Back again

Hello!

First, let me start by saying "Thank you" to everyone who has been so loving and supportive during Dad W's decline and death. I'm very glad I have wonderful friends, even if I've never met many of them IRL.

Second, yes I'm fine. I pretty much dropped off the internet because my computer caught a nasty virus and is defunct. I now have a shiny new computer, but it took a while to get it set up. We're still trying to see if we can recover my files from my old hard drive. We probably can, but nonetheless, if any of you have files of my writing on your computers (particularly the most recent renditions of Ghost Dancer and Riptide), I would be very relieved to have them.

Life is beginning to return to normal. We're still dealing with the estate lawyer and trying to convince Dad's various creditors that they need to deal with her, and not with us. They keep trying to convince us that we want to take responsibility for his debts, which is a big, fat "No!" This is somewhat complicated because when Dad bought his house from us (it's complicated) about eleven years ago, he apparently never bothered to change over the utilities - he and Rob had the same name, after all. But that means that his utilities are genuinely all in our name. Ack!

The boys have one week left of school. Aaron is pretty much done with school work, while Robbie is being inundated with make-up work as his teachers try to pull up his grades to levels to warrant all the advanced classes they recommended him for for next year. Robbie has been very willing to work, but his organizational skills are so abysmal, that he has a lot of zeros for simply failing to turn in work that he did do. He can lose things between packing his backpack at night and his locker the next morning. It's fortunate that he's both engaging and very bright, because his teachers like him, and are willing to work with him to get the grades up and keep him in the advanced classes (boredom only exacerbates the organizational problems, because then he's disorganized and he's not paying attention because he's bored). I wish organization were something I was any good at, but frankly I had exactly the same problems when I was his age, and never have really gotten better organized - I just got better at keeping track of a couple specific kinds of things, like school papers. It's the main reason I've never attempted to home school Robbie or Aaron. They both need significant help learning to organize, and I am not the person who can give it to them. Heck, I'd love to sit in on the sessions Aaron gets as part of Special Ed. I could use them.

Rob is on the grand European tour. Nine cities in fourteen days, all the best chemical plants and conference rooms. It means he'll be away for Robbie's birthday, which he hates, but Robbie seems to be taking it in stride.

And last, but not least - we're down to two dogs! It's absolute heaven. The barking has dropped enormously, and there's almost no peeing in the house any more. I feel safe walking around in my bare feet again. Without the dachshunds harassing him and peeing on things, Toby has calmed down even more, and stopped peeing on top of the things they've marked. It's definite that we're keeping him now. So have a look at our new permanent basset - Toby the very sweet doofus. That's him at the top of the post.