College Is Hard on Warrior Moms

The time has come for me to hand my daughter the keys.

Not to our family car, though she will in fact be driving that to college every day.

The keys to her educational advocacy -- something I've been cherishing and polishing and tuning up far more faithfully than that 2001 Jeep.

Join me over at Hopeful Parents for the rest of this post. I'll be writing there once a month.

Adoption on "Rizzoli & Isles"

Anybody watch Rizzoli and Isles? Not me -- I'm still making it through the backlog on my DVR, and haven't made room for this new series, though it sounds like the sort of thing I'd like. Kind of hate to hear, though, that it recently used adoption as a plot twist, rather as In Plain Sight did a while ago. According to a TV Squad post, medical examiner Maura Isles (who some have observed seems to have Asperger syndrome) gets some DNA info on a murder victim on her table and finds that the DNA matches her own, and the guy is her biological brother.

Unlike In Plain Sight, this isn't a storyline that's going to go away with the case of the week, and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. TV Squad writer Jason Hughes suggests, "With the series already renewed for a second season, there's plenty of time to unravel the mystery of Isles genetic past, perhaps even tracking down her birth parents and finding out why she was given up for adoption," and ... boy, you know, let's not. If you watch the show, please share any details you have on the plot line and where you'd like to see it go.

School year is a go

Finally got my son's schedule for the school year (with less than a week to spare), and it's ... wow, it's perfect. This is seriously the first time since he's been in high school that there wasn't a duplicate class or a wrong placement that I had to call and complain about. Not only that, but all possible opportunities to have the same class as a friend came through, and he has a friend with him for lunch, too. Several of his teachers are ones my daughter had before him, so I feel like I have some relationships already established. This is a huge year for him, the first time without self-contained classes, just inclusion, resource, and regular-education. He does still have adaptive gym, his one remaining protected spot, but that one I'll cling to for the duration. For the rest, I'm ... really, really interested to see how he's going to do. Judging by his summer homework performance, I think he's up for it. Starting next Tuesday, we'll see.