Yikes, time flies when you're having fun... or when everything's kinda fuzzy. In either case, there's been a LOT that has happened in our lives that I meant to mention here that I haven't, so here's a bit of a catch-up. (And I do mean a "bit," as in "just a small piece" because it's gonna take several entries to actually catch up for real.)
One big milestone I didn't mention -- in fact, I just found the unfinished draft of the post a few minutes ago! -- is that this year the Pipsqueak turned 12. It's her last year of officially being a Tween instead of an actual Teen, but to be perfectly honest I'm not sure she hasn't already vaulted forward into teenhood in all ways save actual numeric age. Thanks to a certain ongoing global medical problem, her birthday wasn't a big bash but she enjoyed the home-baked brownie cake and the gifts and the time together, and that's really all that counts.
Another big milestone I didn't mention is that she's finally really, actually, truly IN school; AJ usually drops her in the morning but she rides the bus back home in the afternoons. Technically, she's attending the same school where Mom taught for several years, but the entire original building was razed to the ground and rebuilt (much larger) from scratch a number of years ago. I showed Mom videos from my dashcam of the ridiculously narrow & twisty country-type road that leads to the school and of a slow pass around the building, and it was one "oh my god!" and "where'd that come from?" after another. (All of which her granddaughter found highly entertaining.)
After spending her first year of middle school staring at a Chromebook screen, Miri's taken to lugging her two-ton backpack around the school building like a fish to water. This being the Pipsqueak, there were a couple of very tense & worried weeks leading up to the first day of school (despite two orientation sessions before the scholastic year began)... but now that she's on familiar territory, all is well and she is actually enjoying herself. Also not terribly surprising: she's popular and has so many students passing in the hall saying "hi" and/or waving that some of her friends (both old & new) laughingly complain that she knows everybody.
That said... there's definitely a bit of a cloud wrapped around that silver lining. So far it's only happened once (and a lot of kids came to Miriam's defense quickly & loudly), but sure as an anti-vaxxer is gonna scream about mind control microchips in the COVID vaccines, one stupid kid just had to point out that Miriam is ethnically Chinese. Using impolite words. And rather nastily to boot. It was the usual BS: "You should go back where you came from," "This isn't your country," and other similarly bigoted crap. The good news is that the twerp not only got talked to by one of the school counselors, but several other kids in the class tore him a new one while others checked to make sure Miri was okay (and made a point of asking her again over the next couple of days). There hasn't been a repeat, but Mama Bear and Uncle Hungry T-Rex are keeping an eye & ear tuned "just in case."
The only other notable negative at school was just over two weeks back, when Yours Truly was taking Mom & Dad's cat to the vet and fielded an unexpected phone call -- while miles away and heading rapidly in the wrong direction -- from the school nurse explaining that a certain someone "...came down a little hard on one ankle in gym class" and Miriam spent the next week on crutches. (AJ was having a bad day at work and thus we arrived at the school within literally 2 minutes of each other a good hour-plus after that first phone call.) It was just a bad sprain, and she's pretty much back to what passes for normal... but now we all know with absolutely zero doubt that my niece has a dislike of crutches that borders on absolute loathing & hatred (and has the dramatic capabilities to communicate that dislike with nonstop crystalline clarity).
Aaaand I think I'll end this post right there. Obviously there's a couple of metric tons of other things to catch up on but I'm far too tired to spend the rest of the night typing out doctoral thesis. (The situation with Dad is unchanged and thus I'll only mention it on an as-needed basis, let's just say it sucks.)
I'll be back with more soon... 'til then, y'all stay healthy out there, okay?
