Day 75

The Fitful Alternations Of The Rain
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere

Today it was pouring rain when we woke up. It is Sean's birthday, and he said he had requested it particularly. I drove him to the bus stop along with Aidan as passenger; Aidan is completely recovered today.

I'm drawing a blank on what happened next. I made bacon and eggs for a late breakfast, and Kevin and I drove to the post office and then to the store to get some supplies for Sean's birthday cake. Aidan came with us.

At home, I told Brendan and Clare about a movie I had watched with Kevin called Bye Bye Birdie. It was very silly. Kevin was appearing and disappearing to tell us about Steve McQueen's final days; he had recently watched The Hunter, McQueen's last movie, with the kids and he was telling them about Steve McQueen's life and how he became a Christian in his last couple of years of life. Apparently even though he was sort of a wild guy (ADD, seems to me) he was warmhearted and gave things to charities like a reformatory without letting the public know. Also, he lived for a while right near where my oldest is going to college so he showed us pictures of that.

Then we got into a discussion of the phenomenon of the 60's and Clare started making up ideas for a musical with Bertie Wooster going to Haight-Ashbury. Somehow from there we started looking at last year's Senior yearbook for TAC and reading quotes.

I took a nap.

Aidan keeps working on his puzzle, and also read some of his words today. He has a growing list of favorite words.

Sean came home with news that the high school, facing budget cuts and declining enrollment, might have to fire the football coach. Ugh. It's weird to be involved with school finances on a bigger scale now -- in former years we only had to worry about how WE could afford resources and so on. It's nice to feel involved with the larger community but a bit wrenching to feel it's out of our control. We're used to managing most important things ourselves..... Kevin freelances work, I homeschool, we do home improvements and car things ourselves or outsource them on a contract basis. The comparison that comes to mind is Aidan's medical condition where we CAN'T write our own prescriptions or perform surgery.

Now the kids are going to watch a Jeeves and Wooster episode. Sean was talking about how the kids in his geometry class discuss global warming and abortion and gun control, which started another discussion. I guess this has been a conversation-oriented day.