Rachel's Blog

There's a lot to say, but most of it will remain unsaid for now. I haven't been feeling well. I am not doing well in school. But my heart is happy. My freezer is full of convenience food and I am taking a good multi-vitamin and that is making a big difference. The last few weeks I have been too tired to do more than glance at schoolwork and making healthy meals was not going to happen. I think I had an iron shortage - it has happened to me before. I am only writing right now because I want to remember, even if its nothing more fancy than "for two weeks I was really tired." It will be enough.

The other reason I am writing is to remember the phenomenal find from the thrift store today. I found something I have been looking for for years - The Spiderman Cartoon Maker CD-rom. It is very hard to find. Apparently it was only ever bundled with that one Packard Bell computer in '95. It's a very simple drawing program where kids drag icons across the screen to create animated Spiderman Cartoons. They can animate characters, change backgrounds, add props, and add music. It's a very, very simple format and I knew it would be perfect for imaginative Elijah. I nearly danced when I saw it at the thrift store today for $1.99. It took some rigging to get it to run on my computer, but I got it going and now Boo is really enjoying it. It's hard to explain how happy that makes me. It is a geek's dream come true - to see your kiddoes playing the same 'puter games you played. I also offered to buy him a chapter book about Mario and Luigi as long as he promised to read it (a similar promise my dad always made me take when buying me a book). He promised he would read one page a day - today he read the first chapter. That also fills me with excitement. The first chapter book - the first first book with more words than pictures - is a huge milestone for a true lover of books.

Like I said, there's a lot more going on, but it will have to wait.