I feel like I�m in slow motion when I�m working today. I feel like my brain is falling down on the job.

I woke up to the scraping sound of the snowplow this morning at the edge of a dream in which we were taking AJ to the street opposite our house where a school bus was parked. They were doing a special orientation for kindergarteners-to-be so they weren�t afraid of the bus. When we walked out I noticed that my husband�s car, which he�d left parked in the driveway the night before, was lying on its side in the middle of the lawn. After interviewing area teens, it turned out that the culprit was most likely a boy named Chris Floyd, a rich kid with (and I love this totally random detail) a 4,000 square foot bathroom and a bad attitude. In reality, Chris Floyd was a guy I went to high school with. He was a year ahead of me and I didn�t actually know him that well, although he was a theater geek so he ran with my crowd. He went to that other Chicago area snooty school and when I went up for an interview (his freshman year), he showed me around campus. I haven�t thought about him in close to two decades.

I love the image of the car on its side, completely useless and almost sculptural. Incidentally, the bottom of the car looked rather more like the bottom of one of AJ�s toy Matchb0x cars than like a real vehicle.

I will be spending the afternoon trying to get AJ to calm down and take a nap. One of his good friends is having a birthday party this afternoon at one of those stores that sells fancy backyard play sets. It�s in an old barn next to my favorite nursery and they open it up to parties in the winter � one giant indoor playground. He�s very excited. He�s also very excited to give his friend ZE his present, a Leg0 fire engine set. �Do you think my present will be the biggest? Do you think he�ll like it best?� AJ has a drive to be on top in all things. This morning he wrote out a math test for himself, took it, and graded it. At the top of the test he wrote an F, crossed it out and wrote an A+ and �Good job!� I�m not sure how he even knows about all these grades � he must have assimilated something from watching me grade my class last year � but he�s very fascinated by them. My little overachiever. As long as he doesn't start deciding to tip over our cars.

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