Ho boy!
2004-11-08, 7:43 p.m.

Sooooo, where do I start? Ok, first of all, remember that GWAR kid? He�s now going to be in our 4th block class. Ugh.

At 9:15 I get a message that someone from my daughter�s school needs me to call about a slight injury. A slight injury? What the hell? I just dropped her off at 8:00. What could have happened? Well, it turns out on the bus to the GATE school she got hit in the face with a backpack. (One day a week she�s bussed to another school for additional classes because, unlike her parents, the girl is brilliant. :) ) Well, I don�t know about you, but getting whacked in the face, no matter how gently, is never a SLIGHT injury. So I call and find out that it hit her below the eye, and there are two small marks where it hit, and a little swelling. So I give her a little pep talk and tell her that we just might have to go to Dairy Queen after school for some Blizzards. That pacifies her. Until 10:15. That�s when I get another call. I talk to Amanda again. �Mom,� she says, �I just don�t think I can make it. My eye really hurts.� I have to throw in dinner at McDonald�s to get her back to class this time. I picked her up this afternoon expecting a black eye or something, but any marks she might have are hidden under a band-aid, if that gives you any idea of the seriousness.

Alright, moving on. One of my absolute favorites kids at school got busted with pot. Possession, with intent to distribute. The ironic thing is, just this very morning the teacher I work with and I were saying how we�re on the verge of losing him. And then, bam. This sucks. He�ll go to an expulsion hearing in December. I don�t think we�ll see him again. If he�s expelled, he won�t be allowed to return to school for one year. He turns 18 in August. I don't see him coming back. I just talked to this kid not three weeks ago about dealing, too. He told me he used to deal but he got away from it. I told him he reminded me a lot of a good friend I had when I was 21. My good friend used to deal, also. He only intended to do it long enough to get his mom out of the neighborhood she was in. Well, he got her out, but the money was too good to stop. His drug selling career ended the night they found him in a ditch with two bullets to the back of the head. I told this kid at school that as much as I cared for my friend, it would hurt me a hell of a lot more to see him in that situation. He assured me he was done with it. Ahh, whaddaya do? You concentrate on the one that maybe you CAN save, I guess. Did I mention this sucks?

So, onto other things. My husband told me Saturday night that he�s finally come to the conclusion that our marriage is over. (Ya think?) He then said he feels very lonely. I think (but don�t say) that I felt very lonely when I realized the same thing. Of course, this was several years ago, but hey. Men are a little slower, doncha think? So we�re going to start fixing up what we can around here to get a better price on the townhouse. If all goes according to the plan (which it never does), we�ll each have our own place in January. I emailed the apartment community I�m interested in, so hopefully I�ll have some info tomorrow. I�m actually very scared and extremely excited all at the same time. It�s a weird feeling. The funny thing is, now that it's actually all out in the open, the tension in the house has eased tremendously.

Oh, and one last thing, I�ve changed the date of my oyster party to next Monday. I put invitations in mailboxes at school today. I�ve already had FOUR people saying they�ll be there. So HAH! I�m not the only sucker in town!

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