It couldn't be simpler.

A sunny Monday and I'm staggering along with my day. The biggest part of my day will be a conference at Ashton's school which begins at 1300h. She's having quite a bit of academic trouble and I need to help her out of it. I think I've helped her on her writing projects and now I need to find out what other problems are holding her back. This is the most important part of my job as a father right now and I need to get it right.

For the writing, I made up a series of games to play to help them (I included Ben in these) move their thoughts onto paper, to organize their thoughts and to show them that this process has value. I think it's gone pretty well so far. It's been fun for them and me although it's cost me about $130 so far. That's the part where I show them that it has value. We score their writing by volume and they are paid real money per unit of written volume. I'm sure this method might draw criticism from some people, but I needed a motivational shortcut for the first part of this.

This morning when Scout got up off the couch to go outside for our after-breakfast outdoors check, he fell. He gets off the couch pretty slowly these days and he did the same this morning. But after he got up, his left back leg kind of gave out and he fell to the ground with a thump. I was afraid he'd hurt himself, but he got back up and wagged his tail when I asked if he was OK. He did alright outside but we came in pretty quick. It was cold out.

Ben was home at the time and he gave Scout some pain medicine in case he'd hurt himself in the fall. One of these days he's going to fall and be unable to get back up. I'm really not looking forward to this happening. But I guess it's an inevitable consequence of loving somebody.

I will need to take the painted tiles over to the shop today and later, paint them with some clear glaze to get them ready to fire. There are more tiles we need to glaze, but I think I should fire these separately to see if we can learn anything from them.

Ashton has a half-day of school today because of the conferences and she's going to spend a little time with Brian after school. I told her that she needs to get home and work on homework as she has a big backlog to make up.

I think she may need tutoring or some kind of help in math. I'm not the person to help her with that.

It's almost noon so I better start preparing for the conference. I need to find the notes on the last contact with her teachers and go through them.

Sleep was a little better last night. I feel so unsettled and unhappy. I need to work my way out of that and get on with my life.

More later,