Dorothy Called

...from Stroger Hospital. She was taken in Sunday. She had been off her medications and when she went back on them she had a strong reaction, including severe diarrhea. They are working to adjust her medicine so it helps without hurting her. She hopes to be back in drug treatment by Wednesday.

She got the things I dropped off last week. I didn't have the heart to get on her case for hanging out with Yup-yup over the phone, but I did write about it in the letter I sent her this afternoon. At least I think I did. If not I'll have to get on her about it when I go visit in a couple of weeks.

Also tonight, Picasso and Junior came over. Junior had an essay for civics. He had to take a position on the question of whether 16-year-olds should be allowed to have an "early voting permit" if they can pass a civics test. His opinion was yes, they should. Picasso paid attention even though it wasn't his homework assignment. I was glad. He read my Newsweek, too, and was cracking up at the scale they have of egregious things famous people do, which ranges from "mildly tacky" to "utterly shameless."

"So there's no good ones, right?" he said.

"That's right. They all suck," I said, drawing a laugh for my moderately bad language.

Picasso helped Junior come up with some opposing arguments to his position and we talked about how to refute them. Picasso turned in his personal narrative today, so he doesn't know yet how he did on it. I hope it comes out well. It drove me nuts when I saw his English class (Multicultural Lit or whatever they call it) was his worst grade at progress reports. He's way too smart to be getting anything below a B in an English class.

I got in touch with his teacher by email, who wondered how well he understands things, because he is very quiet in class. (He told me he doesn't like her because she has no sense of humor.) I told her that I've been working with Picasso for four years, that he is more than capable of the work, but that his life outside the classroom might be interfering with his performance. (I restrained myself from saying anything about his impression of her, since that's not going to get us anywhere.) Picasso wants to pull up his grade, so we'll see if he does what he needs to do. I intend to stay on him about it. Hopefully he'll keep hanging out with Junior, which will get him over here somewhat regularly. I was really pleased to see he paid attention even though it wasn't his homework assignment. Hopefully he learned something.