Toot

It's not like I've been traveling or anything lately, but I haven't written as much here. This is for two reasons. First, we're covering photosynthesis in the class I'm teaching and that takes some time for me to prepare. Second, well, um, second, I'm doing the online dating thing, and I'm surprised at how much mental energy it takes to pursue it.

I'm not even going to reveal my ratio of emails sent to dates (OK, it's zero), but this week I had two of the nicest (really) "no thank you" emails ever. It gives me some hope, and I try to remember that this does not, by any means, represent the entire pool of available men, so I still might run into someone nice in the produce department at Whole Foods (right, Suzanne?).

This note, though is to toot my kid's horn a bit. I wanted to say how proud I am of my son, the one and only Mr W (that's short for Mr. Wumpkin, a name he acquired shortly after birth). I got his report card yesterday, as well as the results from one of the standardized reading tests he took lately. He scored in the 93rd percentile. I was surprised. They have him in the smaller, and I thought slower reading group (which was fine, and that's what his teacher thought was best), so I thought everyone else was reading like he was reading, you know?

For his part, he said he had to guess at some of the answers, and couldn't see what the fuss was about - just a number. I noticed in the last few weeks that his reading has made a jump. I noticed it because he was reading me a comic and read pretty big words pretty fast. Didn't stop or hesitate, he just knew the words. This seems to happen about once a year. He kind of goes along, and then ramps up in some kind of skill - it's cool to see.