Bette decided that they would do another ski vacation sometime during the next few years before Daniel went off to college. Bette gathered the laundry and started it up as she did not know when Tina would be getting up. She also decided to get out her graduate term papers and start and reread her notes and establish a grading scale. If they included all the elements, she asked for to be in the paper and the paper was well organized and reasonably written, they would get an A. There would be a deduction of a letter grade for any of the missing elements or if it were poorly organized or poorly written. Poorly written meant multiple misspellings, run on sentences or phrases which were not sentences at all. These were graduate students and were expected to be able to write a paper using correct spelling and rules of grammar. She fully anticipated that most of the class would get A’s. On first read, she had been pleased with what had been presented.

She then started to reread each paper and put her grade on the worksheet. The house was quiet and she was not in a moving car, so the process went rather quickly. She would then go back and write her grade and make a summary comment on the paper. She would then file her notes after she posted the grades to the internet. They would be ready to hand back on Tuesday. On Monday, she would grade their mid-term exam. She hoped to have those back to the class by Thursday.

Mary would be coming in on Thursday. Bette had arranged for a car to meet her at the airport. On Friday, she and Tina would help her unpack her boxes and get situated in her room. On Saturday for lunch, Paris and Jeanette, Kit and Sonny, Mary, Tina and herself would meet and go over the findings on Melvin Porter. Hopefully, that would put that to bed. Sunday would be a day of rest and relaxation. It would be a day when Mary and Margaret might spend some time together. Daniel would do whatever he was going to do. This was his weekend to spend at John David’s house. Bette smiled. She wondered if Daniel would share all he had learned over the weekend. She laughed. That was to be expected. She then wondered how Barbara was handling the sex education of her two boys. Well, some day she might ask but not anytime soon. Bette was actually glad that they had decided to start the conversations this weekend. She believed that Daniel was ready and it was the appropriate time to start this conversation. Tina was right. According to the research she read, Daniel was beginning puberty and was now into his adolescence. It was far better to begin a little early than to start late.