda makes it easy to forget that the world is gonna be ending in another year or so. 

Just something about these clear fall days that make me feel very optimistic. 

The boys had their trunk or treat at their school last night, which meant, of course, that I was scheduled for an evening shift (although, for the first time in almost 3 years, I am not scheduled on Halloween night... thank you!). Anyway, they had a good time hanging out with Mike last night, and are (24 hours later) now out of Halloween candy. They went so far as to chart out a trade exchange for all their candy. To get a 'mystery' dum-dum sucker cost 5 candy bars. 

The dum-dum was the golden standard for some reason. Next on the list was the kit-kats. 

Personally, I stand by my rolos. 

Wow. Officially a month since I fell off the edge of the cyber-world. Again.

But, today is a good day to come back, seeing as its' Mike's 33rd b-day. That's right. I'm married to an old man. Who's married to a slightly less-older woman. We had our red velvet, our lunch date, then our dinner date together. I'm going to risk sounding a bit hyperbolic right now, but I truly believe I have luckily married one of the best men in the world. He has been such a strength to me, and such a God-send as a father to our boys. He constantly amazes me with his tenacity, his insight, and his unfaltering faith and love in me and in our family.

He is constantly making me smile. And that's just by being himself.

Anyway, stepping away from the pinnacle a bit, let me go into a bit of what else has been happening.... which is not a whole lot, but, I will try to fill in the month's gap of time.

Ben has continued on the early intervention pathway and has been evaluated through the school district for speech and occupational therapy. And then today, he was evaluated for cognitive function, which was all very technical stuff, but basically boils down to this: Ben does what Ben wants. Period.

The evaluating staff was kind enough to drop it after the first 40 minutes of testing this morning, and allowed us to come back in the early afternoon. Which he then promptly screamed his way through. All they wanted him to do was stack a couple of blocks on top of each other, match some cards, do some mild algebra.... nothing major, but it was a no---go. Which is, to wildly understate the case, exasperating. Because Ben is brilliant, and everyone should know that. Not that one test is gonna determine anything definite, but.....

If he wasn't so annoying with his defiance, this whole situation would probably be cute. Maybe.