Samantha Pierce

Today is the big day. We start the two days of services culminating with the interment of my sister's body in a cemetery. Not what I wanted to be doing this week. This week I wanted to chase the totality of the solar eclipse as so many did on Monday. This week I wanted to be enjoying Tennessee barbecue and bourbon. But the plot twist of my sister's death at the beginning of the month means I have to adapt to significant set of changed circumstances. Now I mourn in quiet and with patience while others act out their grief. I strive to be thankful for the everyday blessings to keep my world from going too far off the rails. Moms have to keep it together for everyone else. Even people who aren't your children. I'm thankful for the unseen strength that keeps me going even if I drop a detail here or there. I'm thankful that I don't have to be perfect or conform to the standards of others. There is something greater than the opinions of others by which to measure my

Late night last minute preparations for a CSE meeting for one of the children in the morning. I already know what I'm going to say and I already have information at hand to back me up. New York state education regulations as written and implemented tend to throw stumbling blocks in the paths of students with IEP/504 Plans. A student with an IEP/504 Plan that includes an extended time testing accommodation can end up enduring 12 hours of testing to complete Regents exams if they have two exams scheduled on the same day. New York doesn't reschedule these exams to accommodate students with IEP/504 Plans. One option is for student to take one of the exams months later during one of the other allowed testing period in January, June, and August. The other option is to not take one of the exams at all. I'm not a fan of any of those options for my children or anyone else's. So I've got my copy of the full text of IDEA, all 162 pages of it. Download your copy to

Thankful for the life my sister lived and the lives she touched while she was with us. Please donate to the Sanchia A Callender Memorial Fund to help us build on her legacy of helping others.

Black and White Mixed People . I saw the title of this post as hubby was working on it and my response was, "What the heck is that supposed to mean?" The post discusses somewhat the changing attitudes in America towards definitions of race with regards to people of (recently) mixed race. People like to talk about the one drop rule as the main factor in how race is assigned to individuals. I am of the opinion the that the one drop rule is more important to certain select segments of the American community than it is to the majority of America. I'm willing to bet that a lot of the people reading this post right now don't know what the one drop rule is and would find it to be nonsensical once they learned what it was.