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So Much for Weekly Posts
Or alternately titled Not Gone, but Probably Forgotten.
Anyway, due to ongoing time constraints, this post is relegated to a pathetic “I’m still alive” three minute update, and a commitment in writing to get back on track blogwise in the coming weeks. Now, on to the good stuff.
- The powers that be at my graduate program have decided to LET ME OUT! I got notification last night (late last night, otherwise I probably would have gone out for celebratory bar-hopping…) that my applied project received a PASS, which right now to me feels exactly like a parole order from prison. I am not DONE with the semester yet; I still have two weeks of zombie-like sociology coursework to complete, but all the hard stuff is behind me.
- After some recent serious brain-frying cogitation, I decided for a variety of reasons not to walk in the graduation ceremony. I still feel vaguely guilty about this decision even though ultimately I’m the only one who might conceivably have any future regret about it. Honestly, I skipped my undergrad ceremony too and never thought about it twice, so this really isn’t a big deal. The accomplishment remains.
- …HOWEVER, the “now what?” interrogations are just starting. And the fact that I don’t really have any specific answers right now makes this more than a touch irritating; not towards the inquiring parties, but rather more inwardly-focused. I’ve been so utterly driven to finish over the last whatever semesters that the means haven’t begun to connect to the ends yet, in my mind. Oh shit.
- I should take this moment to thank Björn, ABBA, Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried and all their buddies for getting me through many a difficult homework night, most especially (repetitively) in recent weeks. Without the focusing force of Pierce Brosnan’s eye-twitchy singing performances, I might never have graduated.
- It’s official; I have joined the 30 club. I have a lot of thoughts about this, and have started writing a naval-gazing reflective post. I know you are excited, so stay tuned.
- A few days ago, I broke my cardinal rule about not trimming my daughter’s hair myself. I could not stand her shaggy-dog look anymore; had no time to make a trip to Supercuts; and she wouldn’t let me otherwise constrain it with clips, bands, bows, ties, clasps, barrettes, or hats. The results aren’t terrible, but they aren’t fashion-mag cover material either. I solemnly swear I will take my poor abused child to a proper salon to get further tidied up before her big upcoming dance recital.
- We have infected her entertainment life with Fern Gully. Anyone of a Certain Age remembers this movie with some amount of amusement and horror for its absurd stench of the 90s. Naturally, my daughter loves it, and spends a great deal of time now pretending to be, in fact, a forest fairy.
- Speaking of the little genius, guess what? She is going to be graduating too! And it makes me want to cry! Oh wait, I probably WILL cry on the big day. And we still have no firm answer on which school she’ll be attending in the fall yet. Sigh.
- And for a final thought, all she (desperately) wants from the Easter Bunny this year is a Live! Butterfly! Garden! Ummm, ok, bug-phobic child. And thank you, TV infomercials.
Once More into the Fray
Nothing really world-shattering over here, so please don’t be looking for bloggy brilliance today. Just a super quick update / mea culpa [while I wait for pizza delivery - haha] before the insanity of My Last Semester of Grad School overtakes me and sucks out my brains. This is somewhat of a follow-up to the “survival” post, but yes, I am still feeling pretty anxious, overwhelmed, and hella burnt-out. Unfortunately I was not struck by any major academic epiphanies during the break, despite many sleepless nights laying in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to plan things out and avoid full-blown panic attacks. However, I did mentally work out a rough set of project plans (sexy they are NOT); for our purposes let’s call them “A” and “B”. I was banking on plan A because it was the least painful to execute but I just realized (now 4 days into the semester) that it was only a pipe dream…I won’t risk putting anyone to sleep with the details but suffice it to say the timing just wouldn’t work out. So back to plan “B”, which is (I am doing some serious sacrificial praying) hopefully going to be feasible with a minimum of pain. So. Now I just have to work out a million details, file my grad papers, line up a bunch of research, write a literature review, and start figuring out the details of execution. Joy.
So all of this has kind of put me into full-blown freak-out mode the last couple weeks. Uncle Bubba has been acting as my ad hoc unofficial therapist/sounding-board on the go (mostly because he is the one that is always available via phone/text/yahoo lately — sorry UB!). Aside from the academic challenges, I am seriously worried about the reality of student loans pressing in upon me; my ability to find better-paying work one way or another; and getting our general current finances in some kind of order because quite frankly, 2009 and 10 kinda kicked our asses and the ducks are coming home to roost. It’s all a mess right now, but operating under certain constraints makes it hard to plan for improvement. I think this will all become a little clearer once I have escaped from grad school and can get my head screwed back on properly for other important life-details.
We did succumb to one little pre-semester fun hurrah; since we minimized Christmas expenses and whatnot this year…we took a little MLK weekend trip to Vegas, just the three of us. It was actually quite a fun trip, althought very different from recent Vegas adventures because Gmom wasn’t there this time to offload some of the kid-duties. So a lot less drinking/gambling/related shenanigans, but more family-based adventures. K had a great time.
Have to put a shout-out to my awesome hubby for all his recent support, patience, and general steadiness in my life at a time when it feels like everything else is wobbling on its axis. Over the last couple days he has been painstakingly working on our @#$)(#!& master shower, so that I can finally be reunited with blisteringly hot morning showers which have more water pressure than a dog peeing on a bush. He also took on the Dad-ariffic task of taking the little genius out to buy her Long-Awaited-Tap-Shoes. She is THRILLED and tomorrow’s dance class ought to be a TOTAL hoot. Oh and he has lately been playing frequent victim customer to K’s “barber shop” ministrations. All this during a week when his dear daughter jokingly suggested replacing him with 1) a puppet or 2) a robot. (!)
On the other family WIN front, we finally got the little genius in to see the dentist this week, which had been somewhat delayed for a variety of reasons. As first dental visits go, it was pretty positive and she seemed to enjoy it overall. For my peace of mind, I am so relieved to find out that the nightly teeth-grinding isn’t going to ruin her life, and her overall dental health is A-OK perfect right now. Hooray!
OK as exciting as all that is — on to the mea culpa. I had great intentions (and we ALL know where those are used for paving…) to get around to fixing the blog design layout and whatnot, and get some serious type-time in over the break, but somehow the allure of DVR and Wii frisbee golf and staying up all night doing nothing meaningful got the better of me. So. Maybe not so much on the redesign and playing catch-up, given that my next three weeks of academic/work life are probably going to be sheer hell, BUT I am planning to try to commit to one post a week this semester, because I feel a lot more sane and happy when I get some of the junk in my head OUT. Fortunately (?) you all are along for the ride!
So, onward and upward; on the road again; ready-steady-GO; once more into the fray….yada, yada, yada.
Pizza’s here!
OMG! Run faster!
*not actually me!
First, take a moment and look at these date tags, will you? NINE days since the last post. This is totally unacceptable and management will address the problem forthwith. Well, hopefully.
Yes, as this picture illustrates, I am back on the hamster wheel of grad school again. The break went by in approximately 5 nanoseconds, I think. (Vegas’ll do that to a person, I hear). Even though the semester technically started a week ago, I find myself floundering and completely at a loss for motivation, comprehension, organization, and any other applicable tion‘s you can think of. On Sunday night, I did the first assignment for one of my classes and it should have been easy in theory but in practice it took me about 4 hours, and included an elegant mental breakdown, 2 temper tantrums (on the inside [mostly]), and a very, VERY strong impulse to throw my mouse through the window just to hear some kind of satisfying breakage. Yeah, welcome back to academia!
Sooooo, yeah, I’ve been a in a marvelous frame of mind and lots of fun to be around lately. Just ask FF! On second thought, don’t ask him. Work, too, has been pretty nutty, although, not as bad as some semester launches. I attribute the manageable-nut-factor to my awesome coworkers. (and possibly I should also recognize here the fine contributions of my good friend, Beer.)
So anyway, this is another one of those “whatever pops into my head with no organization or coherent theme” posts.
K has not been the best sleeper lately. After 4+ years of dealing with unholy sleep disruptions, I’d like to say at this point that becoming a parent is FULL of false advertising. When they are all tiny, cute, and fit in one arm, you tell yourself that all the sleep deprivation is worth it, and after all, they’ll sleep through the night eventually, right? FALSEFALSEFALSE!!! Woe is me.
I have to proclaim something very important: vanilla oreos dipped in Nutella might be the most delicious thing on Earth. So delicious in fact that I will not be able to buy them ever again, because merely looking at the package is approximately 200 calories. This is most definitely what I want for dinner. Sigh.
Just when I am about to pull my freaking hair out over my daughter’s sudden shift to demanding parent-interactive play CONSTANTLY, a $6 investment in a pretend-pizza-set kept her busy for 2 days straight! What the heck? I mean, she always used to be really good about creative, imaginative pretend and/or toy play, and I always felt we had a really positive mix of solo and interactive play. Lately though, it has been Mom/Dad/K2 or nothing but complaints. I don’t get it. Is this a normal developmental shift? Geez kid, go entertain yourself already and let us take down the Christmas decorations!
Now that the dining room area is painted, mostly deboxed, and we have an actual table and chairs, we have started eating at the table like (mostly) civilized folks. Thus, I am teaching K to set the table. So far, she thinks it is a lot of fun; especially when it comes to lighting or blowing out the candles. I wonder, am I starting a pyro here?
My self Christmas present this year was my ridiculously cute Coach bag. FF, on the other hand, has been lusting after a Keurig single-cup coffee brewer for quite awhile, so that was his self-gift this year. I expected to get indifferent service out of it, just as I have viewed any other coffee apparatus in the past. Well, that was the past. I’m now a slavish fanboi for this thing. Go figure. But hey, it brews perfect single cups of coffee, tea, or cocoa in mere seconds, directly into my travel mugs and there are no distracting measurements, clean up, filters, blah blah blah. It’s ridiculously awesome.
/Soapbox:
Dear Ghost Whisperer / JLH:
I feel that some of the storylines this season have been waning in quality. For example, who had the great idea of digitally rendering the “Shiny people” on the cheap, thus ending up with something that looked like the love child of Casper the ghost and the Stay-Puft man? Also bear witness to the oddness of sending JLH inside an online virtual world avatar. Please understand that I hold you to no specific intellectual standards, but there is only so much ridiculousness that I can tolerate in the name of my JLH crush. I hate to bring this up and all, but I just saw the preview footage for next Friday and all I can say is….couldn’t you spend a little more on those glowing orange contact lenses? And hasn’t the cheesy demonic possession thing been DONE enough already? I’m really ok with numbing, formulaic regularity in your episodes, so please consider this my request to skip the contact lenses, avatars, and marshmellow people forthwith. /Soapbox off
OK, one more last thought: DAMN, some days I wish I could have gone from pregnancy to a 5 year old in the blink of an eye with nary a scratch, saggy boob, or misplaced hair.
Braindead
Well, I haven’t had the intellectual fortitude to actually sit in front of the computer to write anything meaningful for days…and so I come to you from the limited confines of my iPhone.
Pretty braindead here…K has come down with a cold (I do hope only a cold and not flu), I have mountains of homework to do this weekend and for the first time in my life worried that I may not be able to pass a class. The house is a mess, the cats are nuts playing and galloping everywhere, spreading bits of litter everywhere with abandon.
But hey we have a new blog domain (check out your URL bar) and I can also now be reached at cluelessmom@whatdoyouwantfordinner.net !
More coming soon.
Stuff that really aggravates me…
It’s my blog and I’ll complain if I want to…(that’s how the song goes, right?)
…slimy ex-landlords that keep your deposit (well over $1000 mind you) in order to repaint the interior as preparation for listing the house to sell. Not that we damaged the walls mind you, just a little normal wear and tear with hanging pictures, etc. And to think, we were so careful to keep our sweet little artist from doodling on them, too. Apparently our rental contract should have specified that the sacred walls were forbidden from being punctured. The reality is that she charged us to repaint over the evidence of multiple incidents of water damage, termites, and roof leaks. Yep, we got screwed.
…door-to-door security system salespeople. Seriously, WTF? Not entirely sure if the dude was a scammer or just a desperate salesman, but either way, he was persistent, annoying, and courtesy of my talkative daughter now knows her age, the name of our cat, and that we just moved in to the neighborhood. I’m pretty sure if K had our social security numbers memorized, she probably would have shared that too. He caught me totally off guard, because normally I would have told him where to shove it, but he caught me at a moment when my focus was completely split, at the end of a long day where I had not slept or eaten in the last 24 hours. So let’s say, I was not at my best. Also it occurred to me that perhaps being aggressively rude in front of my daughter had several implications. It wasn’t until later that evening that I realized how aggravated I felt because of the whole thing. And of course, in true parental self-flagellation, I realize we have been very lax with teaching K about stranger-danger, volunteering information and all that other personal safety junk. I hate the thought of bringing the concept of “bad things” into her bright world, and again, I don’t necessarily feel qualified for this. I want her to be safe, but not live in fear. I think I need a parenting stand-in to handle all this “teaching” stuff. Talking in silly voices with toy dinosaurs, I can do.
…our dear child is on another sleep strike. Sorta. She started off in the new house pretty strong, but after a week or two, she started having more and more difficulty going to sleep in her own room and staying asleep. I think the stress of moving, and also starting back at school kicked off the strike, and then the loss of Mynx raised her separation anxiety level. I guess this doesn’t really qualify as something for the “aggravation” list, but it is hard to deal with at times. For one, it means that she only sleeps peacefully in her own room for about 45 minutes each night. That is not much time to get homework done, unpack boxes without “assistance”, or watch something on DVR that doesn’t include dinosaurs, counting in foreign languages, or men who sing and dance while wearing colorful clothing. Not to mention, oh, I don’t know, actually sleeping in our own bed without an evil genius pasted to one or the other our backs all night long. Praying to whatever parental gods that be, for this to pass soon. The problem is, once she wakes up from her 45 minute solo sleep, she cannot be diverted back to her own room. She’ll stubbornly stay up all night, if she has to. Which means either a) one or both of us take her to bed with us, b) she dozes on the couch downstairs until we go to bed, or c) she stays awake until we go to bed. All three options are wreaking havoc on the quality and quantity of her sleep and it worries us, for sure.
…scorpions. OK, maybe the word for that isn’t really “aggravation”, but whatever. I was watching TV solo downstairs one night, and just as I was getting ready to head to bed, I saw what I thought was some string on the edge of the couch. I leaned in to brush it away, and realized it was a BABY scorpion. Thankfully I looked more closely before touching it. As it was, I had to trap it myself and flush it, because I couldn’t bear the thought of taking the time to wake FF and possibly have the thing disappear into the couch forever. The whole thing basically gave me a panic attack. Overall though, I think the ministrations of the extermination company are working, because we have had way less buggy incidents, and no more scorpion sightings in a couple weeks. So here’s hoping they have all moved on to the scorpion afterlife.
…KIDS THAT RANDOMLY REACH OVER AND HIT RANDOM KEYS WHILE YOU ARE TRYING TO TYPE UP YOUR HOMEWORK. ARG!
…homework. sigh.
