Dawn

Emily Perl Kingsley wrote this essay back in 1987, and I think it's a nice parting thought to start the weekend with.


I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
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Dawn
Last year, I was contacted by Time4Learning.com to do a review of their service.  It was really great, by the way.  Last week, the good folks at Time4Learning.com contacted me again to review SpellingCity.com.  I'm actually excited by this, because one of my minions spells as well as I do.  Meaning, that without the aid of the thin, wavy, red line as we type, we'd be lost.  So without further delay, here is my disclaimer:

I've been given a Premium Membership to VocabularySpellingCity.com for a candid, personal, online review.  VocabularySpellingCity helps students study word lists using 25 different learning activities such as Sentence UnscrambleHandwriting Practice,WordSearch, and FlashCards. Parents can create their own spelling lists, find published lists already available on the site, or use any of dozens of free teaching resources on topics such as Synonyms and Figurative Language. Be sure to come back in three weeks to read about my experience.
Om nom nom

I don't know how excited my minions will be that they will be doing spelling over the summer, but I guess they'll get over it.  It's probably better than pulling weeds, in the heat, with the bugs.
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