Summer vacation begins!

So this is it, guys! I'm finally on summer vacation!

It took sooooo long to get to this point. I know I've probably run this subject into the ground by now, but it's worth repeating, one more time. I had a very long, tough year, where I was put into the (not very fun) position of having to advocate for the kids within the classroom. It really tore me up inside, which is why I keep blabbing about the topic. And I still really, really miss my Little Guy. I hope he's doing okay (I've heard some conflicting reports.... and many non-committal reports... I get the distinct feeling nobody quite knows how he is because nobody's quite thought to look into it). I hope he's retained some of his communication skills (again, I've heard conflicting reports). I think way too much about what I could have done better for him. I think I did all I could, but when you get attached to one of these kids, it never seems like it's enough. I'm not sure where I'll be next year, but I do know that I'll be a very different person from last year, in many ways.

On the plus side, I did get the Little Guy to the point where he had a "vocabulary" of about 20 words (using PECS), which was up from the two words he had when I met him (using signs and PECS). When I left, he could say puzzle, marshmallow, bathroom, fork, spoon, napkin, TV, pillow, blanket, locker, lunchbox, bagel, gym, playground, Potato Head, playdoh, drink, bus, book, and shoes. When I got him he could say marshmallow and bathroom. I really wanted to teach him yes and no, but it was way too abstract for him at that point. But there was definitely progress, at least...

But back to summer vacation....

We just came back from a really wonderful trip to Los Angeles. Well, technically it was a wonderful trip to San Gabriel, which is a suburb of LA with much more affordable hotel rates. And technically it was a Chinese ethnoburb of LA, which was AWESOME. There were dozens of Chinese restaurants within a five minute walk of the hotel, all very good and all very cheap. We spent a huge amount of our time eating everything in sight. I came back much more lumpy than usual, but that's okay, because at least there was jook and scallion pancakes. We went to a few wineries, drove to the beach, went to the California Citrus State Park, went to a few aircraft museums (Dan went and took all these pictures of random airplanes; since I don't know or care I nodded and smiled and said "That's nice, honey," when necessary), went to museum with a replica of a Roman villa and tons of Roman art, met up with relatives, and drove way too much. It was really, really great. Oh, and we had cable television!

Now it's on to the rest of summer vacation, where Grace is ecstatic for about two weeks then dies of boredom until the middle of August. I do teach summer school during July, so I will have some of the structure required for being Grace. I have big plans for this summer, including decorating the house and going to the library regularly, but since I'm Grace, most of my plans will probably not happen due to attention span difficulties. I think I'll be pretty happy if I do get some house stuff done. Our walls are still blank and we've been here a year. I'll also be trying to, well, relax. I know I've mentioned in previous posts that I have huge difficulties trying to relax (and I am very aware of the paradox - if you have to try to relax you're already pushing the issue, which kind of doesn't make it relaxing), and it's really the area of my life where I need to focus, strangely enough. I tend to swing towards extremes - either I'm lying on the couch in a catatonic state for six hours watching football games from 2012 or I'm doing stuff for every minute of my waking hours. Neither of which is good for me. Since my attention span is so short, I start feeling anxious after I've been doing one thing for more than about an hour at a time, but because my attention span is short, I have trouble organizing my time. Yes, relaxing is tough.