Life's been good to me so far

It's January 1, 2015. <--I'm sitting with that sentence for a bit, trying to take it in.

I ate two eggs on toast with some iced coffee from our fridge, for breakfast, at the picnic table outside. Then I wrote a 3 page long poem, and then I took Ananda and went on a BJ's run.


I'm very happy, which tends to scare me. I'm learning to be happy and scared about the happiness at the same time, which is possibly the most important life skill I could master.

In the process of trying to fill out that end of the year meme, I read back over some old entries for the first time in a long time. I remembered how much I love having them to look back on, and decided I need to blog more, or at least more honestly. I'm not dishonest, here, but sometimes I'm less honest, if that makes any sense.

For instance, I feel wildly head over heels in love with Grant. I fell in love with him either for the first real time or on some whole other level, in late 2013/early 2014. And I'm embarrassed, to say that, and I don't know why. It's just so much. I wasn't even willing to let him know yet, a year ago today.

I was sitting in a coffee shop with him yesterday and I looked up at him, feeling my heart swell, and I thought Oh this is terrible. How do people live like this?

The night before he'd told me, holding me, "I know the sex must have been really good if you're crying about how I can die afterward."

It's really sweet and torturous and awful, and silly, and wonderful.

And I feel like it, in addition to my peaceful and conscious choice to just be monogamous, are both somehow sprung from the total freedom he extended to me to do whatever I wanted. The level of honesty we were able to achieve with no assumptions and wiping the slate clean. The understanding that we could make our own rules for our marriage. His exploration and humble tackling of his own faults, and willingness to change, and my own realizations about shit that is just my own but I unfairly blame on him. I could just work on me without blaming him forever, you know? Most of the time that's actually more productive, for me AND for us.

All of it somehow added up to me feeling like the luckiest woman in the world for what I've already got, and really not wanting anything else. Even though that's terrifying and means he can leave me and devastate me, he can be with other people if he wants because I'm not gonna close that door on him just because I changed my own mind, he can die and I'll have "nothing" (not exactly true, but love-relationship true), just... I'm gonna get old, right here. And I can smile and cry about it at the same time. The hardest part is how good it is. It's so much to lose.

I have a really hard time with vulnerability. What a stupid sentence that is. Nevertheless... I crave it and I seek it, but I struggle with it, bigtime. I didn't want Grant to know I was falling so much more in love with him, butterflies-kinda-love, because what if he's too far past that phase with me and I'll just be a big idiot. What if he's tired of my shit and our neverending, tedious as all fuck "Conversation" (about our sex issues, our interests-are-diverging issues, our he's-codependent issues, blah blah blah). I spent weeks thinking sadly that I was going to be really totally in love with him right as he decided he was finally and completely done, with me. It would all be a tragedy of timing.

It was actually FAR easier for me to say, "I don't know if I've ever really been in-love with you," than "I've fallen in-love with you." It was far easier to get to, "maybe we should be open to outside relationships," than to take it back with a "I only want to be with you. No matter what you choose, for yourself, I mean." It was far easier for me in years past, when I was keeping our problems to myself, and I had my private doubts, to go on and on about Grant's (valid) good points online. To convince myself? To make up for some of what was missing? I was also hugely distracted by and focused on pregnancies and babies and toddlers, of course. And Grant and I make great partners, as parents, and are very good at piloting a family together. The point is that now that the kids are older and we're standing here as individuals who've had to re-evaluate who we even are, I'm often too overwhelmed by his good points to share them.

The other day I had this ridiculous "you are the reason I'm smiling when there's no reason to smile" pic on my phone that I wanted to put on his facebook wall, and it took me the whole day to do it, and then I was BLUSHING when I did. Because...I don't know why. Because it's so true that it hurts. Because I'm afraid of it disappearing and so I hold it close.

I also didn't want to tell Grant, initially, because I didn't know how to blend our prioritizing of our individual selves (hobbies, friendships, time alone, etc) with being "in-love." And I didn't want to fuck anything up either, because clearly the individual self prioritizing ALLOWED the love blossoming.

I wrote a whole lot about this, just not publicly. It was all for me, and later, him. I deleted my OkCupid account. I did weird shit like avoid him at all costs and refuse to make eye contact and sob with relief in our kitchen when he was like, "Dude, it's really ok, let's just be monogamous, why are you freaking out? I'm glad you're in love with me. How did you think I would react?"


We're just so much better like this, good lord. And it's this balancing act and I don't want to like, LOSE the total, raw, sometimes painful honesty that asking hard questions and opening up the marriage and all that caused, or start taking each other for granted and acting codependent again, but for the last, I dunno, uh...6 months? 8? We've done a really great job of walking the line. Even when he got depressed, or I stayed sick, or whatever...

He'll give me this knowing look with a pat and tell me polyamory can come back into the conversation and he sort of assumes it will one day in the future. Maybe he's even right. We make a lot of casual jokes we never could have made years ago, like about how we'll have a bed and breakfast and I'll sleep with guys passing through.

More likely I'll be spending too much money on flowers to put everywhere and wasting a lot of tea and baked goods because I always over prepare.

---

This Christmas break has been some of the best days of my entire life. I'm not kidding even a little. It's just perfect. Sleeping in every day til whenever I feel like getting up, taking one kid at a time out places, lying in cuddle piles with all of them, having SO MUCH EPIC SEX ALL THE TIME THERE IS NO OVERSTATING THIS - Grant took a week and a half of their 2 weeks off, so it's been all of us, unstructured, nowhere to go. I've got hickies and feel like I've had a professional massage or something, most of the time. Lots of coffee here and at Starbucks and at other shops, lots of wine in the evenings - Christmas was beautiful. Everything is beautiful. The weather is good. The house is a mess and nobody gives a shit.

One day I was standing by the mailbox and said, "Wait, is it Saturday or Sunday?" and Grant said, "It's Tuesday."

We went out to the Everglades the other night to just look at stars on a whim, after Annie suggested it. Jake complained the whole time, and I got mosquito bites on my feet, but it was still perfect.

I spent a whole evening texting with Kristin.
I've caught up with Jess.
Kathy sent me a picture of her out with her new baby in our Kozy carrier that made me warm.
I was going to send Laura a picture of her (awesome) cheese grater, that she left here after Thanksgiving, with a big red bow on it, and say "Thanks so much for the present, we all love it!" but she's giving us a fat credit they had leftover somehow at a school uniform store, which is pretty sweet and honestly makes my gift for her (a dark chocolate bar with orange bits in it) seem hilariously lacking.

Grant gave me Amanda Palmer's "Art of Asking" book for Christmas, since he had just finished listening to the audio version, loved it, and REALLY wanted to talk about it all with me. I'm done with the whole thing and started on a new book already, since this is surreal-heaven-timeless time. It was great, btw, and I highly recommend it, though all the notes and afterwards at the very end got kind of redundant.

The other night in bed, I dozed off and dreamed the beginning of a story. I woke up excited, tapped it all into Evernote on my phone, and have been fleshing it out ever since.

I also went to FIU and worked out my Fall Failures. Since Elise needs me here for some unknown time and I do not have any older kids about the place during the school day for times I might need to go in when Grant can't be home, I'm contemplating switching to FIU fully online for the rest of my bachelors. That's simultaneously really disappointing and also no big deal. I've loved and gotten a lot out of my on campus classes, but it's really far for the kind of logistical things we're dealing with re: kids, school, etc. And I've had some online classes that I got a lot out of too, even back at MDC, so we'll see.

Yesterday Isaac, Jake and Elise took bags and a stepladder across to our neighbor with a starfruit tree, since it was dropping fruit everywhere again and he encourages them to do this. Whenever they knock he says to take what they want, and will even come with trimmers to help them get high ones. They've been eating starfruit basically anytime I look at them ever since. Elise has probably had 10 today. I tried to get Shaun to take some home last night.

A couple of days ago we had pizza out, all 7 of us, after shopping at Get Smart.
Then hit a park.
This morning while we were snuggling in my bed, Elise said, "Can we have dinner at the beach?" and I was like, "Hmm. Ok!" It will probably actually end up happening tomorrow, because of how the hours are passing, which is also ok.

The kids are all having so much fun all the time with their new (presents) stuff. Building with legos and clay, painting, Aaron sometimes seems to never get off his new unicycle. The old one looks so tiny next to it, it's no wonder he couldn't use it anymore, he's SOOOO much taller now.

We watched "Her" (the Joaquin Phoenix movie). It was really thought provoking and strange.

We might all go and see "Into The Woods" soon.

It's really almost too awesome, right? I mean I'll be back in the whirlwind of our normal schedule soon, but I'm considering taking this semester off, and with Elise home life is just way simpler even when we're not enjoying a holiday. And I love teaching her. She keeps talking about how she can talk silently inside her mind now, and sound things out in her head, and I love the window into her development that she gives me. She's so eager and interested.

I had counseling yesterday. We talked about new years resolutions. I'm still getting mine together. I like to make them realistic and planned out in some detail, so that they actually happen.

I will stop gushing and go back to luxuriating, now, because at the moment a mountain of dirty dishes and NPR really sounds like more luxuriating. I'll water all my plants. Whatever I decide to make for dinner on no specific timeline. Grant and Jake are almost done sanding a desk they made, out back. Tonight might be a bubble bath night. I haven't had one in I don't know how many months.

I even have period cramps today. But coupled with a massive capacity to savor small pleasures and a good perspective? Or maybe I just really hate structure and schedules. Maybe it's LOVE. Ooooor all the sex.

I'll take it. And try not to get caught up in the poignancy of existential crises too often.

It's finally happened!



I understand her angst and woe; being the oldest means being the biggest for so long, and then one day they start outpacing you, one by one, the braggarts. *shaking my fist at the sky and cursing Laura and Bob, how dare you grow taller than me, HOW DARE YOU*

In other news, I have been damn spoiled by Ananda and Aaron's shoe sizes being relatively stable for a couple of years now. Aaron is in this megagrowthspurt though, it's kinda insane, and now...his shoes don't fit. That means, the $100 Vibrams his Opa bought him don't fit. The (nice) skates I got him for his birthday in late July, only used a handful of times, don't fit.

NONE OF HIS VARIOUS DANCE SHOES FIT O_O Not the hip hop sneakers, the ballet shoes, the jazz shoes (all purchased new in September, for the school/dance year). Not the vented, lightweight combat boots Tawanna ordered for them all to take to competition in the Spring, that will probably be needed again if they use that dance again.

I am not really sure how to go about covering his feet at the moment, because it seems extremely foolish to buy anything immediately - it'll obviously only be transitional. Blargh.

Isaac's outgrown his sneakers, too, but that seems so much simpler. His Crocs still fit. He's growing at a nice even pace and the new sneakers will last a decent amount of time.

---

Our All Hallow's Read books are all here, ready to go! I am excited.

Books to Buy Next (probably as Christmas presents):

-The Thief of Always, by Clive Barker
-Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
-Alice in Tumblrland by Tim Manley

I will, ideally, come back and edit that list as time passes.

( I wrote this last weekend, then let time pass )

New entry, starting today:

We had a really great Independence Day :) Izzy came to spend the night with Ananda, and Miguel came to be with them for the day/evening. It's interesting having teenagers in the house examining my belly cast and the IUD display my gynecologist gave me and Grant's spray paint art and photography and so on ;) They think our made-from-recycled bike parts alligator and candles everywhere are so cooooool. Kristin brought her kids and my sister came with her crew. And it's also interesting how Kristin (whose kids are 9 and 6) was totally aghast at Miguel and Izzy (16 and 14) and how it can be real that my kids have friends that age - at one point she was like, "He is like, a DUDE!"

We had 15 chairs crammed in around our dining table for dinner(Grant grilled and I made oven-veggie-kabobs). Earlier in the day we made our annual flag cake, done up with berries, and told our normal annual stories about The Declaration of Independence, and fireworks harkening back to Bristish ships exploding in the night. When it got dark we went and watched fireworks, and then came home and did our own fireworks.

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Saturday, something strange happened, that inadvertently led to other strange things.

The first thing was, I had the house to myself - for about six hours. I honestly cannot remember the last time I was home alone for even 5 minutes, so it was kind of surreal. I'd been feeling very good about our house in general, since we spent a lot time cleaning for the fourth and I recently bought a few more plants, but SIX HOURS HOME ALONE??

I dozed. I read a lot. I swept and swiffered the floor, cleaned the tv room and library, watered every plant I have (that's dozens at this point). I kept low music playing and reveled in the otherwise-quietness. I dusted all my books and shelves (<---O_O). I had one brief visitor and one short phone call but for the most part I was just by myself in this great space where there are vines climbing all around the inside of the shutters and cats running around (and napping), and I realized I LOVE being home alone. I actually realized I might like to live alone, a LOT, in some alternate reality where that could happen without some sort of gutting tragedy.

To illustrate how unusual it is for me to be home alone, let me say that it reminded me strongly of when I was in high school and would have my grandparents' house to myself. Music, plants, cats, insides of shutters - there's a lot to call it up but yeah. That was THIRTEEN YEARS AGO!

I do go out alone fairly often and out with just-Grant at least once a week, but "out" involves, you know, everyone else in Starbucks or the creepy dude trying to kill us on the beach or at least waiters and south Florida drivers. It's not ALONE-alone.

As the evening rolled around and Grant arrived back home with all our kids in tow, I was already thinking of the week of overlapping camps - Ananda and Aaron's last week of music camp is Isaac, Jake and Elise's first week.

I'M GOING TO HAVE THE HOUSE TO MYSELF SO MUCH!!! A couple of the mornings I'll spend in class, and I'll be traveling back and forth part of the time, but wow. I'm excited.

AND, the other strange thing - something happened, while I was here alone, that I do not fully understand, but I realized that night that I felt content. Totally content, totally domestic, the way I used to feel several years and a couple of kids ago when I cooked big breakfasts every day and baked every afternoon and gloried in washing the diapers. This antsy angsty constant clawing restlessness that is always there, now, was not there. I was just centered, thinking...I love my life. Not "I love this and that about my life" or "I'm working to turn my life into something I can love" but just, enough.

Sunday, Gloria and Lj took my younger 4 to the zoo and Grant and I took Ananda to an art supply store (where I was able to get a lot of quality clay for the other kids very cheaply) and a bead shop and this very new age store full of hippie clothes I knew she'd love and then came home and just did more of this...existing in quiet - with clean staying clean. She and Grant both drew in other parts of the house while I made a salad, and read, and baked muffins, and played Vivaldi, and felt utterly peaceful.

It was pretty fucking fabulous. Last night AFTER BAKING I actually made a roast chicken and a sweet potato casserole, with sauteed mushrooms and sliced cucumbers, for dinner - AND red beans and rice with sausage, for Grant to take to work for lunches all week. It is really not my habit to cook half that much in a day anymore, at all, and I did this happily with this satisfied sense of loving my kitchen and being glad I understand ingredients the way I do now.

I don't know if it will last forever, but I will take it as it comes for now, by golly. I was happy enough to welcome all my noisy, messy kids back into the house and I'm sure I enjoyed our time around the table more than usual as we ate (and I do usually eating with them significantly).

The book I'm currently reading is The Weird Sisters, by Eleanor Brown, purchased because it looked the best among the paperbacks for sale at BJ's - and it's pretty good. Attention holding and sometimes thought provoking. I would like to read more by this author.

---

I just want to take a minute to say how much I've been appreciating having something of a support network in place, as a mother. I didn't, for a long long time - if I had a true emergency I could call Laura, but that was it. It never occurred to me to hire a babysitter until I'd been parenting for about 8 1/2 years. I couldn't really imagine having mutually beneficial interdependence with other families that I loved - but I do, now. If you don't have this - GET IT! It is so amazing. Take steps, force yourself out, join La Leche League, seek co-ops, talk to your neighbors, wade through all the false starts - whatever you need to do. It's so worth the effort.

Three times now Karen has taken Ananda and Aaron home with her own kids, from music camp they're all attending. It's 45 minutes north for me, but she lives really close to it. Once it was on no-notice due to car trouble; the other two times we arranged it and they slept over. Which means Karen made sure Ananda had a vegetarian dinner option, AND packed their lunches the following day, for camp. This warms my heart to a degree that is probably silly, but it is just so wonderful to trust someone that much, and have them there available. It's so awesome to have our little girls (Georgia is 6 months older than Elise) playing together while we compare how our homeschoolers are dealing with music camp and what we're gonna do about classes and lessons in the next year.

I'm trying to kind of "watch out" for Miguel, the 16 year old, because Cybele (his mother) is traveling most of the summer and he's home alone for the first time. She was crying-happy when I texted her 4th of July pictures, and full of questions about how he is. Then Miguel was at Karen's one of the nights A and A were, and they all went and saw a movie that afternoon. I keep prodding Izzy to make sure she goes and hangs out with him sometimes.

It's just priceless stuff, man. Even knowing/trusting Izzy to babysit for pay is great.

Saturday night Gloria spontaneously texts asking if she and Lj can take my kids to the zoo the next day? Wut? YES, YOU CAN! They were jumping around screaming-thrilled by the idea when I told them. I packed them a big bag and dropped them off with them at the zoo gate and came back like 7 hours later to hear all the awesome stories about the fun they had.

I've been doing a lot with Laura and Kristin too, watching all our kids mingle and grow up together. Jake and Elizabeth are the closest cousins ever. Aaron and Darrien have these absolutely ridiculous conversations about starting to develop body hair, and who is on the superior Minecraft server. It's assumed that when Kristin moves away in a few months we're going to visit regularly. Magic, I tell you!

I love my crazy friends.

David called me on my cell a couple nights ago, twanging in his southern accent like he does, telling me he was sitting on his porch with his girlfriend like they do. They have "a couple'a oak trees and a main road, better'n tv".Then he started telling me about the first weekend they both had completely off in over a month; it started Friday night when some Tequila led to him stripping down in a Chili's "Don't know what it is bout Tequila that melts clothes off my body". Saturday a friend drove up (did I mention this is Louisiana?) and they started drinking at 10:30 while David made gumbo. By about 9 that night, they were pretty freakin drunk - I'd recall the list of empty bottles for you but I can't remember them all at the moment - and a gradual, relatively low speed, no big injury pileup happened on the road in front of The Porch. So they got to spend like 3 hours heckling the drivers as idiots, throwing things at the cops as they arrived and generally mooning everyone as often as possible. He couldn't even retell this story without both of us laughing til it sounded like he was crying. I'm not sure if he'd be sticking to the porch without parole hanging over his head or not, but, either way I'm glad he's satisfied with it because even though I LIKE getting handwritten letters from prison and all, I do love him enough to like the idea of him free. This is why I was relieved when I found out he was going back to Louisiana, where nobody bothers to arrest you for stripping in chili's or mooning cops from the privacy of your own trailer porch. They'd been talking Texas - that would have been a disaster. In Louisiana he can weld 60 hours a week , rake in money, and continue to be a surprisingly good foster Dad to the kid he loves like a son who's got nobody else.

Memo just updated all his facebook pics - this is Portland area. There's the one where he's standing by some giant fake titties clad only in pasties and his Dad commented "Aye Memo why don't you come get your Dad and share those melons" and the one where he has a dude in drag's thigh draped over him outside somewhere and the one showing the pink-lit tattoo shop where he works (his Dad commented on that one, "Are you tattooing for the cure??? JAJAJAJA"). His gallery is pretty incredible. Anyway Memo called, messaged and texted me for THREE DAYS to call his newly-ex-girlfriend and get her to see the light and take him back. This is why he can't work on my illustrations: he's lost, broken, dark, hurting, etc etc etc and doesn't want that bleeding into my children's book. Finally at 2 am when I had already studied too much, I replied "Dude you're sending me a number with at least one extra digit" and he sent me the real one and I called up this chick I've never spoken to before and we talked for 40 minutes. He interrupted 4 times, every time with "DON'T TELL HER IT'S ME! ...are you still talking to her?" She said some things that made sense and some things that didn't but ultimately it could probably all be summed up with how, the last time he really made her cry, he said "But don't you feel alive? At least I made you feel something!"

I think I may eventually figure out how to get all my dysfunction by osmosis.

---

I feel so renewed and good because,

1. I went and spent hours and hours in Advisement and Financial Aid and so on yesterday (with Aaron - it was good bonding time, although I DO NOT understand why MDC is showing FOX NEWS in the waiting room, Geez) and got it worked out so that I dropped (online) algebra for this semester, and will be taking it next semester in an actual classroom with a teacher ratemyprofessors.com assures me is both great at explaining things and offers lots of extra credit opportunities. Of the 3 remaining classes I'm currently taking, I'm assured at least 2 As. The other one could be a B. My next semester is highly doable schedule-wise and already in the computer registered. I may have to go through an appeals process or end up paying for the class I dropped but I still think this is a vast improvement over the path I was on two days ago that involved screwing up my GPA bigtime. And seriously; reading and writing based virtual classes ONLY, for me. I'm the only parent sitting around at PATH doing my own homework :p

2. THE WEATHER is amazing. It's been in the 60s/70s two days in a row! It's like January has come early :p It really is downright surreal following the past few months, though, in the best possible way. Elise ran most of the walk to preschool this morning, which offset the horror of the headpiece of her seat on my bike being broken off. Grr.

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I'm reading Beautiful Creatures because I randomly picked it off of a list for a novel project for my literature class, and it is claptrap - claptrap, I tell you! I didn't think there was anything that much worse than Twilight, but apparently there is - there's a whole genre out there now INSPIRED BY TWILIGHT; Books clinging to Twilight's coattails. I heard "Southern Gothic" and thought "Anne Rice! True Blood!" No. Just, no.

Oh, Mom, if you're reading this, you would love Beautiful Creatures and should get on it right away :D

This is how I spent about 4 hours last night:


Me knitting (Annie's sweater back) with my feet up.


Laura across from me, talking (or listening). That's her house with all the butterflies, and my purse with all the skulls on it ;) Seriously though I think I can see like 30 butterflies right in this shot, geez.

I suppose there were breaks to eat. It's so great that her (born, haha) children go to sleep early and stay there on their own now :)

Best conversation excerpt:

Me: Elise has been wanting to nurse 2-3 times per day for the first time in like a year and a half! It's like she's totally happy with and at school, but is compensating for all this independence by finding a way to cling and feel connected when she can.
Her: If Brian came home from preschool and asked for a titty, I'd punch him in the face.

---

( Step by Step Cooking Photos for Kale and Bean Soup and Upside Down Mango Rum Cake )

Isaac's clay creations:

He harvested the little springs from a pen.

Jake drew these two - this one has the sun, start, earth (green and blue), Mars (red), the moon (?) and Saturn (with rings, of course).


"Someone about to go upstairs to bed".


One of these things is not like the other... Can you spot MY bike on the rack at school??? The big stupid beach cruiser handle bars won't fit through the openings on bike racks, I have to lay it down like that to lock it up. Aaron let me borrow his chain.


Last week, a bus mowed over a bus stop. Luckily nobody was there waiting for the bus, though that makes it even more bizarre that the bus would have been veering so (extremely) close to it. I was in the stopped traffic waiting as they towed the bus away o_O


Ananda and Aaron coming out of ArtSouth. That skull on his shirt is made of music notes, and it's his flute he's carrying.


The two of them have become annoyingly obsessed with the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and 50,000 plays later, Aaron can play "Concerning Hobbits" on the flute. It kind of bends my brain that listening to it on a piccolo, he had to figure out how to do it on the piano in order to learn it for flute. She's carring Xanth book #1, A Spell for Chameleon, which is great because Grant and I read Xanth in middle school and I remember that book! Piers Anthony is apparently working on the 35th and 36th now. (Reason #eleventybillion that I'm old)

I am apparently never going to have the time or ability to write more than this in one sitting, today. Four hours cleaning and scrubbing, one front porch conversation with a neighbor about an altercation between HIS KID AND BOB OMG BOB IS A FREAKING ADULT, and the random distractions of all my children later...this is the end of this entry!

This was a really calm and peaceful day which is something I needed a lot.

I slept in, spent a long time on the phone with my Dad. He detailed the pirate memorial they staged with my grandfather's ashes, on his boat down near Key West today. It included things like pouring beer and corn flakes into the water, playing a soundtrack including "Free Bird", "Knocking on Heaven's Door", "Ride Captain Ride" and a lot of Bob Marley. He believes my mother did do some real letting go and that it's what Grandpa would have wanted.

I think my Dad's pretty great. He even took a bunch of napkins out there in a ziploc to hand over when my mother started crying. There was also a (lighthearted) wake-style story-telling session that involved much laughter.

I also found out my "three century man" (as named by the Key West newspaper) great (great-great?) uncle is 114 this year O_O He lives in his own house, the one he was BORN IN, IN 1897, and he drives himself to the store once a week. Apparently we don't know him better because he's "a mean old conch". The only other detail I got is that the first three fingers of both of his hands are stained orange from camel no-filters.

I swept, mopped, vaccumed, watered plants, led the kids in all kinds of chores. My house is feeling like a nice good place to be again. I am really appreciating it immensely lately - the individual spaces that are each so good as well as the amount of space over all.

We did a lot of schoolwork. Aaron is starting on fractions and reviewing graphs and he actually did his work with no trouble today. Did you read that? I still almost can't believe it. He's also got a YouTube account through me, that he's eager to work on, and sits with me and reads about the latest in the nuclear crisis in Japan every day. Annie made sense of number lines and adding decimals. She's nearly done with the last Lord of the Rings book and is reading Artemis Fowl as a "breather" because it's less challenging. Isaac worked on filling in ending consonants, and we talked about sperm and eggs and babies. Jake worked on sorting and matching and more clocks/time. He floored me this morning saying things about how four numbers mean thousands and three numbers mean hundreds - I didn't know he knew that. It came about because my scale does "pounds point partial extra ounces" and he saw the ".6" at the end as a fourth digit and went "YOU WEIGH A THOUSAND POUNDS?!" Elise did pre-handwriting (tracing, coloring), and cooking with me in the kitchen.

Our Dover Sampler for this week came with tons of cool astronomy things I saved to print for reading and coloring. Annie is already psyched, she's on a huge astronomy kick lately.

I also realized today I need to make them Easter baskets and got kind of excited about that.

They make me really happy. I found out Fairchild Farm has a summer (day) camp with scholarships available through the Children's Trust and am applying for the three older kids (it's for 6-10 year olds).

I made chicken and yellow rice for dinner, traded texts with David, read a choose-your-own-adventure robot book with Jake and a lot of Shel Silverstein poems to Aaron, and started a new Anne Rice book. Blood Canticle. I am beyond excited because this one is actually BY LESTAT AS HIMSELF IN FIRST PERSON AGAIN and already in the first 5 pages reads faster and better than the whole entirety of Blackwood Farm ever was.

I'm gonna start the Oz books with the little kids tomorrow night.


I'm at a bit of a frustrated stand still with writing as my files and stored links are mostly on laptops that are being repaired (by Grant, who is very busy). I decided I tonight that I just have to quit waiting for that and work around it as best I can for now, which there are some ways to do.

Also a standstill I've made peace with, with college, as my financial aid has still not gone through but neither has anyone elses' and the "pay by" deadline has been extended universally so getting my appeal processed is not as much of an emergent issue.

Weight loss is not going well. I am sticking with my thyroid/metabolism/energy/kill my yeast support regimen (coconut oil, B-12, probiotics and no or low mercury fish daily), keeping what I eat reasonable and better than normal although not at Eat To Live standards, really, and trying to excercise, but, uh. My stupid ass shin splints that I got in NY last summer still act up really badly if I walk quickly or for long, particularly in the shin attached to the ankle I sprained? So what is that about? I mean walking is supposed to be my fail safe excercise as a person who medically can't do ANYTHING to strain my abs even peripherally (straining to open a jar strains them peripherally, it's ridiculous)...the shin pain gradually amplifies to "debilitating". I think I'm going to try stretching a lot before I leave and wearing my expensive NY New Balance sneakers...because, yeah, I'm an idiot and try to just walk in flip flops like I ALWAYS HAVE THE WHOLE REST OF MY LIFE before I was a super fat person with a bad ankle and shin problems due to the aforementioned time in non-supportive shoes... Those $80 sneakers have really just sat in my closet ever since I got back home many months ago... Now that my nose piercing is totally healed and infection-free I'm going to go back to the Y for swimming again, too.

Grant and I are scarily strained at times, though still seeking each other for comfort. I realized today that though we're counting down for Easter, Elise's birthday, and Ananda and Aaron's birthdays, and planning things for them all the time, we both completely forgot our anniversary is coming up (again) - and sooner than any of that other stuff. Not sure what if anything will be planned...finances could really be better at the moment. On the one hand, we could maybe benefit from some shared one on one that was positive. On the other hand, we've been getting an awful lot of shared one on one time that does not end up positive lately :/ I'm trying to focus on things we both know we're really good at together...for instance, we could stay at a hotel overnight somewhere just a couple of hours away and even if all we do is watch movies, swim in the pool and eat something delicious, hey, that could be worse, right?


I'm hoping to post a bunch of pictures tomorrow.

---

This is my favorite Shel Silverstein poem:

Rain

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head.

---

I saw this awhile back and LOVE. IT. I don't normally like Ted Talks. At all. But this is different, profound and fundamental and I really think it's worth your time to watch.

I'm really glad I took a lot of pictures that are in chronological order and remind me of things...otherwise I'd be screwed by now for day to day order of events. Anyway...

This day started out kind of awesome, as the deli downstairs from us delivered breakfast and they're CHEAP. I mean NYC cheap anyway - I got an omelette and Aaron got french toast and we both had bacon and hash browns and it was like $14, DELIVERED, with the delivery tip? And good. Then we were off.

I was seriously impressed with myself because when we came up out of the subway we were actually AT the entrance of the hotel, like I had to walk 10 steps to climb the stairs to the doors. Dropped Aaron off in classes, talked to a few other dance parents and teachers for a few minutes, and went to the lobby.

Where I felt completely brain dead and unable to write anything. Or edit anything. Or care about writing. I was so freakin' happy to be sitting in this cushy hotel lobby couch with my feet up on a chair and be on the internet with nowhere to be for hours, it was...bliss. Between the plastic subway chairs, our rock-bed at the apt and the wooden seat and stools in the apt, I hadn't actually felt a cushion under me in like 3 days at this point, and I was sore all over. It was challenging not to fall asleep.

Then I realized there were no outlets and my laptop battery was about to die. Oh well.

I went out to explore in the Time Square direction. Where there are a thousand people trying DESPERATELY to sell you something.

Guys trying to appear homeless, with massive trash bags, that are actually full of imitation designer purses - they start this low, aggressive rumble of "Handbag-handbag-HANDBAG!!" if you get close enough and there are no cops around.

Rappers literally putting their cds into your hand as you walk by and then telling you that you owe them $10 and thanking you for helping them promote.

Heavily made up women in fishnets, tiny shorts and elegant up-dos trying to sell you theater tickets.

Chicks in jeans and tshirts trying to sell you scalped tickets cheaper.

Asian dudes yelling and grabbing your arm to drag you into their tourist-item stores.

If you slow down, or stop, you disrupt the flow of pedestrian traffic. If someone grabbed your bag and ran you probably wouldn't even be able to tell for sure who it was. And there is forty story high blinky shit EVERYWHERE.

( Rest of the entry, including many many pictures )