Life's been good to me so far

Me: *plays MIA's "Paper Planes" 50,000 times over the course of several days*
Annie: Can we PLEASE listen to A DIFFERENT SONG?!
Me: *Puts on the song in the iTunes list before Paper Planes*
Annie: THANK YOU!!
Me & Annie: *dancing, cooking for one song*
iTunes: :D Time for Paper Planes again :D
Me: Oh, oh!!!
Annie: Not cool, Mom.

---

I'm wondering if certain things I think of as "ghetto, South Florida things" actually happen in other places around the US, too. SO WEIGH IN.

(Homestead Specific)
1. Grocery stores with no electricity. Like once a month my local Winn Dixie is partially or completely without power when I show up. The partially can be "just the parking lot and sign, at night" or "everything but the cash registers".

2. Other unpredictable (yet regular) power outages. Our power flickers or turns off for a few seconds at least once a week in our house. Approximately every two weeks I can expect to be driving at night and see part of town off. This is during clear skies, I am definitely not counting storm-times.

3. Gas Stations taking only one (highly variable) form of payment at a given moment. In the past three months I've had several different gas stations within a few miles turn me away (very frightening, considering my tendency to mosy on in when my warning system tells me I can travel *** more miles) for reasons like:
-their cash register locked up, they can't take cash
-their system is down, they can only take cash
-their pumps aren't working, so only in-store merchandise is available

(Greater Miami Area)
4. Strip clubs right along main roads with guys grilling outside, big banners, dudes selling stuffed animals/flowers for people to take home to their wives, big "18 IS OK" signs and even girls waving people in off the street.

5. People gettin REAL classy, like throwing a sheet over a chain link fence with information about free local AIDS tests spray painted on. I have seen this more than once.

---

Obama admin bans press from filming BP oil spill areas in the Gulf


"As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that
would make it a felony crime for a...ny journalist, reporter, blogger or
photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel
in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000
fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime...."

They would not do this unless the shitstorm that would result from media being on site would far exceed the shitstorm that will come from disallowing media.

So what are they hiding?

The poison gas clouds scientists are talking about? Are workers getting sick?
Is it about huge methane bubbles starting to form, backing up the tsunami fears?
Or that they are decimating ecosystems in unnecessary and terrifying new ways (WORSE than burning endangered sea turtles alive?!?!)
WHAT?!

Am I gonna be flagged for talking about this? What freaking country do I live in? UGH.

The other day, when we were all sick with sore throats, I kept going back out to the deck and picking lemon balm to make us tea. And I was struck by how my basil is sprouting up, and my tree is covered in mangoes, and I have bananas coming in two different yards, and eggs in the coop every day. Walking around with the camera today, I found a pumpkin vine in and amongst the weeds sprouting on some bricks in the backyard! I weeded everything else out, pruned it a little, watered it and am happy as heck. The kids are also excited. I am thinking white pumpkins based on a similar vine my friend Kristin had magically appear in her yard a couple of years ago.

( Photographic Tour of my productive land )

I woke up from a nap the other day, and Ananda and Aaron had made a band:

There's a girl with a ponytail and one of them has a mike on a stand in front of them.

I was amazed. Mohawk guy with guitar on stand:


Keyboard player:


I have done so much Usborne work this week, it is where every spare moment has gone. Productivity is lucrative. Some points:
-We're having a show at our local bookstore, and my mil (who works at the paper) is getting a write-up done about Aaron for publicity - "Local boy dancing in NYC competition" or something like that to drum people up.
-I met with two people from the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation yesterday afternoon and have a meeting with the head of their library next Monday afternoon.
-I've got home shows coming up out in the Redlands, down in the Keys and up in Miami, as well as three others "in the works" (they want to do it in the Fall, or haven't said for sure yet)

I'm also advertising a yard sale in the paper and planning it for next Saturday morning. Gathering stuff...I've mostly got a few outgrown bikes and a ton of disguarded purses, along with some outgrown kids' clothes and a tiny but of miscellany. I'm also going to be selling baked goods and possibly Usborne books, though.

Basically I am in super crazy hyper must-make-money mode. I was praying the other morning, up before everyone else to drive around having meetings - I was down to the wire with getting Ananda's registration in for girl scout day camp by the deadline. Two weeks of camp, already picked from all the themes - $130 each. AND THEN I REMEMBERED! I payed for this big old chiropractic package and then went to just one visit and found out that due to my "structural deformities" (diastasis, hernia) he can't help me. This was a long time ago actually. I drove over there and got my refund check - and it was $260! I was like, alright. Thank you very much. And sent off my forms.

I am about to shift from Usborne All The Time to Agents All The Time for a few days. I look at it as short term and long term financial planning.

( A )

I cooked up a storm last night so we could eat all day without my cooking anything. We had chocolate cupcakes for breakfast, curried chickpeas on jasmine rice for lunch, and lentil soup for dinner.

Tomorrow Ananda's going to Christina's house and Aaron and Isaac are going to a birthday party, for most of the day. Grant and I will probably take Jake and Elise swimming somewhere, like over at Laura's or in Grant Sr's new above-ground. Every now and then I entertain the idea of getting one of those cheapy "everything in a box" above ground pools for like, 5 seconds, and then come back around to the image of Elise floating face down in water and figure we can wait a few years. This is why one of our criteria for home buying was "does not have a pool".


Other than all that:
-Elise is currently right on the line between "low end of normal speech development" and "speech delayed". I am trying to take it upon myself to have more conversations with her, as well as prompting her to use more "connecting" words - because she has a massive and ever-growing vocabulary. But she doesn't really form sentences. She'll come to me and say, "Mama bathroom, chichens, me see!" Not, "I'm going to see the chickens in your bathroom!" Everything is like that. She'll come to me saying "Dada phone, me hi" (I want to call Dad on the phone and say hi) and when she gets it, she'll tell him "Me sick. Miss, my Dad. Love, my Dad. But - mama home, me! Mama lap now. Dada home, hug! Bye." She has way above average comprehension, whether for pointing things out in books or performing complex tasks. She will sit and listen as I read chapter books to Ananda and Aaron and suddenly interject and shock me - "Boy sad, no more eat?" That's right, he's sad because he's hungry and all the food is gone. She also counts and knows all of her colors well (and has done both for quite awhile) as well as singing along with most of the alphabet. We'll see I guess.

-I am tired AS HELL of this sinus headache, sore throat sickness. OVER it. It's turning my already abysmal attempts at sleeping into miserable failures.

-Season 3 of Weeds has not been as good as Season 2.

-I am experiencing a great deal of anxiety when I think about this oil spill, and an uncommonly high level of (obviously related) guilt and confusion about my own priorities re: oil consumption. I am really caught in the middle, not nearly apathetic enough to just be blissfully driving everywhere all the time - but also too selfish to stop driving all the time. I want things for my children, and myself, and our family - like going to top dance schools and NYC competitions but also having chickens and a garden - that are not part of a sustainable model. I want my husband to work where he can make enough money for a certain lifestyle that involves internet, cell phones, movies and dinners out at times, and me staying home - but I don't want to live anywhere NEAR where those jobs are... I live in the absolute worst part of the country for car-reliance and suburban sprawl, and so it is heartbreaking, gut-wrenching justice of sorts for us to see all the beaches and reefs and animals and jobs destroyed :/ *big fucking sigh* I keep wishing desperately for things that seem like partial or complete solutions - a way more reliable, quicker, safer public transit system that runs 24 hours, for instance. Hybrid and electric minivans. We looked for them when we had the settlement, they were (are) only available in Japan. To some degree it seems like the only answer is to move away, but that is not even an option I can consider - this is and has always been home, it is where my and Grant's entire families are.
But something has to happen. I have to start writing letters, and voting for the right things, and taking the bus sometimes, and SHIT I really don't think people understand how big this is. How huge. How many people are unemployed. How they're BURNING ENDANGERED SEA TURTLES ALIVE. How the loop current is going to catch hold of all this and take it all the way to the Carolinas. How they don't know what happens when a hurricane hits a billion gallons of oil. How we can't replace the reefs, or the Everglades. Ever. Just gone forever if they're gone once...

I wonder how much more painful and personal this all seems to me because I've been looking at this water and going on glass bottom boats and wading out on sandbars my whole life. We hang out in the everglades as a thing to do. But...your seafood's going to cost more. Your taxes are going to go up. Your vacation plans are going to change. Your air is going to be dirtier. Your kids will never get to see things my kids have taken for granted. The Bahamas, Cuba, so much gorgeous blue-green-gray-and previously CLEAR is seeming so temporary right now. So surreal.


So I'm sitting here with Google Maps open looking at how Dance Empire goes from 29 minutes by car to an hour and 2 minutes by bus, how it goes from Elise taking a nap to us all walking several blocks on roads without sidewalks in the sweltering heat. On the other hand, I could use more excercise and we could sure save on gas and it might be kind of awesome to actually be able to like, hang out with and engage my kids while traveling. I think we have to at least try it.

Along with the letter writing and voting and so on...