I returned to work today, blessedly not in the pouring rain, although the skies were really gray all day. There were sprinkles, but that was all. It reminded me of the summer I studied in England.
I was impatient to know how Michael did on his first day of fifth grade. He called me, as usual, when he got home from school.
“I LIKE fifth grade!” he said enthusiastically. I laughed.
The teacher had the wisdom to introduce him to the class. He knew several of the students already. One child lives in our neighborhood and Michael has played with him at the pool.
He said in PE, they did a tug of war competition, and the boys in his class beat the boys in the other fifth grade class. However, they were then defeated by the girls. “They got some BIG girls in there, Mom!” he reported.
He has a project due Monday, on one of the Olympic athletes from our state. I found one who is a tennis player, which is great.
Michael assured me the scraped knee he got yesterday was killing him with pain all day. He had certainly acted mortally wounded last night. He was like a little civil war re-enactor, hobbling around, groaning melodramatically. He went to school with a gauze bandage and a loosely wrapped Ace bandage holding it in place. I asked him on the phone how he was going to feel, not getting to go to tennis practice. “Oh I can play tennis, Mom!” he replied, with exasperation. He played the entire hour, and rode his bike back from the pool.
When we got home from Alesia’s therapy appointment, we read 15 pages from his social studies book, on the civil war. Since we watched the miniseries The Blue and the Gray, he was generally familiar with the civil war. I enjoyed reading the social studies book. I read some of it, and Mike read some. I went over the vocabulary with him. It was interesting to me. When I was a kid we were still told to call it “The War Between the States.” When Mother was growing up in the 1930’s it was simply “THE War” – as if the Spanish American War and WWI hadn’t occurred.
We watched another episode in the miniseries John Adams. Excellent acting. I swear, though, Paul Giamatti has the most enormous nostrils I’ve ever seen.
Michael ate a big helping of Granny’s pot roast, covered liberally with
Paces picante sauce, plus mashed potatoes, for dinner. He immediately got a
bellyache. I reminded him that we warned him not to eat so much, but he ate it
anyway. It’s good stuff. Mike and Mother put away a lot of Paces. [They eat medium, not mild, I just couldn't find a photo of it.]
