I want to remember how Elise says "all people". It means "everyone in the world" or "hey guys!" or "our entire family" or "that whole crowd over there".
Today, while we were home alone with the other kids off at music camp, I was on the computer in my room. I came out to the main part of the house and saw her (naked) doing wild kung fu ninja fighting against the air, all over the library. She stopped, gasping for breath, to tell me, "Me was pretending bad guys come in our house, but now them dead all 'round me on floor". How's that for feminism? She don't need no stinking prince.
She likes to sit with strangers on the trolley and always tells the driver hello and goodbye. She is a serious trooper, walking round trips with me in the scathing, miserable, hellacious, didImentionit'sreallybad heat.
The camp the bigger kids are at is AWESOME...passionate teachers doing one on one attention for everybody, lots of nonstop activity with no daycare time fillers...Isaac and Jake performed a long, multistep, completely ridiculous song and dance for us called the Too-teh-tah, this evening, that they learned there. Isaac also told me about quarter, half and whole notes, the counts for each, and what letter each string on his violin is, before demonstrating how to get it in and out of the case and how to position it on his chin and hold the bow. For being 4 days into musical instruction, I think that's pretty badass.
This is another perfect example of how my older kids' and younger kids' lives are differing; like how I always wanted but couldn't ever afford a play kitchen for A and A, but we cooked in the kitchen together constantly? Now I just want them all out of the kitchen when I'm cooking, but the little kids have a play kitchen and make us pretend food constantly. Likewise, I taught Ananda and Aaron how to play the recorder at 4-6 and music theory and all that. I haven't had the time or patience for that with the younger kids...but they're in symphony camp.
Sometimes I remember being a single mom with a toddler on each hip, in line for help with my electric bill or a farmshare handout, and am really astounded by how I'm really DOING THIS, I'm REALLY giving them everything I wanted to give them....I watched Annie set down her music on a couple of collections of classic stories on a dining chair in our library, earlier, to practice cello, and was just thinking...yeah. I'm fucking doing it. All those sleepless nights, all those days when I had no idea how to cook meals or nurse or had never heard of a sling or was trying to find a groove in what felt totally foreign...well, I've broken the damned cycle and my kids ARE being raised differently. I think once you have a 10 and an 11 year old you're allowed some measure of ownership of your success thus far :p
Friends (and my sister) who have babies, toddlers and/or pregnancies really make me think. Breastfeeding exclusively takes up ALL OF YOUR TIME during the first few months of the baby's life. Chasing a one year old and keeping them from dying is so exhausting. I kind of can't believe I don't spend ANY TIME AT ALL EVER trying to get ANYONE to TAKE A FUCKING NAP DAMNITT, I mean...there was a time when I would lay there with my eyes bugging out of my head patting someone imagining how many cumulative hours I had spent in that position like I would die from it.
Anyway. I got done with my exhaustively cited and sourced research paper on why home birth is a superior choice in America, today, which was pretty much my final exam in english. I thought that would be a great idea, to write about that, I have a mini-library here on the subject already and a whole email folder full of links to articles, and I'm passionate about it. But then I started, after I'd already turned in my draft proposal, and was like OH YEAH I ALSO HAVE PTSD RELEVANT TO THIS TOPIC because my research and writing was seriously triggering me to the point that I was constantly blanking out, which is...antithetical to continuity in a research paper, to say the least :p It also gave me pause about my surgery book, but I THINK that as that is a purging thing with more room for emotional exploration and not a strictly academic endeavor, it's easier to channel...I turned the paper in this evening with apologies to my teacher, explaining that I hoped it wasn't too hysterical or disjointed. Then I pulled up a chair, since we didn't really have "class" today, just turning this in, and we talked for a long time about my educational plans and medical history and her educational history and family plans and how I can always contact her for recommendations and need to contact her when my personal writing is published. Good stuff.
My final three quizzes and big test in (online) social science were all on economics, my gosh, gag me with a spoon. UGH. I ended up averaging A on the quizzes and getting a B on the test, but. Ugh. So tedious. Also very doomsday re: the projected future of America's livelihood. Sometimes I wonder if Grant and I have a responsibility to resettle our family somewhere in Europe or New Zealand before the kids are grown. This empire is going the way of Rome.
So yeah. That's all for now. I may be editing in pictures shortly, or I may be in the bath. You just never can tell.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
