First day back

Today is our first day back at school -- actually, the dining room table -- after two blissful weeks of Christmas break, and it hasn't been a marked success. It rarely is. *sigh*

It seems like both Meelyn and Aisling have experienced an unprecedented amount of brain drain in the past fortnight. How? How? I can't explain it. Meelyn has fared better than her sister, but Aisling has complicated the entire day by not being able to find her Biology 1 notebook, her U.S. History notebook and some other notebook...I'm so frazzled, I can't remember which. It is incredibly frustrating and the mood has been dour. To say the least.

Aisling did have a good piano lesson and came out to the van toting her suitcase full of music, as cheerful as a cricket. Meelyn had to work today at the lunch shift and had a pleasant day of it; she came home and immediately went to the gym, where she ran four miles in forty minutes, an excellent time.

Hershey has driven me nearly round the bend by asking to be let out a thousand and three times. "Come on, pleeeeaaaaaaaaase?" he says with his ears aloft and eyes all bright and hopeful. "Pleeeeeeaaaaaase? Just for a minute, I swear. ONE MINUTE. So I can bark at that nanny pushing her little charge in a stroller down the street. They need to be barked at."

I also ordered several books for Meelyn's second semester work, which starts on January 18. I bought the Traditional Logic 2, the next part of her Spanish 2 course and a computer literacy course covering Microsoft Word.

The day is very cold and snowy and to while away the afternoon, I am baking biscotti. The recipe I made, which I put together out of several I found online, features Splenda instead of sugar, chopped pecans and dried cranberries. They're just about ready to go in for their second baking and if they're good, I'll take their picture and post the recipe.

Whoops! Timer just went off! Back to the biscotti I go, while Aisling continues searching for that pesky U.S. History notebook.