The weekend featured some great food. Bill spent the weekend with me and it was a quiet, loving weekend with marvelous food.

Swordfish, homemade bread, caprese salad, ice cream on Friday night. We sat up late talking and enjoying each other's company. Saturday we had a nice walk in the park with the dog. We picked up some stuffed mushrooms and steak at HyVee. We made caesar salad. After dinner we had a comical run to the Ross to see a Chinese movie about an autistic adult. We cuddled on the couch in my room and then fell asleep.

It was nice to enjoy each other. It felt familiar and old. It is nice to not feel angry. To not feel resentment.

Do you need to take notes to remind yourself that Lennie and George had a special friendship?

Apparently. Then you have to turn them in. If you don't, it affects your grade.

And my thoughts on this are very complicated. It has become apparent to me that I have raised independent thinkers with high IQs. They can read Of Mice and Men and give you an exceptional discussion about it. They can pass a test on the plot points and literary devices. They are not going to hand in chapter summaries or notes from class discussion.

I struggle with parent teacher conferences for many reasons. The hubub of eager parents convinced that their "A" student is the next brilliant mind in the world exhausts me. I wait in line and introduce myself and hear the same thing I have heard about all three kids from every single teacher ever (the exception was a surprising conference with an industrial tech teacher in middle school who truly liked my child and seemed to understand her - that's it out of all the years I have been going to parent teacher conferences). My kids have never been a teacher's favorite and they are frequently a true challenge. "She/he is bright and has good contributions to class discussions and her/his test scores are adequate but she/he doesn't do homework and has poor study habits."

So I battle the crowded parking lot, the crammed hallways of buzzing parents, the lines to talk to teachers and hear the same thing over and over. I do it to put faces with the names of the teachers and to make sure they have my email address in case there is a problem more serious than not taking notes in literature class. I was at parent teacher conferences for two and a half hours yesterday. My time would have been better spent staying at home and reading Of Mice and Men.