7-7-07

Well it has been a busy few weeks and I have not been very conscientious about keeping up my journal. I have a lot to share. First of all I finally completed the class I had been working on like a mad woman throughout the months of May and June. It was a class on teaching reading that I found online through the Annenberg Media Site http://www.learner.org/index.html. A colleague and I collaborated on all aspects of the class. I don't know why I waited so long to get started but once I began working on the assignments and research it seemed to take over my life. We sent all of our work in at the end of June. The package that we had to ship to Cambridge weighed 28 pounds. We had to ship it in a copy paper box. I think the guys at the post office thought we were crazy as we had a mini celebration right there in the post office. We were both so relieved to be done and have our lives back.

My second big piece of news is that Grammy and J have moved to an assisted living in New Hampshire. They are now close to Grammy's only living son, D. They have been there for over a month. The first month being a 'vacation'. They love the lifestyle. Grammy is so relaxed and happy not to have to cook and clean and worry about her meds! Unfortunately they have only seen D once since they've been up there but I think she probably knew that would be the case. Unfortunately J's family isn't so supportive of this move as we will have to sell the house in Chatham. I have mixed feelings about selling the house myself however I know that this is not about me it is about Grammy and J's happiness. It will be more challenging to visit them as they are about 2.5 hours away from us now but we will make the effort and try to venture north at least once a month. We'll see how that works out.

We've been working around the house these last few days. Painting windows-trying to save them so that we don't have to sink money into new windows. We found one window on the east side of the house to be damaged by water. I guess the lack of paint and the fact that that side of the house faces the ocean led to the damage. We have three other window in similar condition. We are hoping to replace them with vinyl on the outside and wood on the inside windows. The windows we saw at Lowe's last week ranged in price from 350 to 500. I'm hoping we can find something a little less pricey with the same features. I'll keep you posted.

I'm hoping that over the next few weeks I'll be able to fit in some time to play with my art supplies. My room still isn't finished and honestly with the nice weather I don't want to be in the basement. Maybe I'll do some work outside.

Peace!