ahem

I've looked everywhere but can't find the book I just bought entitled I Used To Be So Organized. A bad sign, maybe?

memory lane

Long story as to why, but I happened upon this post yesterday. I can't say the feeling has changed all that much, but it did give me an enormous laugh to consider that when I wrote it, I was 6 weeks pregnant and still 11 weeks away from finding out that I was pregnant. No wonder I was so tired!

math

So many things have been going through my mind today as I've been dealing with ramifications of complicated maternity leave pay, but the overriding though/feeling for my day has been, "I HATE math! I HATE math! I HATE math! I HATE math! I HATE math! E-SPE-cially payroll math! I HATE math! I HATE math!" Well, you get the picture. I don't teach math for a reason.

a sign my desk needs more regular cleaning

"Mama, this doesn't look like a desk anymore."

"Why?"

"Because there's not much stuff on it. It's all empty right here."

need more coffee

I love coffee, but there are times in life when I'm addicted. Now is one of those times. Yesterday I only had a half cup in the morning because we were scrambling to get out the door with half of our kitchen to prepare a surprise b-day brunch for my MIL, the day after we had two b-day parties for Pink. My eyes got sore. My head was hurting. My neck was achy and stiff. I got my hands on two more cups and the problems were solved.

Today, I had one cup this morning as usual. And then I got my hands on another cup a couple hours later. And now, only 5 hours after waking up, I'm desperate for a third. It's not even working anymore!

maybe i'm not accepting my age well

Really, the numbers hadn't bothered me all that much the past couple years. Turning 30 wasn't as hard for me as it is for some, and 31 & 32 passed uneventfully.

However. As a "happy birthday" present this year, the DMV sent me a license renewal notice with a picture required. I sat in the car in the parking lot to touch up my makeup & hair, attempting in vain to hide the signs of aging that have bombarded me the past few months as 33 approached, as well as the annoying post-Lizzie "baby hairs" that are growing out and looking altogether lovely. Thoughts of commercials promising a reduction in the visible signs of aging started running through my mind, and I wondered why I hadn't prepared more vigorously for this day by exfoliating & penetrating & shrinking & minimizing.

And it hit me even harder than it did on my b-day: I will never again, as long as I live, look young. Sure, I don't get offered senior citizen discounts, and I do look like I'm in my 30s (with the amount of sleep I usually get, it's often my late 30s), but I will never again pass for a 20-something. If I'm carded, it will be by some 20-something kid who's trying to butter me up for a bigger tip. I look old, and there's no going back.

OK, not OLD, old. But you know, old. To the teens I teach, I'm somewhere in the same group as their parents. To the kids at the local college, I'm in that "your old but your hair's not gray, so I don't have to be nice to you, right" age group. And these days, when some guy pays attention to me, it's because my child is making off with a candy bar at the store and he's warning me of the impending shoplifting charges, should she get away.

Sigh. Aging. How did this happen?

well THAT was interesting

I'd set myself up, for sure, but after years and years of the same user name and password for everything but banking, my email was finally hijacked. Everything was changed, so I couldn't get in for about a week. And because it's my login for blogger, too, I couldn't come here, either. But we're back in business after only several headaches to get things back in order.

While I was out:
Lizzie's first tooth peeked through the gum on the evening of my birthday, which helped to make up for the fact that she screamed all day on my b-day (also my first day at home for the summer).

The most excited flower girl in the world loved being in the wedding, and in the end, relinquished her position as the groom's top girl to the bride, transferring her affections for the groom to the little ring bearer. All was right in the end. Except that I forgot the camera, and we took only one quick family photo the entire day, even though fully one half of our family was in the wedding. But I did remember the extra pair of tights, so I'm not all that bad. And surely there was a photo of her taken by someone, somewhere.

Lizzie finally embraced eating food after looking lustfully at ours for months now. After over a month of consistently trying to get her to take bites of cereal, she's now excited about being a big girl and impatient if I take too many of my own bites in between hers.

Pink learned how to insult her daddy:
"Daddy, did you just toot?"
"Yes."
"I don't like the smell of your toots."
"Well, don't smell it then."
"Well, it comes towards me!"

School ended, graduation went off without a hitch, mama has done fully 8 loads of laundry and cleaned 2 bathrooms, and we are well into our obsessive summer fruit eating and freezing. So really, the usual.

Thanks for stickin around.

it's been a big week around here

Monday: A student whose dad's cancer was taking a turn for the worse informed me that his dad is now getting better. My own dad died shortly after my sister's graduation, so this was an emotional high.

Tuesday: There were too many stories to tell about my seniors who completed their mock interviews that day with community members. Many were "hired" on the spot. There was a lot of high-fiving that day. One student, who was failing until the end, came to me and thanked me for calling her mom about the 'F' in my class. She said that her mom yelling at her, and knowing that I had cared enough to call, was exactly what she needed to get her you-know-what in gear and do the work necessary to pass my class. She will now graduate, and she actually thanked me for getting her iin trouble!

Wednesday: Pink had her very first haircut of any kind (I've never even so much as trimmed one stray hair). She went to my normal salon and my normal guy did her hair. She's been a big girl for a while now, but it felt official yesterday.
ALSO, Lizzie "crawled"! She can now move to both sides, backward, AND forward! She does this thing where she lifts up her knees, plants her heels on the floor, and dives toward the ground to move forward. And the girl is practically unstoppable now.

Thursday (today): I have said my piece to all 100 of my seniors, signed stacks of yearbooks, handed back final exam results, and given out final grades. I have hugged, high-fived, and patted on the back. After a year of pushing, prodding, and pulling, and after having a 40% failure rate in one class just two months ago, I was able to tell every single one of my students, "Congrats! See you next week at graduation!" My heart is swelled with emotion.

Friday: We leave for a long drive to Phoenix, where Beloved will be the most handsome groomsman that ever lived, and Pink will be the most excited little flower girl that ever lived. Plus, we get to see my brother & sister-in-law's new house (first time buyers - exciting!), and meet our new niece, Katelyn.

And somehow, after an emotional week of successes & triumphs & life changes, I will do my best to not be in a puddle of tears on Sunday night when I watch 2 of my favorite people walk down a church aisle. No promises, though.

there's always a bright side

I've been fighting some kind of sickness for a few days now, and yesterday the beastly germs started attacking my voice. Well, sometime overnight, those germs won. The weak, crackly voice from yesterday is merely a faint whisper this morning.

Optimistic Pink pointed out that it's good my voice is so quiet and sick, because that way Lizzie can stay asleep. And my laugh is quiet, too, so she can take her nap.

The things we do so our children will sleep!

awesome

Our 18 year old nanny (whom I simply adore) asked me today about getting a blog started because I'm in the "blogging generation."

Awesome. It made my day. And it gave me the strangest urge to pinch her young, rosy cheeks.

droppin balls as a way of life

Every day, I drop a ball somewhere.

If I'm a good teacher (my schedule, year-end projects, report cards, and needy students have demanded that of me lately) then I'm inevitably a so-so mom, not-very-good-wife, and horrible friend.

If I'm a good wife and mom, I'm a terrible teacher and pretty pathetic friend.

If I'm a good friend, I'm a decent mom, lousy wife, and embarrassingly sub-par teacher.

Throw in volunteering a few times per month, pursuing hobbies once in a while, and chasing private dreams, and this juggling act is a lost cause. Don't even get me started about trying to keep a Suzie Homemaker house that rivals the houses of most of my friends. Around here, that just doesn't happen. Because I like to SLEEP sometimes.

No matter which direction I look in life, no matter which day, balls are careening down around me, ending in a splat all over the ground in a mess I have to hurry to clean up. I end up owing apologies to people because "I was (fill in the blank with the specific juggling act)."

Is this really life? Am I doomed to living each day of my existence knowing that I'm letting important people down, that I'm failing on priorities in life, and that I'm going to have messes to clean up?

I've read articles about the "she's got it all" women who really don't have it all. These authors have argued that women who appear to have their cake and eat it, too (i.e. work, rear children, maintain friendships, involve themselves in causes, etc.) simply have pieces of their cake, but not the whole thing. Some days, these articles make me feel a bit better. Today they make me yearn for the appearance of having it all. Honestly. Right now I just wish I could fake it. I wish I could be excited for the friend who gets to hang out with the girls while I turn down social events, or at least sound excited. I wish I could get a whole new wave of energy when I come home to Beloved and the girls and that the energy would last all the way til (livin' large here, people), like, 9:00 or something. Is that too much to ask? I even have a second cup of coffee in the afternoon most days, and yet...

dropping balls is pretty much what I do. Is there anyone, anyone at all, who drops balls regularly? Anyone who even sort of understands (no fair answering yes if you don't have at least one friend you haven't called in a month, at least one basket of clean laundry sitting around, at least one bathroom that needs to be cleaned, and a husband who needs some attention)? Sigh. I'm off to drop more balls by taking my sick body straight to bed.

completely normal

"How do you expect us to answer this question?" came the accusing words of one student today. The class was taking their final exam for the quarter, worth about 5% of their final grade in the class. I had checked over the exam thoroughly when I gave it two years ago, but didn't get out my fine-tooth comb this time around. And it bit me. My student was right: there were questions on the exam that were impossible for them to answer, and others that were confusing; all of it led to mass frustration.

For the rest of the period, I felt like I had failed them. Trying to balance time with my family with grading essays/planning meaningful units is hard: I've no where near mastered this art. But I do try hard to do right by my students. This time I'd unwittingly set them up for failure, made myself look incompetent, and felt horrible about it all.

Then about 20 minutes later I saw a student walking outside. He'd been released early to lunch by another teacher as a part of a school-wide "get good test scores, get out of class early" campaign. The only problem was that he had skipped my class this morning and missed that exam in which I embarrassed myself. And he's missed about four other days this month. So I casually walked outside, greeted him, and pulled him inside my classroom where I handed him the exam and told him to finish it. He's a great kid and we were friendly in our conversation, but I was totally the Boss and had my act together. I allowed him to send a text to the bewildered friend waiting outside, and then he got started. It was awesome.

Days like today make me feel completely inadequate, and on top of the world, and very much on the ball, and quite human in my normalness. Really, I'm not a terrible teacher or a brilliant teacher, but a teacher who is very human in her makeup and who gets better and better all the time.

And that isn't all that bad.

pretty

Growing up as a girl who wished she'd been born a boy, one of the worst things I could be called was "pretty". It was made even worse when "pretty" was used in conjunction with my nickname: "Jenny (ughh), you're so pretty (gag)."

However.

In response to Beloved's recent sport bike purchase (my Christmas gift to him as a testosterone outlet amidst yet another girl), I sent the following text message in the middle of an impromptu morning of dancing at home:
You can have your bike & your testosterone; I have pretty girls who like to giggle & dance & sing & wear pretty clothes with me. Oh, my HEART!

I'd say the acceptance of my femininity is complete.

the #1 reason to always be organized in every area of life:

Because if you're not always organized, and you do something like, say, toss part of your baby's play gym into a random box somewhere when she's 1.5 years old, by the time your next child arrives 1.5 years later and you move into a smaller place, the play gym will be a thing of the past.

Seriously, I'm going crazy looking for the missing piece. I have the floor mat and one arch, which of course doesn't stand up without the other arch. I've made significant headway in this area since Lizzie was born, but I'm paying for past negligence in a big way.

Ughh.

traditions

I'm a tradition kinda girl w/ traditions coming out of my ears, so when Every Chapter asked me to write about my favorite, I was happy she fed me an answer.

No where else in San Diego (or all of California, to my knowledge), can one start his Christmas evening with an appetizer of Swedish meatballs while watching girls of Swedish heritage sing Santa Lucia in a beautiful museum... and finish with Swedish rosettes, American apple pie, Greek baklava, and Danish pudding for dessert, chased by some hot glug from either Denmark or Sweden, while watching Baile Folklorico dancers from Mexico.

There are so many people who attend this festival now that my old go-to parking plan, walking plan, and eating plan were abandoned several years ago. I've since adopted a willingness to walk much further and eat much less (never a bad thing for the waistline anyway). But we still make this event a priority. It doesn't even need to be entered on the calendar, really. We know it's the first full weekend in December, and our schedule always makes room. Even last weekend, when we had an infant, a tired 3 year old, and we moved the next morning.

read the full version over at Every Chapter.

lesson learned

After having a baby, particularly if this is not baby #1, and there is no such thing as "nap when the baby naps," DO NOT RE-READ BLOG POSTS. There will likely be grammatical mistakes such that your readers will wind up completely confused. And the only thing harder than writing with perfect grammar the first time around is trying to make sense of grammatical mistakes, and fix them correctly.

Expect quite a few mistakes between here and the time in my life, out yonder, when I will be rested and my brain will function properly. Then I will be grammar queen once again and I will obsess over every punctuation, agreement, etc. But that will all have to wait until such time that I can even remember what the other grammar points are.

I hope I just made sense...

i'm busy right now

Although I wouldn't normally recommend starting a 5-part book series on the fifth book, I must concede that the suspense builds to a climax quite rapidly. And because I'm 302 pages into the 348 pages of this book from the Zion Chronicles series, the whole world is about to change (quite literally).

Yet I am so tired from not getting enough sleep and growing a baby and hosting in-laws and all, that I can't get through the dang thing. So I will be back once I finish watching the world change. It may be a day or two. Or a week. But I will finish and be back.

In the mean time, if you've never read the series, I'd highly recommend that you do. Granted, I can't vouch for the captivating-ness of the first four books, but I plan on reading them, too, so I'll let you know. Book 5 is quite well written indeed.

death warmed over

You know that scene from Devil Wears Prada where Emily walks into the office coughing, hacking, sneezing, sniffing, and looking pathetic? That must be what I look like at work today, since I'm doing all of those things constantly, and even my noisy class settled down immediately, asking if I was going to be ok.

So I'm going home after this last class, and I'm going to bed for about a week. Nevermind that we still have family in town. This show cannot go on.

this is it

I've come to the conclusion that all I really need in life is a live-in nanny in the form of my sister, who would of course take regular breaks to go live elsewhere for a couple days when we need family alone time, but would otherwise just want to do things for us.

As I'm catching up on blogging and email and just overall being lazy, she's cooking the dinner we requested.

She also kept Pink awake in the car earlier to ensure a nice long nap at home.

And she's done more than her share of dishes.

And when I was really craving something to drink other than water last night, she ran to the store to buy margarita mix so I could enjoy a frozen concoction with my dinner.

And tomorrow she's taking Pink on a date for a few hours so I can pack up lots of boxes to prepare for our upcoming move.

And then after we all eat lunch and Pink goes down for a nap, she's making me a latte to sip in my bubble bath, which will be followed by my b-day present: a one hour massage (nice to be related to a massage therapist).

Yes, I think a live-in nanny will do quite nicely.

why won't you love me?

I selected you from among many. "You," I thought, "are perfect. The one I've waited for. The one I need." I've cared for you. I've looked out for your best interest. Hours upon hours we've spent together late at night, both needing something from the other. And you're quitting on me, giving up.

First it was my blog page. You single-handedly ruined my new design and threw my page back into the most basic of layouts, tossing aside all that I had worked on.

Now you have lost interst in me altogether. You quit for no reason. You slow down and take your precious time when I need you most. And you have even turned that hidious blue color, refusing to do any work what-so-ever.

Computer, dear computer, why do you leave me now? Don't you know that I need you? That you are my connection to the world at large? Please don't go computer; I promise to always love you if you stay.