All I’ve done for the last two weeks is eat. Food keeps appearing at school, as everyone wants to bring in goodies to share, and parents bring in thank-yous.

We will soon explode.

Today a parent brought in four huge platters of warm bagels, scones and muffins from a local bakery. There was no way to resist a cranberry scone. (o.k., there was probably a way to resist, I just didn’t see any point in making that kind of effort.)

It was really delicious. I love scones. But rarely buy them, and certainly don’t see any point in making them. I tried once. They were not a success. As a matter of fact, I believe they’ve held up quite nicely as flagstones at my old apartment.

To add insult to injury, today was the day that we buy lunch for our aides as a small thankyou for all their hard work and extra effort. They get paid embarrassingly little, so this is a very small token of our thanks. We don’t give gifts within our department anymore, as we felt it was getting out of hand. Instead we each make a donation to the local "Home Committee", to be used for families in need. I work in such an affluent community that it always shocks me to realize that some of these families who live in the subsidized housing complex are getting by on a shoestring. I always hope that some of the kids we work with benefit from our donations.

We ordered lunch from a wonderful deli, which has fabulous sandwich concoctions. Of course what did I do? I ordered my old standby "The Mayflower", turkey, cranberry and stuffing. You’d think I’d have passed that up seeing it will be a turkey feast at my mother’s on Christmas.

I’m in a rut.

Of course, we didn’t stop with sandwiches. We had desserts, chips, antipasto, just way too much of everything. I was stuffed, and I didn’t even try the "Whoopee Pie Cake" that I’d brought.

Not to worry, I didn’t bake it. The local market has a fabulous bakery. Besides, when would I have had tome to bake?

So I stopped eating then, right?

Nope.

I had to get Ashley to take her for our ice cream date. Now with any other child I could have gotten coffee and it would have been fine, but with Ashley if I don’t order ice cream she won’t have any. And I know she really wanted it, so I had to make sure she could have what she wanted.

She ordered a humungous sundae that had brownies, four scoops of ice cream and hot fudge sauce. Fortunately I was able to get away with just getting a small dish of black raspberry ice cream. Even that was a struggle to choke down.

I had a great time with Ashley. She is such an interesting child, but I worry that she is still such a little girl and is on her way to high school next year. She just isn’t ready for it, and she will probably have to go to an alternative type of school either vocational or something else. Our high school is too academically oriented, and it just won’t be the right place for Ashley.

She’s already in a panic that she’ll have to leave her friends. This is a big deal for her, and any transition is hard for her. A transition to an entirely new school where she knows no one is almost unimaginable.

She loved the Christmas present that I gave her, and she showed how young she really is, as the thing she most liked was the stickers. I had gotten her a writing kit based on a character named Amelia, which I knew she liked.

Ashley has always loved to write in her journals, so I knew this would be a hit.

I love giving presents that make the recipient happy.

Now I need to go buy stocking stuffers. Thank goodness Walgreen’s in open twenty-four hours a day. Bet there won’t be much of a crowd at midnight.

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