Listen to me ramble

I've done a couple of podcast interviews for my new book, 50 Ways to Support Your Child's Special Education, and they're available on the Web if you're interested in hearing me talk and talk and TALK. The one for Mommy Time Radio is about six minutes, and the one for NEED Project is sufficiently longer that I haven't gotten up the nerve to listen to it; I had the impression at the time that I was blathering on, and I'd hate to confirm it. If you give it a listen, let me know how I do. I so prefer writing, where you can go over things and clean them up before anybody sees.

I'm doing another interview on Tuesday for The Parent's Journal, and then on September 10 I'll be doing a live "meet and greet" at the Barnes and Noble in Clifton, NJ. If you're in the vicinity, stop by and keep me company. Details are here.

Schedules at last

So my kids' school schedules finally came on Saturday (clever to make them arrive on a day when we can't immediately call and complain.) My daughter's looks perfect, and my son's has just one glitch -- the same elective class in two different periods. That's pretty minor compared to problems on his friends' schedules, though. Two of his friends had schedules with periods completely missing, and his friend who's going to be a junior has senior English on his schedule. It will all work out, and it's good to know now exactly what the issues will be. Lunch, I can see, may be a problem, because none of his friends have it the same period. Either he'll make new friends, eat alone (as my daughter usually has to), or pull up a chair beside his paraprofessional.

Movie recommendation: Julie and Julia

I saw Julie and Julia the other night, and found it to be completely adorable. Unlike a lot of critics, I liked the parts with Julie as well as Julia, and thought the two stories benefited from each other as counterpoint. I'm not at all a foodie, and was not seized by an irresistible urge to eat the kind of food shown onscreen (except maybe that bruschetta Julie made early on). What the movie really made me want to do was go home and hug my husband. The movie offers a great depiction of two functional, affectionate marriages, something you don't see that much of in movies and TV these days. I though it was interesting that, although the plot involved the accomplishments of two women, you couldn't imagine either of them doing what they did without the love and support of their spouses.

For those of us who've dealt with infertility, there was a very sweet little scene, very understated, showing Julia's reaction to news that her sister is pregnant, that rang true and familiar. Been there, cried those tears, got that sweet comforting hug from my husband. A nice touch in a very nice, funny, sweet movie.

Something I didn't know about "Sully"

After the big media rush surrounding the plane that landed on the Hudson River in January, it seemed hard to believe that there was anything more to know about the plane's captain, Chesley Sullenberger. He seemed like a nice guy in danger of being so overexposed that the inevitable autobiography would be a big "so what." Reading a review in our local paper today, though, I saw something that I either missed in the coverage around the event or never got reported before: He's an adoptive dad. From the review: "He tells of training as a military pilot, his first kiss with the woman who would become his wife, their struggles to conceive and their joyful adoption of two girls." Gonna have to put that book on my reading list now.

< shameless promotion >

Hey, if any of you live in the vicinity of Clifton, New Jersey, come out and see me at the Barnes & Noble at Clifton Commons on September 10. I'll be doing a "meet and greet," which is what they do if you're a local author who's not likely to bring in the hordes like, say, Kate Gosselin (for whom my daughter and I waited in line for an hour and a half). I'll be available to chat and sign copies of my new book, and I hope folks will come out for me because otherwise, my son's going to accost random strangers and drag them over. You can get more info about the event here -- and if by chance you've already read the book and liked it, please consider reviewing it on Amazon and/or BN.com.

< /shameless promotion >

Worrying off-schedule

While I was on vacation last week, one of the blogs that has been sucking up the time usually reserved for this one -- my Brothers & Sisters blog -- was unceremoniously dumped by 451 Press. I'm hoping that the time I've been spending writing about the fictional Walkers in all their spectacular dysfunction can now be channeled back to keeping this blog current.

And speaking of dysfunction ... why, oh why, oh why can't our school district get schedules out on a timely basis? Come on, people! We usually go on vacation the second week in August, and the kids' schedules have always come reliably during that week when we're not here to obsess with them immediately. This year, though, we came home to nothin'. Nothing in the mail, nothing on the fancy new website the school has for posting schedules and grades. We've usually gotten a preliminary schedule without teachers and classrooms earlier in the summer, too, and that's also gone missing this year.

It seems like every year, things are a little less organized. And that means a little more time wasted at the start of the school year getting everybody in the right place. Maybe they're just trying to minimize the time that parents have to complain before school begins, but I'm afraid that they're just that disorganized. Meanwhile, I'm practically sitting on the mailbox waiting for these pieces of paper that mark the official start of my school worry season. I've got worrying to do, people! Get it together!