Started on Thursday, continued on Friday

There is a messy desk to tackle and other household things. I procrastinated about the desk until Friday, but I've now spent the entire day on the desk and I have order! I know it will not last long, but . . . . I went through a lot of estate stuff that I stored last year, clearing my files of two garbage bags worth. Most of it was documents I could have gotten rid of when I received them -- like those medical not-bills insurance companies send out -- but I was being cautious.

We got some good news on the oil-contamination clean up. After months of refusing to let our remediation engineers into their house, the neighbors are now allowing it. Steps right now are engineer inspection to make sure the our house and the neighbor's house will not fall down when they start digging, final remediation plan submitted to the insurance company, DIG that contamination out! The neighbors will have to sign one more approval to do the actual digging on their land (There is actually much more residue oil from my parents' old oil tank on the neighbors front lawn than under our driveway. The cause -- downward slope.) and I have no idea if there will be a hold up there as well. I am hoping that we can finish before the fall and have a sale before the end of the year. The one little piece of good news has me spinning day dreams about the entire process.

Oh, please, please, please, please.

I expected to see Marilyn on Thursday and unload my latest worries, but the car did not start and I had to cancel with Marilyn and buy a battery instead. A new battery is almost a welcomed fix! I am go glad it was nothing worse

I did get a chance to call Marilyn and we talked for a good half hour. Julia is going into territory that is strange even for Marilyn. Julia's dinosaur behavior is very disturbing to me. Her insistence on always being a dinosaur puzzles me. Should I go further in with her, or should I insist she be a human girl? I am less upset today than I was yesterday. Julia has gone through a lot of phases with us. Why should I expect this one to last any longer than the others? And I guess the answer is because it is about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs which are Julia's passion.

Tonight, when I talked about our summer projects together, Julia suggested that we learn to draw dinosaurs together. And then, asked which one I wanted to draw. And here I am thinking of practical things like her full name, address and phone number. Maybe we can do both at the same time.

When I picked Julia up from school today, one of her class friends showed me her lost tooth and the book she got out from the library. It was the Tale of Despereau. Cheshire would have been reading that at 8. Julia is not ready to have that read to her at 9. And I sighed. I can dip in and out of blue very quickly sometimes. We still have a 9 year old who is a 4-6 year old. We will ever get to chapter books?

With one of her therapists today, Julia got closer to playing Go Fish. I hope that we can take it on vacation with us. It would be fun to play on the plane. Maybe we should try a simple Uno game as well. Another summer thing.