There are also literally a lot of red ribbons being tied around campus. I may bring some red ribbon tomorrow from my stashes and have some of my shoe-tying kiddos practice with red ribbons on the gates. Or I may forget. But maybe some of you will remember. 🙂 Tomorrow I have IEP at School X, treatment at School Y, then another IEP at School Z…….But I think it will be an okay day. It ends early as I have a hair appointment! Excited to get my hair cut for my birthday. Then Pilates and then I should be home by like 6pm which is super crazy and weird. 🙂

Today I went in a little late as I didn't have kids scheduled ASAP and I've been working about ten million hours a week. Then I saw kids the rest of the day, met with a parent for an hour after school to discuss things to do at home in terms of fine motor skills to help a child stop fisting his pencil (it may be more a sensory thing though, hmm), and then worked another few hours trying to catch up on paperwork and organization. I'm really finally slowly getting the hang of it, as shocking as that may sound to anyone who knows me and my workspace in real life. The janitor came and visited me a few time, lol. At one point he said he wanted to close the door to the room I was in so that it was safe, because if he came back and there was blood everywhere he'd have a lot to clean. It cracked me up. He has an identical twin brother and one is at some of my schools and one is at some of the others and so I can never remember which is which. I finally left at 7:30pm, went straight to Pilates Candlelight, then got gas, the went to the store for lemon pepper tuna (they were still out – I nearly cried again, dude why am I so emotional), then went walking with my friend up the hill to my house, and got home at 10pm to feed my cats (I got them sardines for the first time, I figure black cat needs some excitement in his old age), eat my dinner, talk to my mom, etc. And now play online and blog to chill out my mind. My salad was a Country Italian Salad from Trader Joe's, I love the dressing in it, but I mixed it with spring mix, cherry tomatoes, avocado, white balsamic vinegar, lemon, pepper, salt, and then some salt and vinegar potato chip “croutons” so it was like a party in my mouth!! I've been eating a lot healthier lately and working out a lot more even while working a lot. I'm proud of me. Anyone who knows me knows how insanely self-deprecating I normally am, and so to say that means aliens may have taken over my body. 

Also did one with a little boy who was super disappointed I forgot to bring “Monster cheese” today, it was my fault because as we were walking I had told him we should give Monster cheese a bath. And then it turned out I hadn't brought him. I suck. To be fair though I had lots of other fun toys. We typically make Monster Cheese eat a bunch of stuff then throw it all up and he likes that. So today when I was telling him we needed to give Monster Cheese a bath, I said “Monster Cheese is getting kind of dirty, he threw up all over himself like 10 times yesterday.” The boy paused and said “You're a silly person, so I think when you say that you mean maybe he landed in the dirt since he can't really throw up.” I laughed and was like yes, great problem solving, I am just pretending. I loved his thought process, so great for an OT kiddo to realize that a silly person would say silly things that probably aren't true. 

Also did one where we used a metronome (60 bpm) to go over spelling words, one letter to each beat (ie.. K…I…N…G)…worked on puzzles, re-writing stuff, etc etc. Blah blah blah. 

Well it's almost midnight and black cat is purring on my chest as I write this. It makes up for how he wakes me up at 6am every day by biting my fingers. I can only assume my fingers appear to be delicate morsels of sausage….

I'd apologize for this being so long but y'all know I can't help it, bless my poor brevity-lacking soul…

I'm about to go work a little bit more on my “Quiet Mouths, Loud Hands” post which is about classroom teachers incorporating fine motor handwork into line time, and then bed. 

KD