City Girl

While I am still baking biscotti and writing my columns for the local paper out here in Jersey County, Illinois, I'm not entirely the Country Girl anymore. In August, we rented a house in the tony enclave of Clayton in St. Louis so the kids could go to the terrific public schools here (Spanish starts in first grade!). Last year, I was schlepping Oskar into St. Louis every day to attend a special private school that caters to kids with learning disabilities. Oskar has a weird and challenging cocktail (a "witch's brew" as one of his doctors put it) of neurological and behavioral impairments: Tourette's Syndrome, mild Asperger's, ADHD, and a few other acronyms. It was a brutal commute and every day was stressful. So, for the half the amount of that tuition, we rented a beautiful 3-bedroom duplex in the fantastic DeMun/Captain neighborhood, and now both Oskar (5th grade) and Willa (1st) are at the same school. We go back to the farm on weekends and Dave Stine does his best to make it to the city a few times a week. We're still trying to get into a groove, but so far so good...