Wednesday

I took an annual leave today at work. Why, you may ask? I'm honestly not sure. I woke up this morning and felt the need to not go into work. Ok, that happens most days :), but today was different. I had some errands to run, so that was my excuse, but as the day went on, I began to feel it was much more than that. I know we all take "mental health" days at times. This is probably what I would call it. Although I'm still not sure this was exactly the reason. So, I blew an annual day just because. And, it felt very, very good. I am so lucky to have a job that allows me to do this every once in awhile. The ironic thing is, though, that I still worked today. I wrote about 3 pages on a grant I have due, talked to someone from work & even did some emails so I could get a meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Honestly, though, I am very good with still taking an annual day for this. Because, this allowed me to set my own schedule. Even though I know that I will now have to work on Saturday to catch up from being out of the office today, I am completely at peace with it. Today was very nice - period.

I spoke to Sylvan Learning Center about Caleb. After doing some research on other options for tutors (local colleges, the high school, even considered calling a former coworker who used to teach math), I decided to go this route for a couple of reasons. First, I can have Caleb's skills tested. I'm looking for something a bit more than just homework help. I'm doing fine with helping him each night get through is assignments. Yes, it takes me a bit of time to get back up to speed on what he is learning, but between the two of us, we are figuring it out. By having them test his skills, I believe I will come out of this with a better understanding of where the breakdown in learning is occurring. Caleb is failing his quizzes & tests, so something more than him just not getting the concepts is happening. Second, I decided I was more comfortable in working with a company that specializes in this. That tutor will be my employee either way, but this will give me some assurance that the person working with him is qualified and will do the job that he/she is getting paid for. I am worried that hiring a young person will allow for too many opportunities for them to get distracted - not sure I want to pay someone to talk about music with my son :). So, I have the testing set up for Monday night & then we will meet with them later in the week to set up a plan of attack. yep, it is going to cost a lot of money & nope, I really don't have the funds for it. However, I just decided that this is much more important than the money involved, so I'm willing to take on these extra headaches.

I want to take a second to thank everyone for the nice feedback I have had on this blog. I appreciate everyone reading, although I surely do not expect any of you to spend hours catching up on my ramblings. For those of you who know me, you are well aware that I do not talk in bullet points, so the length of my posts can get out of hand. However, I decided to keep writing free form like this as it feels best to me. Anyway, just wanted to tell you thanks & to give you permission to not check back daily :).

Positives for today:
1. obviously, my comfortable day out of the office
2. the nicest boss ever for her granting me the day off, but even more for her kind words throughout the day on issues that have happened at work
3. The federal government for giving me back some of my taxes so I could pay for my son's extra school help. Talk about stimulus :)!

Healthy Living Update Did another 20 minutes on the gazelle. Eating was ok today, but not the best. Still thinking about joining weight watchers, but I need to wait a bit to see how the tutor expenses are before I make that decision. That may need to wait until the summer.