TERFs suck

One of my colleagues is a TERF and she’s been writing anti-trans op-eds for a religious journal and the school has been promoting them on our webpage.

The students complained. I complained.

We were told that the school would continue to promote her hateful op-eds and they had reviewed them and decided they weren’t dangerous, despite comparing trans people to sharks and repeating every rumor and lie JK Rowling has ever told.

I don’t know what to do. So I donate another $25 to get books about trans kids and teens into the hands of kids in red and purple states.

I want to leave this place so badly.

Related post from delagar

The onion part 1 (not really funny at all, in the way that their mass shooting headline isn’t)

The onion part 2 (funny)

Them

DH’s mom has uterine cancer

This is her second bout with cancer.  She had breast cancer 20-30 years ago which left her with lymph problems.

Uterine cancer has a good 5 year survival rate (81% overall, 95% if it hasn’t spread).

She has an appointment for the end of the December to discuss a hysterectomy and that’s all we know.

A lot of weirdnesses about holiday planning this year make a lot of sense now.  Turns out DH’s worries that something was wrong with his parents’ health were right.

I am cautiously optimistic, after having read up on uterine cancer.  I don’t think I can have the capacity to believe something will go wrong at this point and won’t until there’s more information.  My brain does its future planning thing where it’s like, who will fill all these functions she fills, but then it completely shuts off and refuses to go there and moves to how can we provide support during medical treatment and during our trip which is a much healthier and more useful line of mental planning.  (We’re bringing more masks and more covid tests for one– if any of the 8 kids is sniffling this year we’ll have tests and appropriately-sized masks for all.  We also plan to be on little kid duty.).  The nurse-themed hand sanitizer lanyard and mini hand sanitizers I picked up for her (I wanted to meet a free shipping price from bath and bodyworks) seem an even more appropriate gift now.  We’re also going to provide a sampler of masks that DH likes for his dad who has been even better about mask wearing than DH’s mom has.  Covid doesn’t seem to be super prevalent where they live, but RSV and flu are filling up the hospitals there too.

DH, naturally, is very worried.

RBOC

• Another unexpected death this year… Werner Troesken passed away last September and I just found out. I feel like I was just talking to him about being interviewed by reporters about Flint.  (He’s an economic historian with an amazing book on the effects of lead solder in water pipes.  Other fantastic books about segregation etc. as well.)  People are dying too young.  I had never met Devah Pager or Alan Krueger (though I have read so many articles by both and had seen Krueger give talks), but Werner I knew and liked as a person.
• It’s a little weird seeing old “faces” on the internet and remembering when everyone was saying, “NOooooo do not do that stupid thing with your money”… and then they did anyway, and now the thing that everyone said could happen did happen and the person is in bad shape because of it.  I think it’s more sad than schadenfreude, but also, do not do stupid things with your money.  And don’t be a jerk when you ask people for their advice and don’t like what they say.
• DC2 fractured hir wrist in two places falling off the monkey bars.  :(
• One of the things I hate about being a woman is how journal editors and occasionally referees will use any even marginally related previously done paper as evidence that the paper I’ve submitted is not novel.  Even if all it does is use a related novel technique looking at a completely different question.  Or uses the same dataset for a completely different literature.  When I’m refereeing guys papers that never ever gets said by the other referees (or me).  It’s like the initial assumption is let’s find any reason to reject, even a flimsy one.  It’s such a hard bar to pass.  Women’s papers have to be more than perfect.  I see this in refereeing all the time and it’s so unfair.  I hate it when it happens to me.  And big name guys can submit stuff that does the most minimal of lit reviews and provide no spec checks and somehow their stuff gets sent out and negative referee reports often get overruled.  It is just unfair.  And I’m not good enough to get over that hurdle.  I can’t get the line just right.  I put so many checks in footnotes.  And it takes me forever to do all the checks I need to put in in order to get the paper not rejected by an editor and to get the writing so it is concise but also contains enough material while also not having so much people overlook things (I have not managed this balance yet for all reviewers), and by the time I’ve done that, someone else has published something marginally related, and that’s enough of a reason not to accept what I’ve done.  So why did I bother in the first place?  And when the paper is finally accepted, there’s enough cut out to publish a second paper in another journal.  Though it has to be a lower quality journal because, of course, I already used that dataset or looked at a different subset or whatever.  FML.
• our local library’s opening has been delayed until September.  Apparently the city counsel delayed ordering furniture and are now at the end of the furniture buying queue behind all the school districts.

Little Kitty

I fell for her beautiful blue eyes on the no-kill shelter page.  We were going to finally move into an apartment that allowed pets and I started cat shopping early.  She was still there the day we got the apartment.  We went to the shelter before we even moved our furniture because I was so anxious to get you.

When we got there, you were in one of the rooms with the big adult cats.  You were so tiny and yellow.  You wouldn’t eat or groom yourself because you were so scared of all the other animals.  While we were there a volunteer got her to eat some soft food by giving her her own dish away from everyone else.  She was really still a kitten– not even a year old.  But she’d had three little boys (adopted out) already.  That meant she’d never get very big.  And she was a great mamacat taking good care of them.  She’d been found in a box near a dumpster.  (She liked boxes.  The smaller the better. We called her box kitty sometimes.)

We took her home with the friendly Big Kitty we also picked out that day.  She hid for a while in a built-in cupboard.  At lunch I gave her some chicken and she became my best friend in the entire world.  By morning she’d cleaned herself up and her previously yellowed fur was bright white and she was so energetic.

She didn’t really know how to cat.  She learned a lot from Big Kitty, even though Big Kitty never particularly wanted to be friends.  (They had a nose touching en passant relationship, but no more.)  In the night we would hear these terrifying screeching sounds– it was usually silent Little Kitty practicing meowing.  She also liked to play ball in the night.  She escaped from the apartment once and led us on a not at all merry chase around the neighborhood.  She was very good at jumping fences.  Enormous height for such a little kitty.  We eventually got her on a halter.

She didn’t really like to be carried (though she allowed me to carry her so long as she’d get a treat right after), and she wasn’t crazy about people coming up to pet her.  One doesn’t pet the Little Kitty, the Little Kitty pets you.  Headbonks were her favorite, and we would have a nighttime routine in which she would visit us before we fell asleep for headbonks and pettings.  When it got really cold she might consent to be a lap kitty or to curl up on the same bed or couch as another cat (not touching).

Back when we had big computer monitors, her favorite spot was on top of mine.  When we moved to flat screen, she had to move in front, which she didn’t like as much.

She was the sweetest and most trusting of kitties.  Once she got into our chimney and was so trusting as we gave her a bath.  She’d look up to us as if to say she didn’t understand what was going on, but she trusted us to make it better (and to provide treats after any indignity).

She moved with us to our new job and loved the patio.  She loved our backyard (we still had to keep her on a halter because she was so good at jumping even the tallest of fences).

When we had a surplus of backyard cats she mostly stayed aloof and out of the fray.  She seemed to miss Big Kitty when Big Kitty passed and never really got into a nose sniffing relationship with Nice Kitty, the remaining backyard cat.

As she got older she got indigestion and then more recently ear infections that would go away and then come right back after treatment ended.  Then one morning she couldn’t walk straight and the vet found a tumor in her ear canal.  We drove to the closest vet school and determined it was inoperable and would not be a candidate for chemotherapy.  Radiation could be done, but there was no evidence that radiation without surgery worked at all in cats, and at most it would slow the tumor’s growth, not stop it or shrink it and she would have to go to the vet regularly which she hated.  So we prepared for hospice.

Cancer is not a pretty way to go.  But little kitty was so resilient as every new disability affected her.  She learned how to walk straight and deliberately with each new hit to her sense of balance.  She submitted calmly to baths and ear cleaning with minimal complaint.  She chomped down her medicine in pill pockets until she couldn’t chew and swallow anymore and then sort-of allowed us to dose her with the fruit-flavored and heavily sugared liquid versions of the pain killers and steroids that she hated.  We’d think it would be time and then she would figure out that she could get water from the faucet, or she’d figure out a new way to get treats to her throat and that would buy another week or so.  She would curl up on the patio or knead DH’s chest and purr, despite it all.  But each time she got better it wouldn’t be as good as it was before and each worse was a new low.  And finally, as the vet predicted, she couldn’t eat anymore, not even baby food, and we couldn’t let her starve to death or force her to submit to a feeding tube and she suddenly stopped getting joy out of her favorite things and we had to let her go.  Which is heartbreaking.

Death is hard, whether it is sudden and unexpected or following a slow deterioration.

Little kitty has brought so much joy.  Fifteen years was just not long enough for our sweet little girl.

Little kitty in better days

 

 

Sad update on Little Kitty, and no kitchen renovation this summer

Little kitty has had repeat ear infections for a few months now.  After the last round of treatment, she suddenly started losing her balance when walking.  We left her at the vet and the vet found a tumor in her ear canal.  A biopsy showed (a week later) that it was malignant.  The surgical specialist we were referred to did a bunch more tests (~$1.6K worth) including a CT-scan and determined that the tumor was very large and in a bad position in her ear (the bottom of the ear canal L) and had caused additional bone growth.  That means it was inoperable.  The tumor itself was slow-growing but had started to affect the nerves on her left side.  We were given the choice between radiation treatments which could not shrink the tumor or stop it, but just slow the growth.  She would still have all her dizziness.  And there’s no research with numbers telling us how much time the radiation would buy us or how effective it is without surgery (there’s a lot of research on radiation in conjunction with surgery, but not radiation by itself).  The other choice was hospice at home.  And they would give us good drugs to ease her pain.  With Little Kitty being 15 years old and having difficulty walking, we opted for hospice.

They did quote some prices for the radiation therapy, but I forget what they were (we’d pretty much decided before the vet brought up prices and were grieving pretty hard when she mentioned them).  I think maybe a couple thousand for the 5x treatment and ~6K for the 20x treatment, but don’t quote me.  But even if it were free we would have made the same choice.  If the radiation could have shrunk the tumor and brought her straight walking back, we would have paid it.  But we wouldn’t have paid an infinite amount– DH and I discussed earlier what our limits were… more than 30K we wouldn’t pay, under 10K we definitely would and would only consider what was best for Little Kitty.  In between 10 and 30 we’d have to think about it.  I feel guilty about this– if it were my children I would mortgage the house and go into debt if we needed to (heaven forbid), but our beloved 15 year old Little Kitty… no.  She is more important than a kitchen renovation (or a new car), but there are limits.

In any case, I don’t want kitchen repair people around the house with Little Kitty doing hospice.  She deserves peace and quiet and treats and chicken and time curled up on the sunny patio.  And headbonks and love.  New counters can wait.  Not all decisions are determined by money.

We love her so much.

January Mortgage Update and what to do when your landlord dies…

Last month (December):
Balance:$16,793.45
Years left: 1.25
P =$1,143.40, I =$71.00, Escrow =$809.48

This month (January):
Balance:$15,645.52
Years left: 1.166667
P =$1,147.93, I =$66.47, Escrow =$809.48

One month’s prepayment savings: $0

Bet that headline caught your attention.

It’s a bit surreal and really sad– zie was only middle-aged (and on the young side of middle age!) and the death was sudden and unexpected. I never met the landlord, but both DH and our friend out here had. It didn’t really hit me that the landlord was a real person until I remembered that zie had a 13 year old child. Somehow knowing that a person was loved and will be missed makes death that much more real.

Nobody actually bothered to tell us (either us or the other half of the duplex) about the death. We found out when we asked our neighbors if their rent check had been cashed for the month because ours hadn’t. We also hadn’t gotten responses about a couple of repairs we’d requested. Our neighbors had direct deposit set up so they hadn’t had a problem, but they googled the landlord and found the obituary and memorial service and told us. Then emailed the landlord’s partner with condolences.

Fortunately, Paradise is in a state that protects tenants more than landlords, which means that once the mess of who actually owns the building is figured out (not a lot of middle-aged people are thinking about wills, and this landlord wasn’t the most organized person), they can’t kick us out to sell the place until our lease is up. *Whew.*

According to the internet, we are to write our checks to, “The Estate of XX” instead of to XX until we get official notification otherwise. We should keep copies of the checks we send (because if they don’t get the checks then the new owner can kick us out before the lease is up). But not much else should change for the remainder of our stay.

As for repairs — DH fixed the toilet himself. I don’t know what we’re going to do about the garage door that only opens from the front when it’s warm. (Our kludge is going in the back door and opening it from the inside.) Our neighbors said the landlord was really bad about repairs anyway, but was also really bad at increasing the rent, so they just bought a new dishwasher to replace the one that broke and didn’t mention a thing to the landlord. Hopefully that won’t happen with us because I am not interested in purchasing appliances, even if we can handle toilet innards.

And if you’re ever in the situation in which your landlord dies– check your state laws.  In some states, the new owners can break your lease and kick you out without recompense as soon as ownership changes hands.  Some states will protect you so long as you’re under contract.  Some municipalities may even provide more protection if the new owners aren’t planning on selling or moving in themselves.

Also, even if you’re young, if you have people depending on you, make sure that you have a will.  Sudden and unexpected deaths do happen.

Our justice system is f*ed up for victims of sexual violence (triggers)

Just did another stint with jury duty.  Third time being called since September.  This time it was for ongoing sexual abuse of a child.

I didn’t get selected.  Because I said I was biased because forget getting to the indictment stage, just coming forward about sexual abuse is so rare that even getting to the kid actually telling someone means it’s pretty likely that it actually happened.  The defense stopped asking me questions at that point, just skipped over me.

I hate the jury selection procedures.  The prosecution and the defense throw out enough “hypotheticals” that by the end of it you know not only what the (alleged) crime is, but you know how the two sides are going to proceed.

In this case, the prosecution was going to allege that this dude repeatedly assaulted a young girl in his family, and that she didn’t come forward right away because she was scared to tell anyone.

The defense is going to paint said child as a malicious liar who is being manipulated by an older sibling into making a false accusation.

This is just so @#$@#ed up.  No wonder nobody ever comes forward when being abused.  No wonder nobody is willing to go through the trial.  No wonder false accusations are such a small statistically unlikely occurrence.

And of course the other prospective jurors just ate it up, especially the former teachers.  Kids lie all the time.  They’re malicious awful creatures.

Hell, the defense attorney wasn’t any better.  When asking us a hypothetical about the punishment, he made a comment about girls who were 13 going on 30, and if a 13 year old who looked like an adult was dating and having sex with a 17 year old for a six month period, then surely that would be not that big a deal (the defendant was obviously a middle-aged man).  WTF?  A 13 year old is still a child even if she has breasts.  Especially if she has breasts.   Seventeen year olds should be damn careful that they’re not having sex with middle-schoolers.  And if they are, that is in no way the 13 year old’s fault.

I don’t know what would be a better system.  I’d like to imagine that having these cases be decided judicially would be better for the victims, but judges are probably no better than normal people for being influenced by the patriarchy.  Just look at the supreme court.

In memorium

We got two amazing cats when we finally moved into an apartment that allowed them.  Little Kitty and Big Kitty.  We’d initially gone to get Little Kitty and decided she needed a companion.  Big Kitty was in her room at the shelter.  A big soft short-hair calico, mostly white with small black and ginger patches.  When we came in the room, she was sociable, gave us some love and pettings and then after a while went back to her little house area.  After checking out the other cats, we decided she was just right… loving and sociable but not too clingy.

Her sheet said she’d come from a house with too many cats and that she loved dogs and children.

The women at the animal shelter said she had a heart condition and they didn’t expect her to be adopted.  They hadn’t even listed her.  We’ll take her anyway, we said.

We gave her heart medication each day.  DH picked up her prescription refill today.

She was a beautifully behaved cat.  She didn’t go on counters (except when she thought we weren’t looking and then would jump down if seen), and never understood why we let Little Kitty jump on them.  She mainly just tolerated Little Kitty, but she also taught semi-feral Little Kitty how to do important cat things, like how to meow.

Big Kitty always wanted to be alpha cat, even though Little Kitty doesn’t understand social hierarchies.  Sometimes Little Kitty would accidentally become alpha, which was always funny because Little Kitty was about half the size of Big Kitty and really had no idea what was going on with the dominance games.

Big Kitty liked hard catfood a lot, and deferred to Little Kitty over who got first dibs on the soft food because that’s the one thing Little Kitty would defend, and it’s easier to keep your alpha status if you don’t have to fight for it.

Big Kitty’s short hair turned out to have a longer undercoat in the winter.  She was the softest kitty imaginable.  We had to make sure she had special catfood because she’d throw up most kinds of high quality food, but Little Kitty needed something high quality to keep her fur from getting dry.  We won’t have to buy Purina One Sensitive Systems anymore.  We also had to ration her food because otherwise she’d throw it up (and she’d get overweight).  After many experiments with water pistols and so on to try to keep her from waking us up wailing for food, we set up a catfood timer.  We’ll have to reset that for one cat, or just get rid of it since Little Kitty never overate anyway.  Or maybe Garage Cat will start sharing with Little Kitty now that Big Kitty is no longer keeping him in the guest bedroom.  I suppose we could move his stuff now.  These words seem so cold but my heart is breaking so hard every time I think about how things are going to change.

DH was her favorite.  Occasionally she’d try to take my side of the bed so she could be with him.  But she’d give it up grudgingly.

She was super cuddly with me when I got pregnant both times.  After DC1 was born and before we started cosleeping, we’d close the door because Big Kitty loved the Pack N Play and you don’t want to accidentally smother a baby.  Big Kitty would wail outside the door to be let in.  It was so much easier to sleep when we gave that up.

As advertised, she was great with children.  Wonderful with both babies.  She started swiping a bit at tail pulls and so on when DC1 got old enough to know better, but with DC2 she didn’t even mind those, especially since we’d give her hairball treats after each new indignity.

She was great at finding missing kittens when we misplaced them.  She’d guard and hiss, but was never actually mean to the four stray cats.  She used every one of the extra litter boxes.

She had her favorite spots in the house.  DC1’s bed, both on top and under.  The corner of my closet.  The armrest on the overstuffed chair.  She won’t be there anymore, even if traces of her soft white fur still remain.

At 4 something pm when DH was home, she started panting and meowing and her back legs didn’t work.  While I got the kids, DH called the vet and then another bigger vet and got her in the carrying case and took her to the hospital.  She’d had a stroke and was in a lot of pain.  A heparin shot would loosen that and she might survive, but given her heart condition, it was unlikely she would make it after her blood started flowing again and even if she did, she’d continue to have strokes.  DH had to make a decision and he couldn’t contact me because my phone was dead, so he called his mom.  Big Kitty was in pain and didn’t know what was going on and he petted her and said goodbye.  When I finally got home and called him I couldn’t understand what he was saying because he was crying so hard.

The vet has said many times that Big Kitty has lasted longer than any other cat she’s seen with this heart condition.  She wasn’t an old kitty, but she was middle aged.  Still spry, but not quite as much as she used to be.  Without the heart condition, she probably would have had many more years, but with the heart condition, we’re lucky we’ve had her this long.  They asked DH to donate her body to the state vet school because of it and DH decided to do that.  They’ll send us a cast of her paw in return.

It’s so hard to believe she won’t be around anymore.  She’s gone suddenly with only an hour or so of pain; she didn’t waste away.   If we didn’t have to change anything I could just pretend that she’s in a different hiding spot than where I’m looking.  I wouldn’t have to know that she’s gone.  She’s lived a good life and was a wonderful kitty.  We will miss her so much.

Good-bye, Big Kitty.  We will always love you.

Big Kitty’s last photo

Pregnancy after a loss

I’m afraid to schedule this post.  I’ll update it if I miscarry before Tuesday… it won’t have to be changed much.

As of now I am in the very early stages of a pregnancy.

The first time I got pregnant it was after more than a year and a half of fertility treatment.  I had a monitored clomid cycle (my eggs popped out later than normal) and an IUI.  I got a negative 14 days after ovulation, but a positive a bit after that.  Rising betas, and suddenly I miscarried at 7 weeks.  I’d eaten white bread at a conference the night before.  My reproductive endocrinologist (RE) only believed in Metformin at 500ml, even though the literature has found 1500ml to be effective in getting the early miscarriage rate of women with PCOS to match that of normal women.  Maybe it was just a chromosome abnormality.  I take comfort in the fact that I will never know, but only because I have proof now that I can bring a baby to term; at the time I did not.

Miscarriage is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.  Loss of a wanted pregnancy is a horrible wrenching pain.  I lost a child.

I bled and stopped, I bled again and stopped again.  My betas went down like they were supposed to.  I upped my metformin to 1500 just in case, behind the doctor’s back.  I had a horrific time on a trip when I needed my last beta checked out of town… I had a breakdown because even though we’d set everything up in advance, and were supposed to get the ok with everything someone messed up somewhere and we spent 20 or 30 min trying to deal with the insurance lady when finally we realized if we just gave them $80 in cash they would stop asking me questions.  So we did.  I almost divorced my perfect husband that day.

The RE office wanted us to take a month off from trying (use protection!), then a provera challenge, and then another clomid cycle.  We weren’t sure if we wanted to keep trying.  But since I didn’t cycle by myself I figured I might as well start the provera challenge and then decide given some time.  So I took one of my remaining 40-odd mail order pregnancy tests because you’re supposed to check just in case before taking provera.  There may have been an evaporation line but it was hard to tell so I delayed provera… I wasn’t in a hurry to make the decision so any excuse to delay was fine with me.  The next day it looked less like an evaporation line and more like a faint line.  By that Monday the line was a real line and I called the RE office.  Despite having told us not to try, our tech was excited for me.

I wasn’t ready.  I was in shock.  I didn’t believe it.  I had just bought $600 of professional work clothing literally two days before.  I still hadn’t gone through the stages of grief with my first baby.  I had anger, guilt, and most of all, fear.  I did not want to lose this one.

I took pregnancy test (HPT) after pregnancy test until they drove me crazy with their increases and decreases in darkness.  Turns out my second morning urine is actually the best… has something to do with acidity in some women’s urine.  The ovulation prediction kits (OPK) were much more comforting since they only got darker.  Eventually DH suggested I get rid of the lot so I would stop freaking out so much and I sent them to a friend who was also trying to conceive (along with DH’s leftover Fertility Blend for Men).

I went in and got the blood tests… at 7 weeks I saw the heartbeat… and our child was eventually born.  It was a few months after ze was born before I believed ze wouldn’t just suddenly die.

There was a weird sort of cognitive dissonance for me.  Initially, I was so very afraid of loss, I was afraid to bond with the baby.  But the winning emotion was the thought that each week was another week longer that I got to spend with my precious baby.

Pregnancy after a loss can be frightening.  I didn’t buy any baby items until two and a half weeks before my due date, and even then sent out my mom and husband with a credit card.  We never did get around to buying a crib– we got a pack in play and were going to get a crib when ze hit 3 months but ended up cosleeping instead.

It’s hard to enjoy pregnancy when you think it might be taken from you.  Terrible side effects are a huge comfort because they indicate that the baby is probably still there.  Whenever ze would get still in the calmer second trimester, I would have to drink some orange juice just to make sure ze will still alive and could kick.

I’m worried now.  I’ll be less worried when I see a heartbeat (or maybe just hear it… I’m not sure how the u/s technology is in our small town), and less worried when the baby is born, and probably less worried still when ze is mobile.  And in kindergarten.  And I’m scared… not of the life changes or the increased expenses or time for our oldest… those worries are too far down the line to even dream of.  Almost every moment of the day is spent wondering and wishing and hoping and praying.  I’m afraid to plan too much ahead, afraid to complain, afraid to take anything for granted.  This time around I don’t have a box of OPK or HPT… just the occasional overpriced plastic thing from the drugstore.  (Hint:  ept sucks, go with first response instead.  Pink dye is easier to read than blue.)  Will I have another baby?  I still don’t know.  I hope so.

Here is a list of things not to say to someone who has had a miscarriage.  #2 *always* said the right thing.

Schooling Update Sorrow

So… remember how super happy and grateful we were about our schooling this year?  How DC was flourishing, how they’re letting hir work at about hir level through early entrance, single-subject acceleration, and differentiated activities?  How socially it was all awesome.  How DC is sleeping more and learning that it’s ok to make mistakes and to try new things even if there’s a chance of messing up?

This morning we got an email saying that the school only has enough money for another month.  They need 300K in donations to reimburse all of us who pre-paid tuition and 500K to last until May.  In order to survive another 3-5 years while they get back enrollment from the mass exodus they suffered when the first headmaster died and was replaced by a lady with a completely different vision of the school 3 years ago (and they have been rebuilding), they need a multi-million dollar grant.

I want to cry.  I actually did cry right before class when my father emailed and said he’d donate a 5 figure amount to the school on our behalf.  He’s very much like FGS‘s Babci so that sacrifice means a lot, and I’m not sure if we can let him do that.  And even that amount is only a drop in the bucket of what is needed.

Tomorrow we’ll find more information.  One thing I don’t understand is why they can’t make it a K-4 or K-8 school and jettison the under subscribed high schoolers, just as if they were starting a brand new school, gradually adding on new grades.  And maybe they’ll be able to.  I don’t know.

But I really don’t know what we’re going to do if they don’t last out the year.  Or what we’re going to do next year.  We can’t go back to preschool now, not after how wonderful this experience has been.  I think that leaves the other Montessori option– the one geared towards SAHM that gets out at 2:30 and doesn’t really have after school care.  Otherwise it’s another year of preschool followed by another year of kindergarten (without single subject acceleration) and how can you do that to a kid who has already tasted (and loved) what it’s like to do second grade math and first grade language arts in an academic prep school?

Like DH said, sometimes things really are too good to be true.