Life's been good to me so far

I have 4 different drafts of entries in progress, one of which is 3 weeks old. And probably 40 pictures to post, some of which are a month old. There is just so much, though, so good much, so hard much, so much.

Today, I already snuck money and fairy dust under two pillows, picked Annie up from a sleepover and took her to her new cello mentoring program, studied for one of my online classes, and set up a ride for her to this mentoring program another week when I can't do it. I have a date with Jake to help plan his birthday party invites. Right now Grant is taking Annie to GMYS and derby, picking Aaron up from a (different) sleepover and taking him to the movies (while they wait for her). I have TONS of online schoolwork to do. I'm also hoping to at least finish editing pictures and post them, along with one half-done entry, after dinner... And, I'm emailing the Psychology Honor Society (which I've been invited to join) and scheduling a practice GRE for a couple of weeks from now.

Tomorrow:

-everybody's chores
-A&A revising papers from last week
-moving on to new math with them
-Annie practicing cello from her mentor sheet
-Jake and Elise continuing sentences, as well as multiplication for him, clocks for her
-reading those two the classic Hansel and Gretel
-printing out Halloween dover pages for them to color
-getting Isaac to and from school (in pajamas, with $1 for "pajama day") with cheerleading uniform in tow, and picking him up late from cheerleading practice
-get Isaac a new reed (clarinet)
-pay the electric bill
-loan payment if G doesn't do that
-get a notarized letter I need for Gloria, who's staying with everyone during an upcoming trip, for medical care
-get invitations for Jake's party done/sent
-taking Aaron to and from 3 hours of dance, during which I'll
-go to counseling
-help Isaac with his homework
-take an online test (then, after dance block)
-make dinner
-read to everyone
-start on a paper that's due Tuesday by midnight
-reserve my tickets online for this play I have to see for my theater class

Tuesday:

-chores
-get Isaac and I ready for school, with lists and activities for other kids in place (G working from home)
-go to my 3 classes; buy Jake's "big" birthday present from B&N at FIU while I'm there (Nook)
-meet with theater group about project
-post contest winner
-come home, immediately turn around and carpool Aaron and another kid to dance
-come home again, love on everyone, check on their work progress, talk to them in general - tea time
-make Annie, Isaac, Jake and Elise practice their instruments
-dinner
-read to everyone
-finish paper due by midnight
-make meal lists and print out chores, for Gloria to have while we're gone

Wednesday:

-chores
-Isaac to and from school + his homework; cheerleading day again
-schoolwork for other kids, including science experiments for Jake and Elise and SciShow for A&A
-Annie cello practice during the day
-talking about our PATH presentation choices for upcoming events; write progress goal dates on calendar together
-start on my online school work for the week; try to knock out one class
-post office
-to-do list for horror story reading on YouTube; check in with Memo about pdf dl cover art
-Annie's derby and Aaron's dance carpool in the evening (I just drive them there)
-make Isaac, Jake and Elise practice instruments
-dinner
-online class work for the week
-write out alarm system instructions for Gloria
-and emergency contacts
-get bags of bathingsuits and towels ready, with floats, for Gloria
-serious bathroom scrubbing

Thursday:

-chores
-Isaac and I to school
-their lists need to include new papers for A&A
-Annie practicing
-me in 3 classes
-stats tutoring in the lab
-Isaac, Jake and Elise at GMYS (I have to move between their classes taking notes so that I can facilitate their practice through the week)
-make sure the cooler is clean for Gloria
-BJ's run, including her requested secret chocolate stash
-list of activity times and places for her
-go see play

Friday:

-chores
-Isaac's school/homework - $1/crazy hat/hair day
-everybody else's school, including research for PATH presentations
-more cross stitching with Jake and Elise
-Make sure I have Gloria's payment money and "play" money, and LJ's gas/snack money for driving Annie, all ready and set aside
-insurance cards/AAA card/gas card with money
-tooth fairy small bills/dust just in case
-van full of gas
-kitchen and bathrooms clean
-all online schoolwork done
-paper about the play written
-tea outside with all 5
-at least an hour totally focused on them, no distractions, hanging out
-big together breakfast planned for Saturday
-uh, PACK

And then Saturday, after breakfast - Gloria and LJ take my kids to a farm with a Groupon reservation that involves fruit baskets and tours, and generally take over/move in while Grant and I FLY TO BOSTON FOR FOUR DAYS AND 3 NIGHTS FOR OUR JOINT BIRTHDAY PRESENT!!! In case you haven't been paying attention, we both turn 32 in October. 32!

We'll be eating and staying with Nancy that first night, which none of us can wait for - seriously I feel like I should be writing her name like !!!♥~*~♥Nancy♥~*~♥!!! So much love. *sigh* Since she's coming to Florida in November instead of February, we'll be seeing her AGAIN so soon, too - it will almost be like we don't live 1500 miles apart this fall :)

We will probably be meeting up with the artist formerly known as Julierocket the next day, and possibly calling on a certain idiolecto as well, before Monday night, when we crash this fucking fabulous looking combination ART PARTY AND DRESDEN DOLLS REUNION, featuring Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman as MCs...Read All About It Here, if you feel like it. Ananda is sending along a shirt she wants autographed by everyone there :D Excited, psyched, words do not convey.

Tuesday we will sleep in, eat something somewhere, and then fly home. We'll get in kind of late. Grant has that whole week off, and Jake's birthday is Friday, and his party Sunday. Jakey will be 8 - 8, I tell you! My fourth child will be 8 years old. He's having a pajama party and a bed cake (all his idea).

And our very first day back will hit the ground running...Wednesday will arrive with me slightly behind on schoolwork, with an appt for Annie to go get spacers put between her teeth (she gets braces on the 14th...which reminds me she needs a new special mouth guard for derby before that...), and a dance carpool thing...

So I am REALLY swamped. The terrible triggered PTSD feeling I referenced on 9/11 has been over for awhile...that was a shit week, but research and counseling are helping. Not long after that eased up, my pain suddenly came back big time...I'm still feeling the end of some serious week+ long pain that has me making a new doctor's appt for me (I haven't been back since I cut gluten and felt mostly better, back in...late February). I feel good, though. Achey and somewhat low energy at times, but also... Really good. Trepidacious that I don't want the pain to ramp back up and it could at any time, almost euphoric that it's gone - and kind of heavy when I think about where I'm at in counseling (surgery and medical traumas...it's the first time I've actually been directly tackling it in counseling as the main topic we're working through. I always wuss out and quit before it can get this far). I left after my hour of sobbing and talking last week feeling exhilarated and lighter, though. And I'm SO excited, about October in general! Our trip, Jake's birthday/party, All Hallow's Read, everybody's Halloween plans, the weather getting cooler...I love October.


The days before our Maryland trip were a total avalanche of responsibilities, similar to this one... it was between semesters, but I was putting the kids' homeschooling portfolios together and getting their evaluations done, and Isaac was going back to charter school so all of his uniforms, supplies, lunches, snacks and fees had to be ready to go, in addition to cleaning/stocking the house, prepping my mother in law with lists and info, trying to charge everyone up with lots of extra love and affection...I got there riding on almost zero sleep, and had to cry my eyes out in the hotel room before I could take a deep breath and relax. The trip, though, was amazing and worth it, blah blah blah :)



So yeah if I can get my homework done in time and dinner knocked out in an efficient manner, I'll be back with pictures, and more...

If you'd like to see an overwhelmed, long winded ramble about WHAT I CAN DO DIFFERENTLY TO CHANGE MY LIFE, that is under the cut. It is not really something finished, with an ending. I wrote it almost 2 weeks ago and, as so often happens, writing it out and then reading what I'd written made a lot of answers very clear to me. Usually when this happens I just delete the entry without posting; this time though it was saved and when I went to update again, ( it was here. )

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What I wanted to say today, was:
1.) I realized yesterday how huge the backlog of pictures I want to post is becoming, and then spent over an hour selecting, resizing and uploading almost 80 of them. There will be at least a couple of huge picture posts really soon :) I have some great stuff!

2.) Aaron and I have started a documentary unit study. It's micro learning in many senses - 3D printers! What is meth, anyway? Tibetan monks, gun control, Nikola Tesla - but the macro learning is what I'm more interested in, with this. We started with this big talk about how every documentary is made by a person or persons who have some kind of driving agenda, and the totally contradictory yet factual cases one can make for various things. For instance, a hypothetical "FIU is a totally green university" vs a hypothetical "FIU is a university that is destroying the environment"...both are highly defensible and could be made into a convincing hour long presentation. Neither are the whole truth, though. We're also doing a lot of talking about how documentary subjects overlap. They're often organized into groups that include things like, "science" even though technically, "drugs," "the environment," "nature," and "technology" are all also science. There is biography in politics, and politics in conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories in philosophy, and so on. I want to show him at least a couple of single-topic documentaries that are totally against each other. We're highlighting the ways dramatization can blur the truth or seem persuasive, and I'm asking him to try to see what he can learn from a given documentary as well as what questions he should ask about it's motivations, sourcing, and so on.

Aaaanyway, today he watched the hour long National Geographic special on the Bermuda Triangle (available on YouTube, not actually on that list I linked previously). He was extremely frustrated with how open ended it left the whole issue of WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE SHIPS AND PLANES AND WHY ("the methane gas bubbles could happen anywhere, it's just a coincidence if they're happening there over and over!") but then he was like, "You know, Mom? It seems like anything 'supernatural' is just peoples' way of explaining things they don't understand yet." And I was like, "Welp. That's a pretty profound statement many other people have also made." Then we talked about that tribes from a movie a generation ago that incorporated found Coke bottles into their religious ceremonies and saw planes flying overhead as God, and he wanted to go back to this big conversation we had weeks ago about placebo and I was like LISTEN KID. I've got stuff to do. Your brain's gonna have to quietly explode in another room while I wash some dishes and figure out what's for dinner :p

I think it's a great supplemental thing for him, that is very very painless compared to, say, getting him up to grade level in math and forcing him to do creative writing. Both of which are deeply painful.

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ETA: I've learned that the anti-anxiety med they gave me at the ER - Lorazepam, aka Ativan - is strongly contraindicated for dissociative disorder (which I have) as well as being seriously addictive. Meaning that, you know, maybe the ER nurses shouldn't be able to hand out and advise people on psychiatric medications? This chick sat with me telling me I needed to experience it, see how I felt, if it was something that could help me, she really sat down with me and talked it up for like 15 quiet one on one minutes - and I went home with a prescription for a whole bottle of it (that has just sat). *sigh* This is right on the heels of them trying to refer me out to a cosmetic dentist for the first lump on my wrist, and the year after they gave Aaron DTaP when I asked/signed for a tetanus shot only (an old nail went through his Croc, into his foot). Aaron has had three years of DTaP shots before without incident so for him this is not the end of the world, just a booster. For a kid like my nephew Brian, or Elise, who have had previous seizures, though, and not been vaccinated with DTaP because of it, it could be a big fucking deal to a parent. The fact that they injected a kid with two more things than the parent signed for is a huge liability factor and just another sign of their weird general carelessness :/ I'm starting to feel a burdensome responsibility to write them a letter laying a bunch of this crap out on the table.

I had a huuuuuuuuuuuuge headache earlier, partially from the rigors of trying to wrap my head around what I do or do not think is "right" for mothers to do while they're mothers.

The thing is, I don't generally go around thinking mothers are bad. I generally go around really, REALLY happy whenever I see parents with loved and well-adjusted kids. I have a heavy lot of exposure to moms who ditch their kids for years at a time to keep partying while the grandparents do the legwork, stepping back in only for the occassional drunken visit that ends with a call to the cops. No, really. More than one of these chicks between Grant and I's families, with 9 kids between the two of them. I myself grew up in some questionable circumstances. When I see a young single mom trying to find good childcare for while she's working and playing with the baby when she's off, I feel good about that.

But, of course, like everybody, I still have my ideas about what is "ideal", and they play heavily into the choices I make in my own life, for my own kids, with my own set of resources.

So when someone is in the public eye and requesting my vote, I can't help but analyze them in a way I wouldn't the average joe on the street. And in this case, the Sarah Palin case, it seemed really knee-jerk reaction obvious to me that someone with relative financial wealth, a 4 month old Downs baby AND four other kids probably shouldn't be spending 16 hours a day campaigning for a 16 hour a day job.

There are SO many ways to look at this, though. Maybe she sees a spot in the White House as an amazing opportunity to further awareness, research and funding - as well as plain old acceptance - of Down Syndrome, thusly having the potential to HUGELY improve her new son's life.

Maybe she's generally concerned about the state of the nation and/or world to such a degree that she feels she has to step up and do whatever has to be done to ensure her kids' long term safety and security.

Whatever the case, I've now seen two different pictures of her - one at her desk signing things and one on some steps speaking to a crowd - with the kid in a sling. I've learned that when she went back to work 3 days after giving birth, it was with the baby and his dad in tow. She's still nursing, which is commendable for anyone with a Downs baby as they have some major nursing hurdles that often make it impossible. There's also a shot of her holding him in a grocery store talking to some people.

Anyway, 3 pictures don't mean anything, but neither does my snap judgement or what I read on Yahoo! News that was 11 minutes old or a YouTube video someone edited down and presented in a certain context...I don't think anyone can know what her motives are, what kind of mother she is, any of it. I like it that she seems to really love and accept her kid, special needs and all. I like it that she went ahead and had him, knowing the difficulties that lay ahead. I like it that she's obviously making some big inconvenient efforts to keep him as close as possible while she works at the high powered job. I like it that she has 5 kids at all, because DAMN am I tired of the "Are they all yours?!" "Wow, how many - two, three, four - FIVE?!" "How do you do it - you must have your hands full!!" bs I have to hear from everyone I see in the grocery store.

And the great irony is that for all this thought I've put into her suitability for the role given her personal life - I still am up in the air about her politics! And, it hardly matters, because I still don't like McCain, who is the one actually running!

So, before I redirect you all back to the 24 hour old picture post you SHOULD be paying attention to ;) I would just like to add another topic for discussion that might make us all want to tear our hair out. Well, maybe it will make some of you want to post to stupid_free, who can know :p

Topic:
How do you, or how do you assume I, or how do you plan to (you pick) address children (of one's own) about controversial or subjective matters?

For instance, your kid overhears CNN and asks, "What is 'abortion'?" Or your Jewish child wants to know why other people wear cross necklaces. Or whatever.

I'm asking because I've realized a LOT of people assume that a homeschooling, Christian mother would be "brainwashing" their children in an effort to shield them from alternate ways of thinking and manipulate the odds that their kid will grow up agreeing with their own viewpoint.

Jumping right in to answer, when my kids asked what abortion is I told them in brief, generalized terms what it was, and then went on to say how I feel about it and how other people feel about it. To wit:

Ananda: What is abortion?
Me: *sigh* It's a medical procedure where a pregnant woman goes into the doctor and gets everything taken out of her uterus, so she isn't pregnant anymore.
Aaron: You mean the baby?
Me: The baby, or fetus, or whatever, and all the other stuff in there - the amniotic fluid and some blood clots and whatever.
Ananda: What do they do with it then?
Me: They throw it away.
Both: Screams of outrage, freaking out.
Me: I think it's wrong. I think it's killing the baby -
Ananda: BECAUSE IT IS!!!
Me: But a lot of other people don't think so, they think the baby isn't really alive until it's born, and so a woman should have the right to choose what happens to her own body and say whether she wants to have a baby or not.
Aaron: How can the baby not be alive when it's kicking?
Me: Well usually it's before there's kicking. Not always. But yeah, there is still a heartbeat and all that. I mean, I believe it is alive from the time it first exists, I believe God gives that new life a soul as soon as the cells come together -
Ananda: So do I.
Me: But not everyone even believes in God, and plenty of people think it's just a group of cells. It doesn't look like a baby yet.
Aaron: But it WOULD be a baby!
Me: I feel the same way, Bud. This is huge all over the country right now because everyone has a different opinion about it and they all feel really, really strongly. It's really hard to be 16 and pregnant, or pregnant with a baby you don't think you can afford to feed, or just pregnant when you weren't ready to have a baby, so some people feel like they can't deal with it. I don't think that is the baby's fault - I don't think it's right to punish a baby for what's going on in the woman's life. But it's a LOT, to be pregnant and have a baby. You saw me in and out of the hospital, it's a big deal that really changes you and puts a lot of risk on you.
Aaron: I can't believe that even happens, like what kind of doctor would do that? (looking near tears) I mean why can't they do what (person he cares about who was adopted who I won't name)'s mom did so the baby can still get a good family?

etc.

This is how we go about just about every conversation involving anything subjective. I wonder often if it would seem wrong to other Christian parents who think I should be telling my kids it's murder and a sin plain and simple, or if it would piss of the pro-choicers who think I'm conveying my biases loud and clear through my own beliefs, expressions, tone, history, etc etc. Probably both, I have a knack for that ;) But you know, we were at my friend Kristin's house the other day, and she is an Agnostic with pagan leanings. Her son was saying, "God!" about something and Aaron was like, "You shouldn't say that, it's bad to say the Lord's name in vain, it's like a curse word but way worse". The friend got mad and told me and Kristin "Aaron was yelling at him" (which he wasn't, but I think he just used it to mean "correcting me" or "scolding" or whatever). And I was like, "We believe in God and that it is wrong to say, so that's how Aaron feels and what he's used to. But you can just tell him, you don't believe in God, and so you don't think there's anything wrong with it. Or you can choose to not say it around him if you want to respect his beliefs. Or you can just let it go and he'll forget about it in a minute because that's how he is."

Later on, Aaron brought it up at home, saying he wanted to tell Darian that because he knows Darian doesn't believe in God and he thought it would be important to teach him about it so he can choose for himself. I told him that's his perogative, and I think it's kind of cool, but lots of other people are going to think it's really annoying and so if he's going to take that upon himself he needs to be ready for some people to get mad at him or not want to talk to him as much. Also, that it's Darian's house and so if it really makes Darian uncomfortable, he needs to just drop it.

I am always kind of shocked when I overhear some of the Catholic or Mormon parents I know saying things in these very absolute and rigid terms to children who've never heard of them before. Like, "evolution is wrong and liars believe it, but God is going to punish them". That sort of thing seriously makes me kind of shake my head and drop my jaw and blink a bunch of times. I regularly hang out with a VASTLY arrayed bunch of people...these last couple of weeks I hung out with Mormon homeschoolers, Catholic homeschoolers, the agnostic/Pagan family I mentioned, people at the non-denominational protestant church where the kids go to AWANA, our lesbian nanny, our VERY old fashioned and supersticious granite guy, my Baptist plumber neighbor, and our old high school friend Angel who is a major partying, apathetic, video game playing, womanizing somebody that seems to think it's still high school. And Shaun - who is probably the weirdest guy to anyone reading this, he's a film editor and a lapsed cradle catholic and a philosophy spouting investor...who thought we should get a houseboat to the point that he got us a personalized life ring for our deck - but I digress.

The point is it really takes me aback how everyone spouts their stuff like facts, in hushed tones of conspiracy that say it's assumed I obviously agree with them. And it makes me wonder how each of these groups sees me, and if it even matters, and by the way, how in the world were some people SURPRISED that I think mothers should stay home if they can, in that last post? Did anyone really think otherwise before I said it (this time)?

Anyway, no point. Go look at the pictures if you haven't -
From the 27th - http://altarflame.livejournal.com/327413.html
From the 29th - http://altarflame.livejournal.com/327803.html