For the book deal:

- Maitresse begins homeschooling her A in in Chelsea, in New York City in the Fall of 2003.
- A learns from the Well-Trained Mind curriculum, plus some smatterings of Maitresse's doing. One such smattering is "How to Think Like a Goth." Or something.
- A begins to write cryptic signs in Latin and posts them on his bedroom door. Things like "keep out" and "girls not allowed" in Latin.
- She employed Catherine as the French maitresse, after meeting her at an art gallery exhibit in the Lower East Side, complete with pretty gothic accordian player.
- Maitresse and A make regular rounds at the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Natural History, Asia Society, Japan Society, Hellenistic Society, Museum of the Moving Picture, you get the picture.
- Maitresse and A learn about New York's homeless people.
- Maitresse and A learn about CBGB's and punk music.
- Maitresse signs up A for fabulous marine science internship on the Hudson River, all of two blocks away from Harvey Weinstein's Miramax headquarters.
- We bump into Harvey's entourage several times after "school" at the marine science internship.
- A becomes friends with his two internship supervisors. The last supervisor soon functions as A's "big brother" and takes him boating and talks to him about "life" and stuff over lunch (at the lunch table is a big jar that reads "Like." If anyone says "like" in conversation, he or she must plunk in $1 into the "Like" jar).
- A makes plans to start a punk band with his friends in Chelsea.
- We move out to a town in the countryside.
- Maitresse enlists homeschooling bloggers to do something crazy called NaNoWriMo. Maitresse doesn't finish on time (due to &#$$ stuff that happens during the month of November), but just about all the other homeschooling blogging NaNoWriMo entrants do (Maitresse is incredibly inspired by all this)!
- Countryside town is full of rich spoiled kids who don't understand us, nor we them, and we head back to City.
- A's "big brother" at marine science internship dies in skiing accident and the details look like something out of the movie "Fargo."

- We cope. And we continue...