Yesterday's News.

Yesterday it was well over a hundred degrees here and last night it barely cooled off. Windows open all night, but the apartment is still hot. Miserably hot. Swelteringly hot. Utterly, terribly, roastingly hot. Yuck. The fall can't come quickly enough for this heat-hating blogger.

Yesterday I got in touch with the company through which KidThree originally got her wheelchair to see if they would still take care of the chair even with our insurance change. They will. Thank goodness. Today I have to arrange to get them a prescription, then they will set in motion the procedure to get the repairs authorized. KidThree needs her own chair back. The borrowed one she's in is so rickety, we expect parts to start falling off at any moment.

Our ADA called yesterday to update me on the trial's newest presumed start date. It will start sometime between 09/04 and09/08, with KidThree being the first to testify after opening arguments. I'll be able to listen to opening arguments but KidThree can't because she is a witness. She'll have to stay out in the hall or across the street in the DA's office with our support group. I so want this to be over with. It has been hanging over KidThree's head for so long now, raising her anxiety levels every time it gets continued and rescheduled. She needs to get this over with.

The messy thing about this trial is that not everyone who should be charged was charged. The shooting was between two groups who had been arguing: I'll call them GroupA and GroupB. The argument was on GroupA's territory. Apparently GroupB arrived on the scene to back up one of their members who was being verbally harassed by GroupA. One or two members of GroupB pulled out weapons and started firing on GroupA, who responded by getting a weapon and firing in return. Somehow, those who explained to the police later about the event covered up the fact that GroupB had been firing, had initiated the shooting. No One from GroupB got charged. Two young men from GroupA were the only ones charged, when it is entirely possible their actions counted as self-defense. It is also very likely that a shooter from GroupB was the one who fired the shot that hit KidThree, who was across the street and down a bit. It just feels WRONG to us. Wrong that the members in GroupB didn't get charged. Wrong that the two in GroupA got charged when they were responding to incoming fire. Wrong that the member of GroupB who has bragged about shooting KidThree didn't get charged. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Our ADA told us that he disagreed with the decision to not charge the members of GroupB, but that the decision was made above his head and he couldn't change it. (He was not our original ADA, but we like him much better than the first one.) This whole mess, with the arbitrary nature of who got charged and the continuance after continuance after continuance, has seriously damaged my faith in the justice system. It will be very interesting (and probably more disillusioning) to see how the actual trial goes.

Yesterday I got started moving furniture around in KidThree's room but wasn't able to get much done. 105 degrees outside and no a/c in that room made for a short working session. Maybe by the weekend it will cool off enough for me to do some more work in there. KidOne has two bureaus in there which will be gone in the next week or two, giving KidThree access to all of her room again. We have to set up an exercise spot in there so she can do the routines she learned down at the gym, but we can't do that until the room is cleared of KidOne's extraneous furniture.

And of course yesterday we watched Obama's acceptance speech. I missed Bill Richardson's speech, which I was very sorry about, but at least I got to hear Obama. I thought he was marvelous. Absolutely marvelous. He said all the things I wanted to hear and then some, and what a delivery. It will be quite a letdown next week to hear John McCain give his speech next week, with his anemic "my friends" over and over and over again. He just can't compare when it comes to speaking. But we will be watching, and listening, carefully.

So far school is going well for KidThree. I hope her current level of motivation continues. KidOne started her college semester last week and is adjusting to balancing work and study again; her several weeks of 'vacation' between the summer and fall sessions got her out of practice. KidTwo is out of contact for a bit as her father left the country there and took his laptop with him. I HATE it when she is out of contact. I don't mind a bit when she is out of the country--I miss her like crazy, but I don't mind, because I know I can look at her online journal and hear her voice, and she sends me emails where I can hear her voice, but when she can't access the internet, I don't have that contact. Drat drat drat. She goes to South American next week and will be staying a month. I hope she has access to a computer down there. I miss my KidTwo and want to hear her lovely, funny, idiosyncratic voice. Over the phone or through the computer, I do so love to hear my girl.

My mother is offline too. Her computer is down. Blast! I'll give her a call tomorrow so we can have a good long gab and catch up on all the news.

I finished the biography of Charles Schulz and continued throughout to be enchanted and impressed with the thoroughness of David Michaelis's work. He did such a marvelous job of intertwining 'Peanuts' with the events in Schulz's life and giving us such a clear picture of that complicated man. Like the rest of my generation, I grew up reading 'Peanuts' daily and knew all the characters as well as I knew the members of my own family. That was the only place where I found characters who had the same doubts and despairs that I did, but kept on going nonetheless. I did, and do, love 'Peanuts.' I collect PVC Snoopys, key rings and Christmas ornaments, and have so many my entire Christmas trees are decorated entirely in them.

I then read about half of the biography of Charles Fort but got so annoyed with his stupidity and Theodore Dreiser's gullibility that I quit reading it. The older I've gotten, the less likely I am to finish a book that doesn't keep me interested on at least a couple of levels. So, now I'm reading "The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves," by Andrew Ward. He has done the same sort of amazingly in-depth job as Michaelis, going through what must have been reams and reams of papers to tease out the vignettes he uses in the book. I am enjoying the book and will read bits of it to KidThree after I've finished it; she gets school credit for things like that if she writes short essays on what she has learned.

Now I will finish my coffee and try harder to kill the mosquito that is trying to breakfast on my delectable self. With the computer on my lap, my murderous attempts have thus far been futile.

A