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Mar. 6th, 2010 05:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameSo far today I've eaten:
-a tiny bit of canteloupe
-a few sugar snap peas
-a bunch of leftover roasted cauliflower from last night
-a donut
-some apple slices with cheddar cheese
It's kind of like that Sesame Street song, One of these things is not like the others...
I am extremely tired. There is not really a way to express this tiredness. I woke up almost panicking about how hard it seemed to get out of bed; "Am I pregnant?! Am I diseased?! Internal bleeding?!" (my guess is no, no and no,btw)
I just...I dunno. Monday was a whirl of blitzcleaning and dropping off our van to be serviced (tires and oil) and getting dropped off back over there to pick it up only to find it needed more work and I was stranded, and more blitzcleaning, and email and phone planning, as I anxiously awaited what Nancy would say about the portion of one of my books that I'd mailed her. Late that night I got replies, she said she was breathless, she'd cried, I gave her goosebumps, it was crazy! Crazily awesome.
Tuesday I got up on almost no sleep and ran out to the store in the prius, and Starbucks for caffeine, and did more last minute cleaning, and got all the kids up and dressed, and Nancy came. And it was a GREAT visit - we went through my partial manuscript and she gave me names and numbers for doctors and nurses she thinks I should quote and even sort of hinted around about writing a foreword for me, it was really exciting, but more than that she is just so WONDERFUL to have around in her own right. We ate and talked and laughed and I got pictures of her reading to all the kids. Grant and I managed to co-cook while she was here and she drove me to get my van out of the shop...where it turns out I had to pay $743. When I had just payed $512 the day before when it hadn't been done. New shocks, new brakes, they fixed the interior lights and on and on. ARGH we were not prepared for almost $1300 in sudden vehicle expenses. And then it was sad to have Nancy leave, but I was still happy. My mother in law called to say that Robby would be getting out of the hospital the next day (Wed) which is WONDERFUL and...I am so proud of him. When I visited him over the weekend we talked so much about how I can't help him if he's in residential treatment,a nd if he keeps taking so many unneeded meds he really will go crazy, and he actually took my advice and broke down and told the people in there that he was exaggerating and trying to get attention and quit acting. I am sure that was extremely difficult to do.
Wednesday is always madness, I have to get A and A to their 3 in a row dance classes up in Tamiami and get Isaac and Jake to AWANA down here in Homestead during the time the classes are going on. Everyone was on time, Ananda with her hair bunned and Aaron with his shoes found...Jake and Isaac with their vests on and books and dues in hand and verses memorized. Elise doesn't want to sit in the van that long - she stayed at my mil's this time, which they all loved. Including Robby, who was home. We worked out that he would come here for the next two days and then spend the weekend with her, when she's off work. So I had to go home and clean clean clean again because Robby's therapist was coming here to meet him, and read to everyone and blah blah blah. And go out and do late night shopping because I was going to have two teenaged boys here for Thursday and Friday, eating. The good news was that my brother's stupid transcripts FINALLY CAME IN THE MAIL FOR JOBCORPS. So he and I made a whole plan for the next day and I tried to get him to go to sleep earlier. He took it upon himself to shave with Grant's trimmers, wonders will never cease. Aaron was finishing all of his schoolwork for several days running, too.
Thursday was like:
-wake up at 7:45 (did I mention I got to sleep around 5 am?), nurse Elise back down to sleep
-take Bob out to JobCorps with bus fare for the return trip and a lot of instructions
-get home in time to meet Robby at the door arriving
-talk with him for half an hour while I made a heaping massive pile of french toast, turkey bacon and sliced oranges - he is very easy to talk with, I really enjoy his company
-get Ananda and Aaron up, the 4 of us had breakfast
-get Jake and Elise up and dressed, and then Isaac up and dressed, and serve the three of them breakfast
-enforce Ananda and Aaron's morning chores
-wake Grant up and get him breakfast and tell him there are frozen pizzas for lunch as I collapse for a nap
-up at 2, take a shower with G, check in with Bob about how it went at JobCorps, then rush everyone out the door along with a bag of packed snacks and some other accessories, to PATH
-Where everyone plays with friends, my kids did more physical fitness testing, I told my friends about Nancy's reaction to my book
-drive to Ron Ehman park, near the location of Aaron's special rehearsal - great driving talk and music with Robby. Tetherball, swinging, it was good, until Elise face planted in the sand off a swing badly - mouth, eyes and nose FULL of sand, one hand swollen and I thought it might be broken until she was nursing and calming down...her and Annie and I walked around the path alone, talking, and then Aaron sat on a bench with Elise and I for awhile talking, and then I snuggled with Jake until it was time to go
-we go drop Aaron off at his special rehearsal (for the dance competition at the end of the month, in Orlando. That his dance teacher is paying for, she wants him competing with her so badly. She begged me with tears in her eyes to let him do it O_O )While he did that, the rest of us made the trek to my mil's and back to get Robby's meds for the night and morning so he could just spend the night instead of coming back all early again. By this point I had a movie on in the van to placate the little ones and Robby was buying their compliance with mini-marshmallows. We talked about the autism spectrum, dairy, Lily Allen lyrics and our mutual... admiration for Taylor Lautner. With him and Taylor it's apparently sort of destiny, since Robby once stumbled upon him signing autographs at a Hot Topic AND he used to watch Sharkboy and Lava Girl when he was a kid. They're basically engaged.
-HOME. Everyone is starving and in and out of the kitchen while I make creamy mushroom chicken, roasted broccoli and some whole grain rice a roni.
-we eat. I give Isaac a bath with the special dyes-the-water-pink things he got for his birthday, and then Jake and Elise a bubble bath, and get them all in footed pajamas. Force Annie to brush her hair. Read to people and they go to sleep. Realize Robby is already out and cover him with a blanket. Argue with my brother about washing dishes.
-read a bunch of fan fiction til Grant gets home from work and we have some unusually strained conversation about his tendency to take after his dad and have expectations of me that lead to scolding when I don't meet standards
-come to some kind of resolution and black out in his arms - this was like, I don't know, 4 am.
Friday, I got woke up by people telling me Darrien and Naja had just arrived at 11:15. They were supposed to arrive at 1 so everyone was asleep and Robby let them in since he was on a couch near the door. They're my friend Kristin's kids and she's going through a divorce and doing CNA school on Fridays - so whenever her mom has something that interferes with her watching them on a Friday, they come here. They are great and no trouble, I just wasn't expecting them yet. Apparently the grandma was confused about a lot of details. This day turned out good though - partially because I went on my second Starbucks run of the week and refueled before I did anything else. We had nowhere to go but a potluck dinner at Kristin's later in the night and it was fun. I had Naja and Elise up on a step stool helping me make scones, Isaac had people to play cards with, Bob even went out and played with Darrien in the yard (Darrien idolizes Bob). I did catch Aaron and Darrien trying to light the grass on fire o_O Mostly it's surprisingly relaxed and not as loud as you would expect - we watched The Office by ourselves before G had to go to work.
When Kristin arrived from school my sister was in normal postpartum sahm crisis on the phone, stranded with no vehicle, and so we rearranged some carseats and rescued her. The potluck ended up awesome...I brought roasted cauliflower, sliced tomatoes and REALLY good lemon butter scallops. Kristin had HOMEMADE BUTTERNUT SQUASH RAVIOLI with a sage butter full of mushrooms on top, and homemade fettucinni with homemade pesto and OM NOM NOM. My sister brought her donut pans and made donuts while we passed Elizabeth around. Jake ate like...15 garlic rolls for dinner, and was in heaven. Brian, my sister's son, even did really well. I felt very useful corralling him off to be alone when he got overstimulated and taking him to the bathroom to "try" every so often.
It was REALLY BIZARRE when we all arrived in the driveway. Kristin's sister was there and they are the same height, same thin build, each wearing tight jeans and a clingy, long sleeved dark green top, with the same assymetrical, shorter in the back haircut. Keegan's is purple, but whatever. Different colored Converse. Laura and I both had on the same jeans, a black shirt, same proportions, basically same height and skin tone, different colored Kinos (flip flops). We're standing across the driveway in pairs aghast before everyone starts laughing. Carina, who's house Kristin is sharing, thought it was kind of hilarious and said if her sister was there it would have been even worse.
By the time the talking, the cooking, the eating, the dessert, and more talking were done, and we had gotten toys squared away and dishes and sweeping done and all of it, my kids and I got home at like 12:30. Snuggling, teeth, books, bed.
I woke up today and Robby had been picked up, people had eaten breakfast. Grant is off. The two of us walked over to a lot a block down and shot arrows. Now he's listening to some educational podcast with the 3 biggest ones.
THIS IS WHY I HAVE NOT BEEN UPDATING. How am I supposed to update?!
I have pictures I want to post and will try to.
IF YOU HOMESCHOOL: I have been meaning to tell everyone that Kumon workbooks, which are AWESOME, are currently 4 for 3 on Amazon, with free shipping. I ordered 14 of them for the older 4 of my kids, mid-week, and it was only $76 total. Which is a really good deal.
Also, if you go to cricketmags.com and use the code N401, you can get year subscriptions to really high quality, no-ad kids' magazines for only $24.95. Usually they are $33 each. I've been wanting a couple for a year now and finally went ahead and got Muse for A and A and Ask for Isaac.
-a tiny bit of canteloupe
-a few sugar snap peas
-a bunch of leftover roasted cauliflower from last night
-a donut
-some apple slices with cheddar cheese
It's kind of like that Sesame Street song, One of these things is not like the others...
I am extremely tired. There is not really a way to express this tiredness. I woke up almost panicking about how hard it seemed to get out of bed; "Am I pregnant?! Am I diseased?! Internal bleeding?!" (my guess is no, no and no,btw)
I just...I dunno. Monday was a whirl of blitzcleaning and dropping off our van to be serviced (tires and oil) and getting dropped off back over there to pick it up only to find it needed more work and I was stranded, and more blitzcleaning, and email and phone planning, as I anxiously awaited what Nancy would say about the portion of one of my books that I'd mailed her. Late that night I got replies, she said she was breathless, she'd cried, I gave her goosebumps, it was crazy! Crazily awesome.
Tuesday I got up on almost no sleep and ran out to the store in the prius, and Starbucks for caffeine, and did more last minute cleaning, and got all the kids up and dressed, and Nancy came. And it was a GREAT visit - we went through my partial manuscript and she gave me names and numbers for doctors and nurses she thinks I should quote and even sort of hinted around about writing a foreword for me, it was really exciting, but more than that she is just so WONDERFUL to have around in her own right. We ate and talked and laughed and I got pictures of her reading to all the kids. Grant and I managed to co-cook while she was here and she drove me to get my van out of the shop...where it turns out I had to pay $743. When I had just payed $512 the day before when it hadn't been done. New shocks, new brakes, they fixed the interior lights and on and on. ARGH we were not prepared for almost $1300 in sudden vehicle expenses. And then it was sad to have Nancy leave, but I was still happy. My mother in law called to say that Robby would be getting out of the hospital the next day (Wed) which is WONDERFUL and...I am so proud of him. When I visited him over the weekend we talked so much about how I can't help him if he's in residential treatment,a nd if he keeps taking so many unneeded meds he really will go crazy, and he actually took my advice and broke down and told the people in there that he was exaggerating and trying to get attention and quit acting. I am sure that was extremely difficult to do.
Wednesday is always madness, I have to get A and A to their 3 in a row dance classes up in Tamiami and get Isaac and Jake to AWANA down here in Homestead during the time the classes are going on. Everyone was on time, Ananda with her hair bunned and Aaron with his shoes found...Jake and Isaac with their vests on and books and dues in hand and verses memorized. Elise doesn't want to sit in the van that long - she stayed at my mil's this time, which they all loved. Including Robby, who was home. We worked out that he would come here for the next two days and then spend the weekend with her, when she's off work. So I had to go home and clean clean clean again because Robby's therapist was coming here to meet him, and read to everyone and blah blah blah. And go out and do late night shopping because I was going to have two teenaged boys here for Thursday and Friday, eating. The good news was that my brother's stupid transcripts FINALLY CAME IN THE MAIL FOR JOBCORPS. So he and I made a whole plan for the next day and I tried to get him to go to sleep earlier. He took it upon himself to shave with Grant's trimmers, wonders will never cease. Aaron was finishing all of his schoolwork for several days running, too.
Thursday was like:
-wake up at 7:45 (did I mention I got to sleep around 5 am?), nurse Elise back down to sleep
-take Bob out to JobCorps with bus fare for the return trip and a lot of instructions
-get home in time to meet Robby at the door arriving
-talk with him for half an hour while I made a heaping massive pile of french toast, turkey bacon and sliced oranges - he is very easy to talk with, I really enjoy his company
-get Ananda and Aaron up, the 4 of us had breakfast
-get Jake and Elise up and dressed, and then Isaac up and dressed, and serve the three of them breakfast
-enforce Ananda and Aaron's morning chores
-wake Grant up and get him breakfast and tell him there are frozen pizzas for lunch as I collapse for a nap
-up at 2, take a shower with G, check in with Bob about how it went at JobCorps, then rush everyone out the door along with a bag of packed snacks and some other accessories, to PATH
-Where everyone plays with friends, my kids did more physical fitness testing, I told my friends about Nancy's reaction to my book
-drive to Ron Ehman park, near the location of Aaron's special rehearsal - great driving talk and music with Robby. Tetherball, swinging, it was good, until Elise face planted in the sand off a swing badly - mouth, eyes and nose FULL of sand, one hand swollen and I thought it might be broken until she was nursing and calming down...her and Annie and I walked around the path alone, talking, and then Aaron sat on a bench with Elise and I for awhile talking, and then I snuggled with Jake until it was time to go
-we go drop Aaron off at his special rehearsal (for the dance competition at the end of the month, in Orlando. That his dance teacher is paying for, she wants him competing with her so badly. She begged me with tears in her eyes to let him do it O_O )While he did that, the rest of us made the trek to my mil's and back to get Robby's meds for the night and morning so he could just spend the night instead of coming back all early again. By this point I had a movie on in the van to placate the little ones and Robby was buying their compliance with mini-marshmallows. We talked about the autism spectrum, dairy, Lily Allen lyrics and our mutual... admiration for Taylor Lautner. With him and Taylor it's apparently sort of destiny, since Robby once stumbled upon him signing autographs at a Hot Topic AND he used to watch Sharkboy and Lava Girl when he was a kid. They're basically engaged.
-HOME. Everyone is starving and in and out of the kitchen while I make creamy mushroom chicken, roasted broccoli and some whole grain rice a roni.
-we eat. I give Isaac a bath with the special dyes-the-water-pink things he got for his birthday, and then Jake and Elise a bubble bath, and get them all in footed pajamas. Force Annie to brush her hair. Read to people and they go to sleep. Realize Robby is already out and cover him with a blanket. Argue with my brother about washing dishes.
-read a bunch of fan fiction til Grant gets home from work and we have some unusually strained conversation about his tendency to take after his dad and have expectations of me that lead to scolding when I don't meet standards
-come to some kind of resolution and black out in his arms - this was like, I don't know, 4 am.
Friday, I got woke up by people telling me Darrien and Naja had just arrived at 11:15. They were supposed to arrive at 1 so everyone was asleep and Robby let them in since he was on a couch near the door. They're my friend Kristin's kids and she's going through a divorce and doing CNA school on Fridays - so whenever her mom has something that interferes with her watching them on a Friday, they come here. They are great and no trouble, I just wasn't expecting them yet. Apparently the grandma was confused about a lot of details. This day turned out good though - partially because I went on my second Starbucks run of the week and refueled before I did anything else. We had nowhere to go but a potluck dinner at Kristin's later in the night and it was fun. I had Naja and Elise up on a step stool helping me make scones, Isaac had people to play cards with, Bob even went out and played with Darrien in the yard (Darrien idolizes Bob). I did catch Aaron and Darrien trying to light the grass on fire o_O Mostly it's surprisingly relaxed and not as loud as you would expect - we watched The Office by ourselves before G had to go to work.
When Kristin arrived from school my sister was in normal postpartum sahm crisis on the phone, stranded with no vehicle, and so we rearranged some carseats and rescued her. The potluck ended up awesome...I brought roasted cauliflower, sliced tomatoes and REALLY good lemon butter scallops. Kristin had HOMEMADE BUTTERNUT SQUASH RAVIOLI with a sage butter full of mushrooms on top, and homemade fettucinni with homemade pesto and OM NOM NOM. My sister brought her donut pans and made donuts while we passed Elizabeth around. Jake ate like...15 garlic rolls for dinner, and was in heaven. Brian, my sister's son, even did really well. I felt very useful corralling him off to be alone when he got overstimulated and taking him to the bathroom to "try" every so often.
It was REALLY BIZARRE when we all arrived in the driveway. Kristin's sister was there and they are the same height, same thin build, each wearing tight jeans and a clingy, long sleeved dark green top, with the same assymetrical, shorter in the back haircut. Keegan's is purple, but whatever. Different colored Converse. Laura and I both had on the same jeans, a black shirt, same proportions, basically same height and skin tone, different colored Kinos (flip flops). We're standing across the driveway in pairs aghast before everyone starts laughing. Carina, who's house Kristin is sharing, thought it was kind of hilarious and said if her sister was there it would have been even worse.
By the time the talking, the cooking, the eating, the dessert, and more talking were done, and we had gotten toys squared away and dishes and sweeping done and all of it, my kids and I got home at like 12:30. Snuggling, teeth, books, bed.
I woke up today and Robby had been picked up, people had eaten breakfast. Grant is off. The two of us walked over to a lot a block down and shot arrows. Now he's listening to some educational podcast with the 3 biggest ones.
THIS IS WHY I HAVE NOT BEEN UPDATING. How am I supposed to update?!
I have pictures I want to post and will try to.
IF YOU HOMESCHOOL: I have been meaning to tell everyone that Kumon workbooks, which are AWESOME, are currently 4 for 3 on Amazon, with free shipping. I ordered 14 of them for the older 4 of my kids, mid-week, and it was only $76 total. Which is a really good deal.
Also, if you go to cricketmags.com and use the code N401, you can get year subscriptions to really high quality, no-ad kids' magazines for only $24.95. Usually they are $33 each. I've been wanting a couple for a year now and finally went ahead and got Muse for A and A and Ask for Isaac.
