My first Christmas present was this pair of ginormous pink slippers (?). They are fuzzy inside and out, and Wile E. likes to bite them (while they’re on my feet) so I predict they’ll last about a day or so. Greg would be happy for Wile E. to eat them, because he hates them. That’s fine. I want him to cut his hair, so we’re batting about even.
Here’s me wearing my big pink fuzzies in the kitchen while Wile E. lies in wait for me to drop a tidbit of something on the floor.
I deleted the rant part of my last post. I thought about it, and I didn’t like how I was really letting you-know-who get to me. Perhaps her hating me is a GOOD thing, because it probably means that our values are diametrically opposed, and that’s okay with me. I’ll just chill. I’ll try to not be hateful, because isn’t that where all the bad stuff, like war, starts?
Speaking of, I love this song. THIS one. Not the others where they leave out the “war is over” part.
This weekend, Greg and Sage camped out with the Boy Scouts in the drizzling rain. I stayed home and had writer’s block. Wile E. missed Sage very much, and sat sadly at the window for a great deal of the time. Mommy is boring.
Here is Sage with Salsa. The eyes are Photoshopped in an unsuccessful attempt to correct red eye. Sage and I were totally cracking up at the effect.
The Christmas tree has been up for about a week now. The one we had from last year, which was muy expensive, got peed on by the cat and then mildewed. My brother brought over the little Charlie Brown tree for us, but it was really depressing, so we bought a new tree. I like it, and it will be protected from peeing felines next year.
Last weekend, we all went to see the Texas Fiddling Championships. Greg and I really enjoyed ourselves, and we thought Sage did too. I didn’t find out otherwise until we were at a noontime Christmas flute and piano performance at a local church when Sage said, “Mom, I like this music much better than the music at the BAR.” The very churchly woman behind me gave me a look. So those mortifying moments in public don’t stop when they’re 10 years old. However, I’ll get to get revenge when he’s a teenager, haha.
Okay. Here’s the never again part. Greg loves chicken-fried steak. At least he says he loves chicken-fried steak. Because the reality is that Greg never likes any chicken-fried steak he gets at any restaurant, save the one that shut down about 20 years ago.
So I decided to cook chicken-fried steak, which goes entirely against my nature. We had mashed potatoes, peas, gravy and rolls. My kitchen smells worse than McDonald’s. It was so GREASY. Yuk. It wasn’t all that great, either, in spite of being the top-rated recipe for that particular dish on AllRecipes.com. I just can’t stand spending an hour in the kitchen fryin’ up something so unhealthy for my family. And, Greg ate it, but he didn’t love it. In other words, it didn’t match up to K-Bobs. He didn’t say that, though. Not exactly. I’m glad he wasn’t all that thrilled, because I told him, this is it. The only time this crap will ever be made in my kitchen.
Anytime we’ve been at home today, Sage has been badgering me to check The Weather Channel to see exactly when it is going to snow. For a while there, it was looking bleak, and then we finally got a snow shower. He was absolutely delighted, and gloating a bit about the kids who were in school and didn’t get to go outside in it.
I ran across this old Popular Mechanics cartoon from the 50’s today while avoiding writing surfing the internet. I wish. Only if I tried it now, the floor would probably turn into an ice rink. Living in a pier and beam house has its drawbacks in the winter.
I am quite enjoying being a housewife. I’m getting to enjoy the stuff I like anyway, like cooking and sewing. The cleaning I can take or leave. Spending the time with Sage is also just beyond awesome. I feel sad sometimes when I think how Sky never had this much of my attention. Sage is learning in leaps and bounds. It is just amazing how fast he learns when released from the confines of school. The thing that really is blowing me away is how fast he is picking up Spanish. I have him on the Homeschool Rosetta Stone program, and not only is he speaking it, but he can do the worksheets with 100 percent accuracy. He totally gets it.
I’ve had a few moments lately where I’ve felt just paralyzed–literally staring at the computer like a deer caught in the headlights. I’ve found that it’s much more difficult to write when you have to, and I get brain freeze a lot. I’m working on revitalizing one of my old sites so that I can work it from an affiliate marketing angle. That has much more money-making potential than what I’m currently doing.
I also started an Etsy shop. I had plans to really knock out some cats for the store, but I’ve made exactly one so far. The shop name is Kitty Kitty Bang Bang, and once I have my other site together, I plan to add to it.
The other site? Cash Kitties, if you want to peek. I’m not done with it yet. Yes, I have a thing about cats.
This picture was taken after Greg forgave Wiley for eating one of his hiking boots. They weren’t on speaking terms for an entire day. So this is lovey-dovey make-up stuff.
Sage has a homeschooling blog. I’m teaching him to edit photos and using the blog as an opportunity to practice authentic writing. HERE IT IS. He’s really enjoying working on it, and has comments to reply to! Do feel free to leave your own–he gets really excited when he sees new comments…:-D
I’m scared, but am working on interpreting this feeling as a normal scared feeling instead of a full-on freakout scared feeling. It has to do with my thoughts about quitting my job. When I’m not scared, I’m thinking, “I’m free, I’m free!” and totally enjoying all of the possibilities and the time I get to spend with Sage, outside, exercising, etc. When I’m scared, I’m thinking crap like, “I can’t earn enough money,” and related stuff.
Fact is, I’ve been wanting to homeschool Sage for a while–it was a goal two years ago, and I’m darn lucky that I finally realized that I have to live life consciously and not on some sort of perceived safety autopilot sort of thing or my REAL goals will never be met. So I have to keep on reminding myself of this fact in order to avoid being terrified by the whole thing.
I’m reading a book right now called John the Baptizer, which is just an astounding story of John the Baptist. The guy who wrote it did an amazing amount of research, and so reading it is like diving into this life of Jewish mysticism and learning about the different groups (Essenes, Zealots, etc.) and this really extraordinary man. Strangely, the descriptions of John remind me of Sky. I can totally see Sky living in the wilderness on locusts and honey, wearing a loincloth, having wild hair and intense eyes and decrying a materialist, blind society. Perhaps that is one reason I’m enjoying this book so much.
Sage and I are really digging the whole homeschooling thing. Sage has his own blog, which I set up as a place for him to write stories and basically do whatever creative thing–it is called Sage’s Homeschooling Blog. That may change. His brother added to the story Sage has been writing. That made Sage ecstatic. It’s good to feel that connection from Portland.
We’ve been working on multiplication–doing different things to get the “hard ones” into memory.
We’ve also been going on long “field trips” which turn into two hour long walks in the beautiful weather we’ve been having here. It’s done wonders for my mental health. Today we went to an art gallery. This week, Sage mastered long division. It’s been a good, good week.
Wiley had a moment of passive resistance. He saw Greg and Sage leaving to go somewhere in the car, and jumped out of the window to join them. When Greg told him to go in the house, he ran into the park, where he sat down and refused to move. As you can see, Greg had to carry him all the way from the park to the house. It was ridiculous.
It feels good to be living more mindfully, and not rushing around all the time. I’ve realized that I’d rather learn to cook rice and beans 20 different ways than have my kid in the public schools.
I’ve been having vivid dreams lately. Early this morning, I met a man who had been working for himself since 1981. If I believed in “guides,” I’d have to say he was one. He asked me, “Why do you want to work for yourself?”
I started singing. “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more…” He looked at me, and I answered again in a different way. “I don’t want to work on the plantation.”
We walked downstairs to a small bar, and sat down to have a drink. On the jukebox, Bob Dylan’s song, Maggie’s Farm, began playing. It was beautiful serendipity, only in my dream of course.
They say that Dylan wrote that song because he felt his creativity was being stifled working for too many people (fans). I suppose it meant he was going to write songs more from his heart than for a crowd.
The dream coincides very well with reality right now. Reality is a long story, and it ends with me being on leave from my job and most likely resigning in a week or two.
Reality is this.
Last Monday, Sage walked over to my classroom after school and told me that a girl in his class had called him Stupid, Geek, Dork, and Retarded while kicking him repeatedly. He showed me the marks on his legs. He said, “Mom, our school has a policy of no physical contact.”
I marched right over to the elementary school and spoke with the teacher, who had been out of the room at the time. The teacher asked my son, “What did you do to offend her?” She then proceeded to tell me about problems Sage had been having in class paying attention. When I told her that I was there to discuss the incident of Sage having been kicked she rolled her eyes at me. At that point, I told her she’d better get someone to mediate our meeting.
The principal came in and made nice noises about fixing the situation, meeting with Sage and the girl the next day, being safe, blah blah, and contacting me in a couple of days.
The next day was the class field trip. The girl went along on the trip with everyone else. There was never any meeting, or any consequences that I could see.
I’m pretty sure that if my son repeatedly kicked someone else while name-calling, he’d be wearing the gray uniform at my discipline program. Here’s the thing. There are a lot of children in our school district who are apparently raised by wolves. (I know. That’s an insult to wolves.) At any rate, many teachers and administrators make excuses for it because otherwise, they’d be expelling these kids left and right. And TEA and other government agencies are very concerned about the number of minority kids expelled, so race comes into it, and basically, rules are not implemented in a fair and impartial manner.
If I kicked my kid and called him names and someone found out, he would probably be removed from my home.
I’m not sending my kid back into an environment which, through inaction, tacitly supports this abuse.
I was about to take leave anyway, because I’m in a lot of pain and having to leave work frequently due to panic attacks. This was pretty much the icing on the cake. There’s a reason for everything, and I feel as though a huge burden has been lifted from my shoulders, because I’ve been worried about Sage and school for a long time. Experience has pretty much given me the ability to see into the future as far as kids with special needs and high school are concerned. It’s not good.
I’m very excited about homeschooling Sage. He has been asking me to anyway. He is tired of the bullying, and not understanding the teacher because she is talking too fast and classmates are causing background noise.
As for money, I’ll continue to do the freelance writing. It’ll be the meat and potatoes, rather than the gravy, but that’s okay, because I have other things in the works as well.
No more plantation. No more sending kids home from school because the pockets on their jeans aren’t right (yes, true, daily). The kids and I both know what stupid rules are. How long can you work in a sick system before you become sick yourself?
We picked up the new camera today. Sage was more than happy to pose for the first photo.
The I decided to head outside and test out the zoom. People shouldn’t smoke, because it’s disgusting.
I took a picture of Greg’s shoe. I’m happy with the detail.
Sorry, no pics of bees on flowers or anything like that. If I was a professional photographer, I’d be taking photos of things like peeling graffiti, rusted cars and colorful assortments of garbage.
This morning, Greg and I were talking about how he is planning to formally adopt Sage. I recommended a good lawyer, and then I said, “But I think things would go a lot better if we were married. But I don’t imagine you want to marry me again.”
Greg said, “You really suck at this, you know?”
True, that.
At any rate, we are getting married again, and then will pursue the adoption. There won’t be any big deal or anything, we’re just doing paperwork. The same thing goes for the adoption. I think Greg is wonderful for being a real Dad to another person’s biological child, but we won’t make a big deal out of it, because Sage already sees Greg as being his dad, and it seems like making a big deal out of an adoption would take away from that somehow.
As far as getting married again, well, we’re pretty much common-law at this point anyway. I realized when Greg and I were separated that I could never be with anyone else, which pretty much leaves me in the position of working out problems when they arise, rather than running from them. I really do love the man. He’s one of a kind in so many ways, most of them good.
Edited to add…jeez, am I really coming off as being this pragmatic?? I’m excited about cementing our family together!
It used to be that whenever I bought something electronic, I had to beat the salesperson and their extended warranty off with a stick. These days, I actually ASK for the extended warranty. I ordered this Nikon from our local Staples (12 mp with 7x optical zoom!), and got the two year extended warranty. The reason I did that was because the last camera bit the dust after only eight months. The guy at the store said the whirring, lens jammed thing was so common with digital cameras that most manufacturers won’t cover it themselves. So I basically paid an extra fifty dollars so it would last two years instead taking the chance I’d only have it for a few months.
So I’m excited that I’ll be back to taking pictures again. I’m not sure why, since I spent hours today on my Flickr account downloading photos to have made into a photo book on Snapfish. There are 1500 family photos on there, and it is really overwhelming. The idea of actually editing the photos and then arranging them in a digital book with cute quotes and stories gives me a headache. It’s my duty though. It’s either that, or opt for the easy print order through Flickr and then just throw them in a book from Wal-mart. It seems like that would be a shame, given that the other option is readily available. Sometimes I think we have too many options…
The drug situation remains in limbo. I started Zoloft, and had a few wonderful days of churning out hundreds of dollars worth of articles. I quit again because I got so hyper that midday, I would literally almost collapse and had to leave work twice. Now I don’t feel like writing that crap, and GET why people take Ritalin to study boring subjects. I’ve taken a break from trying to quit Ativan, I’m just trying to maintain the amount I’ve gotten down to, which only seems to be possible with exercise. I lost my groove for a while after I got a cold, and it felt like I was going to come out of my skin. And it’s been months now!!! Jeez this stuff is addictive.
I’m reading a delightful book called Trainwreck: My Life As an Idoit, and it is a hilarious first person account of growing up with learning disabilities and a drug problem. I see many of my students in this story. I also see a bit of myself. The guy describes doing an insane amount of Ecstasy and then basically having a dopamine deficiency the rest of his life. I have to wonder if prescribed antidepressants have the same effect in the long run, seriously. Sometimes it feels like it.
At any rate, I think anyone who works with people with learning disabilities should read this book. Besides the pure entertainment value, it really does give you a peek into how people with reading difficulties and ADHD may perceive things, and perhaps provides a dose of empathy at the same time. All that is below the surface, though. The main thing is that the book is just freakin’ hilarious.
And because I worry about stuff like this, yes, I misspelled idiot on purpose.
