Last night, we whisked away to Vail, Colorado, where so far, I have been working on my master’s thesis while gazing out at a gorgeous mountain view. Although I have written 54 pages – that’s up from the 28 I had on March 6th before I got myself a coach and a support group – I am stuck on this part about the importance of space. I look at the heading:

Space

and I just have a hard time starting to fill it in.

There was some sympathy expressed this morning at breakfast about me having to work on my paper while others hit the slopes, but I reminded everyone that I do not, in fact, have to teach school for awhile; so all is well.

Today was the last instructional day before spring break. I told the students that my goal was to keep it together; but during the last hour, when a million kids gave speeches on the same dumb book about a woman's heart-to-heart bond with a baby gray whale, I lost it in a fit of giggles and snorting.

It wasn't dignified, but it was all I could do.

The birthday weekend was a little too much fun, I guess, as it ended with us in the emergency room last night, Shef hooked up to a nebulizer and ready for a dose of steroids.

We were all psyched about the adrenalin neb, as it perked him right up and he started cracking hilarious jokes about Thomas the Tank Engine.

Shef turned three today. He was a complete peach for the duration of his party, which we held at Dobby and Doc’s house because of our latest home improvement project that’s running over-time. He shared his toys and said thank you, and everything was dreamy until the very end when, as we were walking out the door, he wound up and smacked me hard across the face.

My high school English teacher was a stoic, new critical, don’t-f&*^-with-me kind of guy. He inspired me to love literature, and despite his ambivalence about spending his days with teenaged girls – “Is this any way for a grown man to make a living?” he moaned in a rare moment of vulnerability one day while resting his head on his podium – he made me want to become an English teacher.

Once, a former student came to visit him over his lunch hour and gave him one of those meditation tapes. You know, the ones that are supposed to help you quit smoking or learn to love yourself by repeating affirmations over and over again?

He was already laughing when he put the tape in for us during an American Lit class. When the soothing, airport public-safety voice started repeating, “Writing is easy and fun for me,” he clutched his stomach and belly laughed for a good five minutes.

The point? Well, duh.

Writing is hardly ever easy and fun for anyone.

My week has been in a downhill slide. It's hard to relish the victories because some of the defeats are sort of crushing.

Here's an example of a small setback: when I got home on Wednesday, Shef cheerfully announced, "Daddy is my friend, and you're not."

That made me feel like a real winner.