Life's been good to me so far

After biking to my class in the frigid record breaking cold snap (it was like Xzibit had heard I liked to get dressed, so he put pants under my pants and shirts under my shirts, so I could wear clothes while I wore clothes) for my spanish class (because I am gonna be fluent, damnitt), which was awesomely diverse (thugged out thugs of many colors, flamboyantly made up gay dude with lots of flower tattoos - I was sitting between a blond redneck and a Phillipino, wut?)...alright this sentence is too long. Anyway I biked over to the health food store and got more priobiotics. I logged into my virtual classes and viewed their syllabi (<-- pfft) and did my dumb intros on the messageboards as required*.

I found out Elise's preschool teacher, Denise, who I ADORE and who is Aaron's friend's mom and our neighbor, has been out because she was hospitalized for e. coli and had to get a blood transfusion :/ She just got home Sunday. We're making her cards and baking her something. I feel so awful for her, and her family.

*Hi, everybody! I'm Cuban, from Key West, and live in Homestead. I'm a writer and a psych major. My husband is in I.T. and we have five closely spaced kids, aged 4-11. I've stayed home with them full time for the last decade - basically since high school graduation - but now that my youngest is in preschool it feels good to think about my own future again. I blog, have a childrens book that's being illustrated, and some short stories I'm self publishing for e-readers. This is my 3rd full time semester at Miami Dade College and I'm still trying to decide exactly what direction I'm going in with psychology. There are a lot of really great options to choose from and I still have a little while to decide.
I like cooking, mermaids, rum, thunderstorms, staying up too late, going to the beach at night, antique jewelry, roadtrips, bubble baths and Starbucks. I'm drawn towards the gothic and sensual, as a general rule. I dislike trips to the grocery store, my husband's very long commute, the sun shining directly on my face, and when people act as though curse words are really terrible. I'm very patient and my children make me happy, but I hate hearing nagging coming out of my mouth. We have afternoon tea outside most days, and I read to them before bed most nights. I love music and am a big fan of Florence and the Machine, Mumford and Sons, Queen, Vivaldi, and Bach. I'm extremely disgusted by wet paper, cigarettes, and ranch dressing.
I find it convenient that this course will force me to attend places and events I want to anyway but might have a hard time justifying otherwise.

---

1. This house is WAY too quiet, too simple, too empty, without Aaron. He's been at Cybele's house since Sunday and I really, really miss him. He's having the time of his life. And apparently EFFORTLESSLY doing all his multiplication and creative writing every day, while Adrian does his schoolwork O_O The two of them are kayaking around in the canal full of manatees behind their house every day - since it's so cold, the manatees have had to swim inland and so they're actually kind of dense. They can feed them vegetables and pet them when they come up to breathe. Kayak battles in the swimming pool are also much more high stakes with the water so cold.

2. I spent quite awhile going over my degree audit, MDC's course sheets, FIU's psych dept transfer requirements, and ways to improve my GPA. My semester GPAs have been great but dropping out midway through classes years ago and getting a couple of Fs has made my cumulative abysmal :/ I just have to retake those two classes to replace the grades; both of them are courses I think I could ace fairly easily. THE POINT IS that after quite a lot of research, thought, conversation with Ananda since we were sitting at the dining table working on our separate things alone in the room, and so on...I am seriously considering going for my bachelor's in neuroscience at UM. Their neuroscience program is rigorous and I'd have to have a 3.8 to transfer in (which is possible if I do really really well for the second half of this AA, and replace those grades I mentioned, according to my calculations). You can choose a psychobiology or a neurobiology track for your bachelors, and your coursework is partially in their medical school, which is attached to teaching hospitals. It sounds so engaging, fascinating and challenging and just, wow. I've been seeking out neurology articles and books for 15 years, but really thinking about neuroplasticity specifically almost daily since Elise was born. You can go on from a bachelors in neuroscience to get a masters in psych, which has been my plan all along. It's just a masters in psych that allows you to be a lot more well versed in what is going on, on a physiological level, than a normal psych masters might - and to have more clout should you choose to research or write about your work in the field. It is not a math-centric curriculum at all, or I wouldn't even really consider it. Electrifying considerations!

---

Last night I experienced one of the greatest moments of my life. I realize that is going to sound extremely melodramatic as you continue reading, but I am dead serious. I was feeling VERY overwhelmed about everything I'm working on right now. Good and capable, but also like it can be heavy and I might need to cry myself to sleep before getting up to start again. It was also colder than it's been in at least a year - "record breaking cold snap" is what everyone is saying, freeze warning, etc. I was very low on sleep, staring at my bed, shivering, thinking how early I was going to have to wake up and how difficult some of the things I'm committing myself to are going to be (non-educational things I haven't written about yet). I'm triggered by the cold. I can never sleep lately, either. And then Grant came in with a giant comforter hot out of the dryer and wrapped me in it from behind before I knew what was happening. I went into an uncontrollable giggling fit. Being surrounded in soft heat was like sudden euphoria. He also changed our sheets to fleece ones we had from a winter camping trip and had an electric blanket going on top of them; I stripped off all my clothes and lay down on all that, under this hot blanket, and seriously just laughed and rolled around in complete bliss for about 10 minutes.

I felt a lot better, and slept well, after that. The man is amazing. I was smiling about it on my way to class, this morning.

---

2 am all to myself.


The view as I make dinner.


Twilight.


This kid's fashion sense always involves being in some kind of full-on get-up. He has a yellow and a purple bandanna that get used sometimes, several jackets that he creatively buttons (WHY WHY WHY), various gloves (some manufactured fingerless, others altered to be that way), and spends a crazy, obsessive amount of time on his hair every day. What you can't see in this pick is that he has on a sparkly purple and black striped nylon shirt from a previous dance performance. Grant keeps finding his mousse bottle empty.


Sisters listening to Charlotte's Web.


Starbucks bathroom and the outfit I'm living in.


A rare picture of my face that I don't think is horrible. I like my face in mirrors just fine, don't even bother with makeup - but I am NOT photogenic. Maybe I can print and cut this out tiny and paste it over my drivers' license shot...


Grant and I went and saw Sherlock Holmes the other night (which I recommend) and when we got back, Ananda was showing Elise songs and dresses and things.


We took the children to the zoo for the first time in almost a year (minus Aaron, since he's been gone). The first thing I thought when I saw them playing was how shockingly THIN they are. All my previous pictures of them playing in water feature poochy toddler/preschooler bellies!








Oh, Isaac. This is because he got "sprayed in the head" (and Grant was tending him, I was only slyly taking a picture not being neglectful).


And this is what Annie does while they play in the water.

What in the name of all that is holy is going on in this picture?! My 11 year old daughter is a woman.

A woman who still wears her Girl Scout shirt and likes milk and cookies.

They're getting ready to start selling cookies.

Aaron recently figured out how to get on the roof of our house. It isn't very hard; we have a deck outside with posts up to a low, slanted part, and from there you just get on up. I mean, it's not something any of the other kids (or I) can do, but this is Aaron we're talking about. So he tells us and Grant goes out and spots him and lets him walk around feeling like king of the world for a few minutes and then stays close by while he gets down, which is still tricky and a little tedious. Grant also tells him to only do this with him, since he can catch him if he falls or help him down if he needs it.

Then yesterday afternoon, Grant was lying down with a migraine and Aaron asked me if he could go outside and get on the roof. I said he could when Daddy was up, but not by himself, and that it should only be awhile. Time passes. I hear thuds and thunks above my head. I sigh.

So I brought him in with the intent to stand him in the corner and then ground him for the next day, on the grounds that I can no longer trust him to obey my limits while outside. But when he gets in, we start talking, and I tell him, "Aaron, I know you have really incredible balance and climbing skills. We both know you are way better than most kids your age at getting on the roof. But everybody falls sometimes. You even fall sometimes. And that's high enough that if you fall, you're likely to break your arm. Or your neck. Someone has to at least be out there to KNOW you got hurt, so we can take care of you and get you to a hospital, you know? What if you fell off the roof and I didn't even know you were up there, and when it got dark I went to check on you and you were out there passed out from pain, lying with a broken arm?"

He meets me eye to eye looking suddenly distraught, to say, "I never thought of anything like that!"

And I was like, "I don't think you realize that most other parents wouldn't let their kids get up on the roof at all. But we understand you love doing stunts and you are super physical, and so we let you do almost anything you ask, as long as you let us keep you safe...like riding your bike down all those stairs in Boston with Daddy running alongside, or getting on the giant rollercoaster at Busch Gardens when you were only 6. We're willing to let you try almost anything as long as you let us keep you safe. You're not ready to know what's safe on your own yet".

As illustrated by the inches from hit by bus on bike incident from several months back that nearly killed ME. He agreed, and his punishment ended up being having to have the same talk with Daddy when he got up and no tag team trip to the roof like he would've had otherwise. Aaron is so easy to teach, so willing to HEAR, it's nuts.

Along with this sort of nonsense, I am also dealing with the neverending and hopeless search for a strapless training bra. I see tons of suitable looking things online - just tubes of white cotton with elastic along the top and bottom - but starting at 32 widths, if not 34. I have this daughter that wants to spend the whole summer in tank tops and sundresses who has a 28 chest, but is starting to look downright awkward and....jiggly, almost :x....with no bras. And she's HORRIFIED by the idea of anyone (gasp) SEEING HER BRA. This is a more pressing issue than it would be otherwise because of the near-daily jaunts into water play, be it rain or hose or sprinklers. We were at the zoo yesterday at one of the splash pads and it got pretty ridiculous, Grant and I were just looking at each other like, "Uh oh..." I feel bad for her even dealing with this sort of crap at nine. She doesn't care. It's not her fault she's almost 5 feet tall and is getting boobs all of a sudden, she just wants to play in the water.

SPEAKING of the zoo yesterday. I have oh so many pictures and I know you want to see! Some of them are kind of awesome.
( +21 )