Sunday, October 30, 2005
Yesterday was an excellent day, except for a couple of things.
Alesia woke up with a nasty cold sore on her upper lip, and was self-conscious about it all day, poor baby. We got her some Abreva, at CVS, and it helped some. The pharmacist said it would take a couple of days, but she would probably not look too bad on Monday for school.
The other thing that marred the day was theat her Halloween costume wasn't delivered. I ordered it through Target and paid extra for rush delivery last Tuesday, and it's still not here. I sent a complaining e-mail and got back a reply last night saying they had refunded the shipping costs, and apologized for the delay - they made no guarantees of the costume delivery. Fortunately, we looked at costumes at CVS yesterday, so worst case scenario I can always get her one there at the last minute. I am leaving work early to come home and get ready.
We have 3 pumpkins outside, and a plastic skeleton hanging from a tree. Alesia drew two posters of ghosts yesterday and we are going to hang them on the doors Monday night. One is a ghost directing kids to go to the front door instead of the glass lanai doors, since it can be confusing. I'm going to put candles in the pumpkins - rather a messy thing, since they are old and started to rot, but hopefully they will be OK.
We went to lunch yesterday at a little restaurant called the Blue Ribbon Grill, which is very close to here. I had heard it had good food. The food was excellent. Mom had a reuben, with homemade potato chips. Alesia had a huge hamburger. I had a cup of french onion soup - heavenly - and crab cakes, which were touted as an appetizer but were huge and tasty. Service was fast, music was good, it wasn't crowded. Definitely a place we will go back to.
We spent a lot of time yesterday working on Alesia's paper for social studies, The Influence of Russian American Artists. The thesis is, how have Russian American artists influenced American culture. We focused on George Balanchine, Msistlav Rostropovich, and Ben Benn (artist). I basically wrote it but I made her help, and read it, and so she at least knows the process. She couldn't have done it by herself. She reads on about 5th grade level. She never had to write anything in Russia, and the whole outline/notecards/rough draft thing puzzled her. I hope we get a decent grade, since she missed the deadlines to do all the other things. We have to write one for science, too, and that will be a bigger challenge. Fortunately it's not due until after Christmas. I will make her work on it more.
We had leftovers for dinner last night, which we do about once a week. I had some chili from Friday night. It was an excellent batch, and I don't even like chili very much. Paul had come over to eat with us and work on Mom's computer and he ate two big bowls of it.
Late yesterday afternoon, Mom drove the car. She did fine. Much less pain, and she was less nervous. Hopefully after another week or so of practicing every day, she will be able to start driving herself places again, with confidence. She hates being stuck in the house. She needs to drive herself to therapy, pick up Alesia from school, etc.
Alesia and I watched The Color Purple last night. She liked it. Excellent movie. Hard to believe it was made 20 years ago. We have two more to watch - Little Big Man, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I like to keep things multicultural! Thank God for NetFlix. Today we have another busy day ahead. I just realized we went back an hour in time. Good. More time to do things...
