Days 2 and 3 of 100
Jun. 8th, 2015 03:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameWow, I fell of that wagon quick, eh?
I had a time warp moment Friday night, sitting on the couch with Annie lying on me as we watched a movie. I was just overcome all of a sudden with how we were sitting there in a heap, 33 and 15, and it really seemed suddenly like it hadn't been any time AT ALL since we were 18 and nothing, just a few blocks away, in my high school bedroom at my Nana and Pa's house. Normally it feels like a very, very long time, and like it makes perfect sense that we're the ages we are now. Something about running my hands through her soft hair as she tried not to fall asleep, there wearing my old teenage clothes dug out of a closet, made it all blur together. Like it's basically the same thing. Like I could really just wake up tomorrow and find us 48 and 30.
Time seems to be jerking and racing forward a lot lately. Isaac's a middle schooler now, since his 5th grade graduation. Aaron's a high schooler. Ananda's been visiting with all her old homeschool friends who are home from college, and now that her birthday's passed it turns out she's fine waiting awhile for her restricted license after all. She gets tense if I bring it up. I think it's easier, and way more fun, for her to plan the hypothetical cross country roadtrips she'll be taking in 3 years if they're completely removed from reality.
Elise has had another big reading leap forward, and every WEEK that I check Jake's grown another centimeter.
I got really emotional about Ananda and Aaron being almost all grown up, not long ago. It came out of nowhere and hit hard enough for me to be crying first thing one morning... someone on fb started a conversation about reading to kids, and I was lamenting how I haven't read to those two in a long time, actually, even though they still love it, just because there aren't enough hours in the day - and then I realized I might just never read to them again. It was like packing away baby clothes used to be, just knocking the wind out of me in a way I haven't experienced for years. Suddenly I was aware that this - them, raising the two of them - is all almost over. A whole rush of very strong things, like playdoh and easels, late night talks, roadtrips and bathtimes and standing on chairs at the counter just felt like they washed over me at once.
It hasn't seemed so gut crampingly sad since then. It's a thing and I'm aware of it in a thoughtful way. I imagine there will be more of those moments in the coming years and I suppose I just hope they continue to smoothe out into happy enough ways to move forward as I keep riding them out.
Yesterday was wonderful. Backstory: Grant and I have been having an encounter* for awhile about whether or not to get Aaron a new (to him) piano, for his birthday. He wanted a new piano LAST year, for his birthday, and we ALMOST did it, but ended up just getting him the tarantula (and enclosure/supplies) that he'd also wanted for a long long time...albeit not so much as he wanted the piano. This year, Grant wanted it to just be a non-option - in and amongst spending more than we really wanted to on Elise's and Ananda's birthdays, needing a new fridge, needing new tires AND brakes for the car, etc etc, with a family trip coming up - it's just a lot. Which I get. We can get Aaron better skates, like Annie's skates, which he covets. ("Covets"? o_O ...You get the picture.)
So, I've been dedicated to the cause of somehow manifesting a piano. My plan for this was to send out a mass email asking if anyone knew of anyone moving who might be getting rid of a piano cheap or free, putting ISO adds in the paper and on Craigslist, asking some other moms to keep their eyes out, etc. We still have a couple more weeks til his birthday, and we told Aaron to not even expect a piano for his birthday because it's hundreds of dollars more than where we're setting the gift budget cap. Unfortunately, our existing piano has taken a serious and sudden nosedive, with black keys coming OFF, more keys sticking, AND a new key that doesn't work at all. It started out as a very cheap old thing needing to be tuned, seven years ago, but this is ridiculous. After my last entry here, I was trying to reason with Aaron to not even play the old one anymore and just be patient, and considering places I could take him where there are pianos he can play without bleeding on keys - like the UM school of music, where Isaac has clarinet mentoring.
Then motherfucking Shaun starts sending me links to Craigslist pianos he's willing to buy Aaron/pick up and move, basically immediately, for his birthday. Shaun is unofficial godfather and honorary music mentor to my kids... he's brought over everything from didgeridoos to ocarinas, and taught them the difference between a guitar and a mandolin years ago.
This actually unfurled into a LUDICROUS scenario with someone yanking him around wherein Shaun was texting as two different people from two different numbers, I was texting the seller, and the seller was telling us contradicting things and just - screenshots, it was ridic, I don't even know how to explain it now.
The point is, "Uncle" Shaun got Aaron a piano for his birthday. Our gift will probably be technical maintenance and tuning :) Aaron is THRILLED. So, so happy. I was actually crying.
I do not feel I'm doing this situation justice at all.
Shaun and Cristy spent the day here, after that, and Grant kept us supplied with lunch and dinner from scratch...homemade salsa, jambalaya, tea, all kinds of things. I stuffed portabellos at one point. I also split a bottle of wine with Cristy while they taught us how to plays Settlers of Catan.
*Back at church camp we weren't supposed to "fight," so we would have "water balloon encounters" - now this is how I think of all polite disagreements ;)
Today has been lowkey. My stomach is killing me... I think I might get a stomachache every time Grant makes homemade salsa and I eat it? How can that even be? I do not want it to be; that is some damned fine salsa.
I've been studying a lot and will basically continue returning to that throughout the day every day for the next two weeks. We even have study hours built into our road tripping plans... the trip is for another junior derby bout, this time featuring more of the kids, and we'll be staying with the same friends again.
Our car, the one with the new tires and new brakes - which are of course normal maintenance things - now needs a new Radiator fan. This is the car we just bought two summers ago, a 2011 we're still making payments on. But we drive it A LOT, and I am beginning to fear it's going to start having random, non-normal-maintenance problems left and right. When we bought it, it had around 30,000 miles. Now, it's got over 100,000 miles. It's currently being kept overnight after overheating in stop and go traffic. I am side eye-ing the situation, because our van has issues semi-regularly but since it's never actually broken down while we were out, and it's paid off, and we have a reliable car to fall back on, it's not the end of the world and we make it work. We rent a van for trips, which works out as pretty manageable because Grant's job has an employee perks program that you can rent cars through at steep discounts, AND we can apply our AAA membership. But the car in the shop is the commuter, going to and from either Ft Lauderdale, FIU, or some other Miami locale almost every single day.
I think I feel like something still being financed and under 5 years old should automatically be an infallible vehicle without problems, reality be damned. Payments, dammit! I don't want to trade THIS in for some other car-with-payments, I want to get a new van eventually when this is paid off!
We'll probably end up getting a new van whenever we sell the house, and pay outright again since we owe way less than our house is worth. That's years off, though. Also WTH is going on with how minivan prices have shot up since 2008 when we bought ours?! The same things that were $32k then are $46k, now. Used vans that would have been $18k are $30k. Cray.
Related(ish): I applied for a Firestone credit card today on a lark, since it would be really convenient to be able to charge this radiator fan right now before our trip, and got approved for a thousand dollar limit. This repairing-my-credit business is like a whole new world. A really cautious one that involves not wanting to get in over my head.
Related to that: After a year of paying on my Visa, Capital One recently bumped my limit from $500 to $1500 (without my asking). Which we ended up immediately using to buy a fridge, and are now paying off, but wow, how great to have had it available for that! The point is, my goal of fixing my credit from a couple of years back is going well and it feels really kick ass to see the steady, gradual improvement.
I wish it wasn't so weirdly taboo to talk about amounts of money. It seems so stupid to me, that it is.
Speaking of money taboos, I had a weird moment tonight of not wanting to badmouth Grandma, when Annie asked me what messed my credit up so badly to begin with. The truth is that when I was 19, I found out the first time I tried to apply for an apartment that my credit was totally shot from all kinds of debt my mom amassed in my name while I was a minor. With the options of pressing charges or just paying it all both seeming impossible, I ended up waiting for it all to age out of my report. I did also mess my score up a bit more myself, particularly during my brief stint as a single mom prioritizing the necessities. That's what I tried to over emphasize, tonight.
Books:
Ananda and I were at BJ's the other day (AS PER USUAL) and they had a big, hardcover edition of Oz books #6-10 for only $6! We have a boxed set of the first 4 here already, and I'm excited to read all of these to Jake and Elise :)
Annie's currently starting the Miss Peregrine books, and then going back to the Vampire Chronicles. Now that it's summer she wants to read like crazy.
I cannot WAIT to start Narnia with Isaac, even though it's going to be sad when we're done with Harry Potter (very very soon). The Deathly Hallows is so intense with him. Going back to Professor Umbridge and Snape's pensieve with Jake is so mild by comparison to the things they deal with in the last book.
Between my kids and school I feel like it's a pipedream that I would ever have time to read for my own solitary pleasure again, but the mental backlog I do have is currently mostly Neil Gaiman.
I had a time warp moment Friday night, sitting on the couch with Annie lying on me as we watched a movie. I was just overcome all of a sudden with how we were sitting there in a heap, 33 and 15, and it really seemed suddenly like it hadn't been any time AT ALL since we were 18 and nothing, just a few blocks away, in my high school bedroom at my Nana and Pa's house. Normally it feels like a very, very long time, and like it makes perfect sense that we're the ages we are now. Something about running my hands through her soft hair as she tried not to fall asleep, there wearing my old teenage clothes dug out of a closet, made it all blur together. Like it's basically the same thing. Like I could really just wake up tomorrow and find us 48 and 30.
Time seems to be jerking and racing forward a lot lately. Isaac's a middle schooler now, since his 5th grade graduation. Aaron's a high schooler. Ananda's been visiting with all her old homeschool friends who are home from college, and now that her birthday's passed it turns out she's fine waiting awhile for her restricted license after all. She gets tense if I bring it up. I think it's easier, and way more fun, for her to plan the hypothetical cross country roadtrips she'll be taking in 3 years if they're completely removed from reality.
Elise has had another big reading leap forward, and every WEEK that I check Jake's grown another centimeter.
I got really emotional about Ananda and Aaron being almost all grown up, not long ago. It came out of nowhere and hit hard enough for me to be crying first thing one morning... someone on fb started a conversation about reading to kids, and I was lamenting how I haven't read to those two in a long time, actually, even though they still love it, just because there aren't enough hours in the day - and then I realized I might just never read to them again. It was like packing away baby clothes used to be, just knocking the wind out of me in a way I haven't experienced for years. Suddenly I was aware that this - them, raising the two of them - is all almost over. A whole rush of very strong things, like playdoh and easels, late night talks, roadtrips and bathtimes and standing on chairs at the counter just felt like they washed over me at once.
It hasn't seemed so gut crampingly sad since then. It's a thing and I'm aware of it in a thoughtful way. I imagine there will be more of those moments in the coming years and I suppose I just hope they continue to smoothe out into happy enough ways to move forward as I keep riding them out.
Yesterday was wonderful. Backstory: Grant and I have been having an encounter* for awhile about whether or not to get Aaron a new (to him) piano, for his birthday. He wanted a new piano LAST year, for his birthday, and we ALMOST did it, but ended up just getting him the tarantula (and enclosure/supplies) that he'd also wanted for a long long time...albeit not so much as he wanted the piano. This year, Grant wanted it to just be a non-option - in and amongst spending more than we really wanted to on Elise's and Ananda's birthdays, needing a new fridge, needing new tires AND brakes for the car, etc etc, with a family trip coming up - it's just a lot. Which I get. We can get Aaron better skates, like Annie's skates, which he covets. ("Covets"? o_O ...You get the picture.)
So, I've been dedicated to the cause of somehow manifesting a piano. My plan for this was to send out a mass email asking if anyone knew of anyone moving who might be getting rid of a piano cheap or free, putting ISO adds in the paper and on Craigslist, asking some other moms to keep their eyes out, etc. We still have a couple more weeks til his birthday, and we told Aaron to not even expect a piano for his birthday because it's hundreds of dollars more than where we're setting the gift budget cap. Unfortunately, our existing piano has taken a serious and sudden nosedive, with black keys coming OFF, more keys sticking, AND a new key that doesn't work at all. It started out as a very cheap old thing needing to be tuned, seven years ago, but this is ridiculous. After my last entry here, I was trying to reason with Aaron to not even play the old one anymore and just be patient, and considering places I could take him where there are pianos he can play without bleeding on keys - like the UM school of music, where Isaac has clarinet mentoring.
Then motherfucking Shaun starts sending me links to Craigslist pianos he's willing to buy Aaron/pick up and move, basically immediately, for his birthday. Shaun is unofficial godfather and honorary music mentor to my kids... he's brought over everything from didgeridoos to ocarinas, and taught them the difference between a guitar and a mandolin years ago.
This actually unfurled into a LUDICROUS scenario with someone yanking him around wherein Shaun was texting as two different people from two different numbers, I was texting the seller, and the seller was telling us contradicting things and just - screenshots, it was ridic, I don't even know how to explain it now.
The point is, "Uncle" Shaun got Aaron a piano for his birthday. Our gift will probably be technical maintenance and tuning :) Aaron is THRILLED. So, so happy. I was actually crying.
I do not feel I'm doing this situation justice at all.
Shaun and Cristy spent the day here, after that, and Grant kept us supplied with lunch and dinner from scratch...homemade salsa, jambalaya, tea, all kinds of things. I stuffed portabellos at one point. I also split a bottle of wine with Cristy while they taught us how to plays Settlers of Catan.
*Back at church camp we weren't supposed to "fight," so we would have "water balloon encounters" - now this is how I think of all polite disagreements ;)
Today has been lowkey. My stomach is killing me... I think I might get a stomachache every time Grant makes homemade salsa and I eat it? How can that even be? I do not want it to be; that is some damned fine salsa.
I've been studying a lot and will basically continue returning to that throughout the day every day for the next two weeks. We even have study hours built into our road tripping plans... the trip is for another junior derby bout, this time featuring more of the kids, and we'll be staying with the same friends again.
Our car, the one with the new tires and new brakes - which are of course normal maintenance things - now needs a new Radiator fan. This is the car we just bought two summers ago, a 2011 we're still making payments on. But we drive it A LOT, and I am beginning to fear it's going to start having random, non-normal-maintenance problems left and right. When we bought it, it had around 30,000 miles. Now, it's got over 100,000 miles. It's currently being kept overnight after overheating in stop and go traffic. I am side eye-ing the situation, because our van has issues semi-regularly but since it's never actually broken down while we were out, and it's paid off, and we have a reliable car to fall back on, it's not the end of the world and we make it work. We rent a van for trips, which works out as pretty manageable because Grant's job has an employee perks program that you can rent cars through at steep discounts, AND we can apply our AAA membership. But the car in the shop is the commuter, going to and from either Ft Lauderdale, FIU, or some other Miami locale almost every single day.
I think I feel like something still being financed and under 5 years old should automatically be an infallible vehicle without problems, reality be damned. Payments, dammit! I don't want to trade THIS in for some other car-with-payments, I want to get a new van eventually when this is paid off!
We'll probably end up getting a new van whenever we sell the house, and pay outright again since we owe way less than our house is worth. That's years off, though. Also WTH is going on with how minivan prices have shot up since 2008 when we bought ours?! The same things that were $32k then are $46k, now. Used vans that would have been $18k are $30k. Cray.
Related(ish): I applied for a Firestone credit card today on a lark, since it would be really convenient to be able to charge this radiator fan right now before our trip, and got approved for a thousand dollar limit. This repairing-my-credit business is like a whole new world. A really cautious one that involves not wanting to get in over my head.
Related to that: After a year of paying on my Visa, Capital One recently bumped my limit from $500 to $1500 (without my asking). Which we ended up immediately using to buy a fridge, and are now paying off, but wow, how great to have had it available for that! The point is, my goal of fixing my credit from a couple of years back is going well and it feels really kick ass to see the steady, gradual improvement.
I wish it wasn't so weirdly taboo to talk about amounts of money. It seems so stupid to me, that it is.
Speaking of money taboos, I had a weird moment tonight of not wanting to badmouth Grandma, when Annie asked me what messed my credit up so badly to begin with. The truth is that when I was 19, I found out the first time I tried to apply for an apartment that my credit was totally shot from all kinds of debt my mom amassed in my name while I was a minor. With the options of pressing charges or just paying it all both seeming impossible, I ended up waiting for it all to age out of my report. I did also mess my score up a bit more myself, particularly during my brief stint as a single mom prioritizing the necessities. That's what I tried to over emphasize, tonight.
Books:
Ananda and I were at BJ's the other day (AS PER USUAL) and they had a big, hardcover edition of Oz books #6-10 for only $6! We have a boxed set of the first 4 here already, and I'm excited to read all of these to Jake and Elise :)
Annie's currently starting the Miss Peregrine books, and then going back to the Vampire Chronicles. Now that it's summer she wants to read like crazy.
I cannot WAIT to start Narnia with Isaac, even though it's going to be sad when we're done with Harry Potter (very very soon). The Deathly Hallows is so intense with him. Going back to Professor Umbridge and Snape's pensieve with Jake is so mild by comparison to the things they deal with in the last book.
Between my kids and school I feel like it's a pipedream that I would ever have time to read for my own solitary pleasure again, but the mental backlog I do have is currently mostly Neil Gaiman.
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no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 08:57 am (UTC)THANK GOD YOU'RE BACK.
let's (as in you) keep this up, m'kay? ;) really really, thank you. have missed you and your family.
no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-08 08:43 pm (UTC)