.

I asked Chuck very nicely if he would please remove my eyeballs from their sockets. He smiled and said that you can always tell the size of the favor by the pause that comes after, "Will you do me a favor….?"

Some sort of alien junk has landed on my forehead and is sucking the humanity right out of my brain. Oh the humanity!!!!

I have fared pretty well this year, what with students dropping like flies all around me from one plague or the other.  I hope I can make it to and through school tomorrow since I didn’t get a lesson plan made up for a sub.  I think most of my classes could run themselves.

We had a new tenth grade boy visit today. He went through classes just as though he were enrolled to see if he liked us enough to come. I had him first in Language Arts and somewhere during the class I asked him what his options were now that he was out of public school.  He has been doing on-line homeschool but he said he was work at it all day and well into the night. I think before he left that first class he had a pretty good idea that he would want to enroll. Students in the class were encouraging him to enroll and sharing the benefits of our school. At the end of the day I asked BootyBoy what he thought.  He said that the young man wanted to enroll tomorrow. So that’s pretty cool.

I have not written over the past few days because I was hoping for a turn of events to report on.  We had a very warm day a few days ago and I put Tortilious out on the back patio for some basking. The Babe asked if she could play in the yard and let him run around in the grass. That is something we sometimes do but only very cautiously because there are a few places he could escape under the fence.  I let her.  I came in to work on supper and then sat down for a relaxing game or two or three of Majong. About halfway through my games I had a funny feeling I should go check on the two of them.  But I didn’t do it. When I finally did he was gone.  She thought he had gotten back inside the confines of the back patio. He likes to hide in the leaves that have not yet been  swept up.  She said she saw him go there.  We searched everywhere in the yard after doing a quick check outside the fence.  He is gone.  When I think of him fending for himself out there I tear up. When I make a salad I have to stop myself from setting some aside for him. When I put The Babe to bed there is no curious tortoise stretching his neck to get a better look at us. I do not have a hole in my heart, just a tortoise sized ache.

I have a few posters out and I left a message with the animal control people.

"Mom, we got Tortilious and made all this special stuff for him and loved him for nothing."

"What do you mean for nothing, Babe?"

"After all of that all we have is that we are hurting."

Ah yes, yet another deep discussion ensued.

I don’t want to talk about the tortoise.  I don’t need sympathy. Other people have actual serious issues that trump our little pangs. I doubt anyone could really understand anyway and I don’t want  obligatory sympathy. :lease let my getting it said be enough and comment on our new boy instead. Thanks for understanding that. 

In Sandy soil I plant this seed, If even only I do heed.

In death is life; won’t be denied, grown by tears of sorrow cried.

The truth is harsh, the babes are dead, I’ll hold mine closer in their stead.

It’s all I have and know to do. I don’t admit those lives are through.

I will not waste this plot of land, it will not wither ‘neath my hand.

Come here my Love, look in my eyes,

Do you know how dear you are to me….?