scheduled

i'm slowly getting myself organized in preparation for the coming week. i'm going to continue teaching at icaom and supervising at the clinic... i begin uh classes, and my student teaching at aiea intermediate next week... in the pockets of time remaining (including large swaths on the weekends), i am struggling to fit in my acupuncture patients... and, if that's not enough, due to the low quality of care (at least in our opinion) at the afterschool program at the ymca, i'm going to have to pick willow up from school directly on four days of the week, and indirectly on half-day wednesday. that gives me the opportunity to meet with her, do homework with her, at least for the brief hour or so that i can spare... but that's better than nothing at all.

unfortunately, i'm not going to have as much time to meet with aiden. i take him to children's house in the mornings, and he outright says that he misses me (usually that kind of mushy talk he only reserves for lynn). aiden has suddenly encountered some kind of developmental growth spurt. he's only been at children's house for three days this year, and he's already outproduced pretty much the entire previous year in terms of output (paperwork). and he is extremely talkative... he comments on everything, and it's always always interesting to hear the kinds of connections he makes. he has a favorite song on both the "in rainbows" radiohead album and the "louder than bombs" smiths album. for in rainbows, he likes "weird fishes." i think it started when he asked what "weird fishes" were. that night, i brought out the time life book on the sea, and showed him the weird, nightmarish shapes of fishes near the bottom of the sea: anglers, viperfish, etc. you know, the kind with needle teeth. from that point on, he associated the song with that picture of the sea... so today as we were driving into children's house, he commented on the lyrics. the lyrics go: "i hit the bottom and escape, escape" (that, by the way, led to its own interesting discussion, about how one escapes from the bottom of the sea)... so then aiden says, "daddy, i saw the jellyfish at the bottom of the sea. so he has to watch out or else the jellyfish are going to sting his head." i suppose that he saw the jellyfish on one of the pictures of the time life book...

...oh yeah, yesterday, because i was in such a rush, i told aiden i had to drop him off directly, and now walk down into the school with him... at first, he was upset, but then i told him how i really needed his help in this, and that i knew how brave and independent he was... so he was ultimately okay with it. he left the car, guided out by one of the instructors... but at the last minute, he shouted, "daddy wait! i forgot to give you a hug!" so the instructor brought aiden around the front of the car to the driver's side. i opened the car door, leaned out (seat belt still buckled), and he gave me a hug...

i am going to miss aiden. i think the only time i'll get to interact with him is in the early morning, and in the late evenings (when i force him to do his violin lessons... great).

but i know i'm luckier than most.