I'm sitting here with a box of tissues at my elbows, sucking on a Riccola lozenge. Yes, April is the cruellest month. It's the month when I teach twenty classes a week, which is about ten too many, but makes up for other times in the year when no money at all is coming in. It's the month when the weather is a muggy ninety degrees last Sunday, and then a crisp 55 yesterday. It's the month when our house looks like a tornado hit it, because I have piles of file folders everywhere--and there's often a frantic scramble for the perfect one I need before I go off to teach more classes.

Today, in second grade, a learning-disabled boy who can't write at all, and spent most of the period sitting with his hooded oversized sweatshirt pulled over his head so that he looked like a brown tree stump with the word "GAP" written across him, suddenly announced that he wanted to share like the other kids. He got up in front of the class and said, "I want to be your friend until pigs fly/until the clouds turn into mashmallows/until the end of time." Then he sat down. The other kids applauded.

I have to note here that C had to drag me out of bed this morning, by my ankles--parents reading this blog may be reminded of similar scenes with teenagers. He then made me coffee and breakfast--a couple of turkey meatballs and some soycatash. I got to work ten minutes early despite having to fight the urge to take little mini-naps at the red lights. My schedule is not more challenging than most people, but my body doesn't do well with all this running around.

Bad news from the vet today--Dede seems to havre arthritis. She's been limping more and more, licking her shoulder, and yowling piteously. She's in some pain--how much, we can't know.

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p.s.: Later, after teaching my Writing Salon class tonight, (great class! I'm excited! And exhausted.) I sped home over the bridge to find C knee-deep in cleaning supplies, mopping and vacuuming. Turns out Dede has fleas. As soon as he told me, I bagan to feel itchy. Anyway, this could explain the licking and biting at herself, and the piteous yowling. He went and got $100.00 worth of flea medicine at the vet, and has been fumigating our bed and the whole house. Life in the shtetl...