Homework

Riley wants to get out of the house as much as I do. I have told him to get his work done and we can go do something, anything. I talked to the teacher about it. Riley did not have all his work complete on Friday. She said that he should be doing an hour for every class she teaches him, three hours a day. I had him doing an hour and a half.

He really only has two days to do work each week, other than tutoring days. Thursdays, we find that we just want to escape it all when we are at the hospital. It is just not conductive to study when you can hear the various TVs going in the alcoves or the sick children passing by with their coat racks of drug IVs just like Riley's. I am almost hopeful that we will start introducing ourselves to other families so we can have a social life. But most of the families are just in the beginning or really sick stages. Not people you want to interrupt and just to have a casual chat. Once your child has progressed to a certain stage we will probably get to go to our regular physicians and wont be coming to the clinic any more.

Meanwhile, unless Riley takes the initiative, I don't push homework while we are at the clinic. I try to encourage it and not disrupt Riley if he chooses to do homework, but I am OK with Riley watching a movie with me or reading a book. I do put my foot down with computer games. He can go to the play area and play the play station they have, if there are other children around. Socializing is good for Riley. I notice he only goes to the play area if there are other children around on the play station. I think he feels much as I do. He likes the camaraderie.

I am trying to get an hour of homework out of Riley every morning after he gets up and takes his pills. We have a nice routine going at home. We need to add a reward to it afterwards, for both of us. Riley asked if sitting around all day is what I always did. I reminded him that I worked in Longview before we moved and loved it. I volunteered at school and worked for the school district as a sub. Now I sit at home and stare at Riley, waiting for him to pop. It is so much better than it was, though, that I am willing to run short errands locally. I even vacuum regularly around the house, because he is home.

The vacuum sits out as a reminder and it does not collect dust on the outside like it used to. It just seems like the more I vacuum the worse those white carpets look. The spots show up even after vacuuming, and I realize how permanent they are. We steamed the carpet in February. You can't tell that we did. Someday we will get the pool table moved and replace the carpet with solid surfacing.

Riley took his shot yesterday, now we wait until Thursday for the results. Hopefully the red will stay high and the platelets will be even better than last week.