16 tons of concrete

Hello Gentle Readers. I am here, and all is well.

R's 10th birthday party was a quiet affair, with dinner out and a sleepover with two of her friends. She invited the sweetest, most polite girls in her class, which made my job easy. One of the girls is diabetic, and so we had to stay on top of checking her blood and dosing out the insulin after consulting with her mom every few hours. It was educational, because I now understand carbs and blood sugar in a whole new way, but also educational to see that a 9 year old girl can jab herself in the stomach with a needle and just say a quiet, "Ow" when she's done. It's all about attitude; how we handle hardships, how we get through this life.

We had about 16 tons of concrete poured in our front yard today. That's right: 33,000+ pounds have gone into the making of a courtyard just outside the front door. D. was very worried thinking about it last night, and I don't blame him. That's a lot of material to deal with if something goes wrong. Which it didn't. We'll have a walkway to the front door cured in another week or so instead of the rebar and dobie obstacle course we'd had. (I tried and tried to find a visual for a dobie but I couldn't!) It feels like things are getting done in a timely manner, but that's probably because I'm not the one doing all the hard work & I'm not as aware as D. is of what must still be done.

I'm working on poems to send to the contest, and I think I have 2 or 3 candidates so far, but they'll need more work. I love the process of working on poetry so much.

Tonight is D's night out. I got the girls to bed before 9pm and am still awake a half hour later - unheard of for a Monday night! I'm trying to talk myself into doing a few more things before bed so I can sleep well all night instead of my usual Monday night routine: collapse into bed, set the alarm for 10pm, hit the snooze button for two hours, get up and work for an hour or two, go back to bed. That's just so wrong in so many ways.

The pet rat is keeping me company. We named her Beatrice. I suppose if I'd had a male too I would have named him Dante, but it somehow seems appropriate that Beatrice is here and Dante is somewhere else, distant from her.