February

Well, I'm doing better at posting, right? Like I said before, not much is changing day to day now, so it's harder to find things of interest to discuss.

Stroke News:

As J.J. is communicating more, we're noticing that he is still experiencing some memory issues. This is not unusual from what I've been told, and normally persists for 12-24 months post-stroke. But it is annoying, when J.J. swears up and down that he's told me something that I KNOW I would remember (most recently, that he had to pay an exorbitant amount of money to repair his car). I've been talking with another stroke wife on Stroke Network who has recommended that J.J. ask his neurologist about a drug that her husband is on to help with this issue. He has an appointment a week from Thursday.

We've also heard back from the new speech therapist, and J.J. will be starting therapy a week from Tuesday.

Family News:

Eli's school science fair was today. Eli's experiment involving determining the most effective storage method for fresh strawberries, and has resulted in me pulling a moldy box of strawberries out of the refrigerator on more than one occasion recently (they got to make their departure in this morning's trash pickup, thank goodness!). He received a second place medal for his work.

Additionally, Eli will be starting gymnastics on Thursday. He's so excited. Last night when he signed up he came home wearing a shirt with the name of the gym on it, and he slept in it last night. I hope he has a good experience with it.

Leah's swimming lessons started this week. At 5 years old, the biggest criticism her teacher could give me was that her backstroke needs work. Seriously. I'm 31, and I never got the hang of that one either, so I'm not too worried! Anyway, she loves her lessons and I love the fact that she's getting great exercise from them.

Other News:

I found a distance-education program for Speech-Language Pathology that will get me through in three years, as opposed to five with the original program I was considering. But they only start students once a year, in the summer. I really don't see how I'm going to be ready to commit to a program in the middle of everything else that's going on, so I've made the decision to spend this year straightening the rest of my life out. I'll hopefully start the program next summer. In the meantime, I'll continue working on prereqs, so I'll have plenty to keep me busy. I'm taking an Ethics class and Intro to Microcomputers right now (since my class in this subject was in 1997, and since my coursework will all be online, this one is a requirement) and they are both interesting.

That's all I've got tonight, folks. See you next week!