{SQT} The Van, College Decisions, and Now Hiring!

Where is the summer going? How is July almost over??? At least I got one, nice relaxing week in.

On Sunday, on the way home from Mass, we had trouble with our van again. Thankfully, we made it home going super slow; no gross hotel room overnights required. We dropped it off at our mechanic on Monday. Thankfully, it was a “easy” fix, however locating the special, heavy duty part our van required took several days.The mechanic in Virginia didn’t do anything wrong intentionally. They simply replaced the broken part with a part that works on most vans, just not ours. We’re lucky it lasted as long as it did.

The big news this week was that Addie finally figured out where she’s going to college in the fall; Cleveland State University! She really wanted to go to the University of Detroit Mercy, and we wanted her to be able to attend UDM, but we also don’t want her graduating with a ton of debt and CSU is a more affordable option. It’s actually cheaper than the state schools here in New Jersey, and it has a Division 1 women’s fencing team. She’ll be going “sight unseen” as we did not actually tour the campus. I wanted to tour it her senior year but once she settled on UDM, she didn’t want to visit any more schools. I’ve kept it on my radar anyway and I encouraged her to apply. She had been putting off making a decision (she’d been accepted as a transfer student to both UDM and CSU), but once we really sat down and talked about the pros and cons, it was a pretty easy decision and she’s really excited to go. So the next question is, who do I know in Cleveland???

Work for the OSV Challenge continues, and I committed last weekend to finishing up all my school planning for the 2021-22 year so I could focus on my apostolate Accepting the Gift through the rest of our summer break. I ordered all my books on Monday, which makes this the second year in a row I got all my planning done before August. Last year, lockdowns meant I had tons of time to sit and plan, so I finished early in the hopes all my curriculum would be in stock. All that work last year paid off two-fold, because it really helped make it easier to select curriculum for this year (which will of course be outlined in a future post for the small percentage of you who care). I still need to upload assignments into Google Classroom for Edie, but the hardest part of planning is done.

Part of my work for Accepting the Gift now includes hiring people! If you’re a writer or a someone with social media managing experience, and you’re interested in contributing to an apostolate which is committed to providing resources and support to Catholic special needs parents, please check out my (very informal) job listings and email me if you’re interested! I’d love to fill these spots with readers and followers who are excited about the work before using a hiring site, so respond soon if you’d like to join in this important mission.

Next week I’ll be on Iowa Catholic Radio talking with Joe Leonetti during his morning show about Accepting the Gift. Hopefully I can even making a quick, shameless plug for my book. You can listen online HERE or if you’re local tune into 1150 AM, 88.5 FM, or 94.5 FM on Wednesday morning between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. CST. I should be on around 7:15 a.m. but it’s live radio so, no promises.

I think that’s everything. No van meant no exciting day trips, though we did try out the new restaurant in town that serves all their sandwiches on large pickles instead of bread. Four of us liked it, one didn’t, and two wouldn’t even give it a try. #picklereubenalltheway

What sandwich would you eat on a pickle??? Write it down in your Takes and link it up below. Be sure to include a link back to this post so your readers can find the rest of the Quick Takes. I look forward to reading your posts!