I had a sleep, woke up and walked the dogs, and am in the midst of puppy snuggles (even though they’re kind of wet and stinky). It’s all good.

This week has just been one that makes me want to pack up my Samsonite luggage and move to a remote location. If I had Samsonite luggage. I pretty much have my old E.T: The Extraterrestrial backpack and a couple of duffel bags.

Anyway.

1) Perfectly good children dying. Not good.

2) It’s been rainy and gross all week. And hot. Not particularly hot outside, but hot in my classroom. I have the windows wide open and the heat turned off and by the end of the day I am bright red and sweating glowing. On Wednesday I saw my student teacher’s pit sweat stains on his shirt. Who likes seeing that? Not me.

3) I have felt barfy for three days. This morning I very nearly did barf. This afternoon I got my period. Nothing to remind you that you have malfunctioning barren ladybusiness than that.

4) Even though we brush them every day (to their great discontent) the dogs each have a matted area. Sprocket behind his ear, Doozer behind his front leg. Meh.

5) Had I mentioned that it’s been raining all week? Our whole house smells like wet dogs. Cute wet dogs, but wet dogs nonetheless.

I am re-reading those and realize that I should probably not be as grumpy as I am. But I am. So nyeh.

Our friends’ daughter passed away this morning. She was seven years old.

She started her life with many challenges ahead. She was born with cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus, which through her short life caused untold problems. She required oxygen at all times to keep her saturation at a normal level; she required a feeding tube because she couldn’t eat on her own. She never spoke, she never walked. Her smile could light up a room, and her laugh brought joy to many.

Last Thursday, her oxygen saturation went down to 40%. She was brought to the hospital, where she had her first cardiac arrest. Her parents told the doctors to let her go. She stopped breathing for several minutes, and then started again on her own. This happened a couple more times. The third time, she was without oxygen for fifteen minutes before starting, once again, to breathe on her own.

Someone said to me, last week when things weren’t looking good, “Maybe this is a good thing. If it’s God’s will.” He didn’t say it in a mean way, or a “Oh, handicapped kids should die”, way, just that he knew how much Hannah had suffered in just the past six months, let alone how much her parents and her siblings had been through.

The oxygen loss caused undetermined brain damage. She was in a coma until this morning, when she passed away in her mother’s arms.

Is it a good thing? It might be a terrible kind of relief for her family – they know that she’s no longer suffering or in pain. Her younger brother had been waking up through the night for the past few months, to check her 02 sats. That’s no kind of life for a five year old. But the family is definitely going to mourn for her. They will miss her forever. She was a wonderful girl with a beautiful smile. And the pain that her family is feeling tonight is not a good thing at all.

I have been making fun of Rob all day long, because his sparkly vampire date fast approaches.

See, the thing is this. His friend is kind of … I don’t know. He just really likes everything having to do with vampires or werewolves or whatever (I just asked Rob how to describe W. to you. He said “Well, to be kind, let’s just say he’s a fan of ‘genre fiction’”). So he phoned yesterday and said to Rob “I bought your ticket. You’re coming to see New Moon with me. I’ll be there to pick you up at 8″. W. doesn’t care that they will be the only two grown men sitting amongst the 14-year-old Twihards. Rob… kind of does. In fact, if I might take the liberty of paraphrasing him, he’d rather be stuck reading colon cleanse reviews.

No offense to you if you enjoy the books. Just, as a 33 year old man, he’s not quite feeling the Twi-love.

Bullet points!

- My student teacher is awesome and starts teaching tomorrow. Good thing too because I am STRESSED BEYOND BELIEF with the seemingly thousands of things going on.

- Rob has been asking me what I want for Christmas. I can think of two things: a jewelery box and some Dansko shoes. My work shoes are good (a pair of Dr. Martens much like these) but they’re getting old and my feet and back are very sore by the end of the day. I’ve heard that Danskos are pretty great.

- My husband has a man-date tomorrow. He and his best friend are going out to see the 10:00 showing of…

(… wait for it…)

(… no seriously, this is gonna be good…)

(… you’ll laugh I mean it…)

New Moon.

No, it was not Rob’s idea.

That’s what he tells me, anyway.

I never thought I’d need this kind of thing because to be honest what kind of assets do I have? Nothing. But I’m thinking I could have benefitted from some sort of identity theft protection. Suffice it to say that because of someone using my mailing address (not even my name, Social Insurance Number, nothing, just my MAILING address), some money of mine (a very small amount) has been taken. It’s not going to happen again, because I’ve taken steps against it, but yeah. Just be aware that someone using your MAILING ADDRESS to open accounts can actually do that. And it sucks.

I have a university student job-shadowing me for about a month. Today was his first day; I think he’ll come back tomorrow, although he seemed pretty tired out by the end of the day. Which is sort of funny because he didn’t do any teaching today; he’s just observing for the first few days, and then he’ll start teaching maybe 1 or 2 periods per day. At the same time, though, it was a very hectic day; kids coming in at lunchtime and recess to take tests they missed, staff meetings, I had him correcting some tests, PLUS he drives in from an hour away every day. I think he was probably exhausted by the time he got home. I’ll bet by the end of his time with us, he’ll wish he had a Capresso coffee maker hooked up intraveinously.

This is the first time I’ve ever had anyone jobshadowing me so I’m probably just as nervous as he is; I worried the whole time I was teaching that I was boring, or that I wasn’t doing the Latest Thing in Teaching and that he was thinking “Umm… this is not how they taught us to do things at the University”. In which case I will fall over crying.

Anyway. Once a week my bff, C, the one who so generously offered up her uterus if ever we could afford surrogacy, comes over and we watch some Dexter and some Glee. And she is here now, which means that I should probably get off the computer and be sociable.

Husband: here, let me scrub your back.
Wife: I could get used to this. We should shower together every single day.
Husband: Sounds good!
Wife: Hah, we couldn’t.
Husband: Why not?
Wife: You don’t like to shower in the morning. You shower at night.
Husband: True, but people can change their ways. Besides, it could have its benefits.
Wife: What do you mean?
Husband: Well, someone here would have the cleanest boobs in the universe, for one thing.