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Progress and Balance

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I have six untouched books left. I am in progress on four three books. Of the four three I am reading, one Noah is reading to me, two are one is more than half gone (and they are short), and one I am slowly savoring because it’s neat. The two one that are is almost done I can easily finish in a few hours of reading. Of the six remaining, three are plays and the remaining three novels are fairly short. I could probably finish the entirety of my reading in about eight solid days of reading. It will only take me that long due to Shanna interruptions. I have four weeks and three days.

I am trying to maintain a reasonable awareness of politics seeing as I will be voting before the Comp Exam. It feels irritating and distracting though.

Spanish is plugging along. I would feel worse about my grasp of things only some of the people in the higher numbered course aren’t doing much better. I have a test in seven days. I have an oral presentation of some kind (it’s not announced yet) in three weeks.

The house has gone to crap and that’s just how it’s going to be for a month or so. I don’t have the bandwidth.

I’m trying to continue being a good friend. It’s kind of hard. I don’t have much extra energy.

I’m probably not doing enough for Noah. I’m trying though.

Shanna is still my primary focus. I’m telling you, being a stay at home parent is a full time job. This is pretty hard. Especially given all the other things pulling at me. Things will let up tremendously after the Comp Exam and the election. I’m looking forward to being able to coast for a while.

Although… after the Comp Exam comes the holidays. I’m still not entirely sure what all is happening there.

Edited to reflect today’s reading.

some of them don’t suck.

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So far I liked The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The English Patient; Midnight’s Children and Kim are both really interesting so far. Pretty much everything else has been obnoxious. I’m happy about four good ones. 🙂

I have eight books left that are not in progress. I have four weeks and four days left. Oof. Best get to hurrying!

Associations

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I was thinking about how things become associated with another person. I won’t be able to get all of mine in this list, but here are a few:
English muffin with blueberry jelly = James
Long clingy rayon nightgowns = Brittney (I used to borrow one from her when I went to visit. It was the coolest thing ever.)
Brussels sprouts = Ali
Really sweet late harvest Rieslings = Anna
Driving slow in the fast lane = Debbie
“Where I come from” by Alan Jackson = Bailey
Fast cars = Tom
Ice cream, hedonism, speech ticks = Noah
Naked slacking = Sarah
Macaroni and cheese with tomato soup = Miss Jenny
Spice cake = Miss Sara
Chocolate = Anthony
“No one can make you feel anything” & “Generous”= Deborah (Yeah, but they can make me a sandwich!)

There are many more, but Shanna woke up and is wiggling. I like how many reminders of my friends I have in my life.

Debates

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So I watched the Palin/Biden debate. Wow. Could she have tried any harder to seem stupid? In my oh-so-humble opinion if you are going to say “gosh” and “darn” and “heck” so often you might as well say god, and damn, and hell. What you are saying is equally as unintelligent and low class. This is why I don’t really care if people swear.

And I was rather disappointed that neither of them could ANSWER A FUCKING QUESTION.

Although Biden was a little more self-deprecating in a funny way. And I liked his small jabs. He should have used bigger ones imo. But dude. She was so not playing to me.

Meeting mommys

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So this meeting moms thing isn’t going that well. The neighbor I’ve been trying to hang out with has a lot of irons in the fire. She’s happy to see us at Gymboree, but we don’t talk at all past, “Look–Shanna can sit up! “J has his third tooth!” and that’s not really that interesting to me. I’ve extended offers of dinner and board games and they aren’t interested. I’ve offered to pinch hit on baby-sitting so she can get stuff done and her husband vetoed that (no one who isn’t family is allowed to baby-sit). So… I can spend $75/month for our babies to do lame stuff and be near her for 45 minutes a week. Yeah, I’m thinking that’s a waste of money.

Mommy & Baby yoga is about the same. It’s 10-15 minutes of yoga then an hour of playing with the baby while other moms play with their babies right near us. Uhm… yeah, no. I don’t want to pay for the privilege.

I would love to find other freak moms. The ones I know are pretty busy or they live in FREAKIN PORTLAND. (And there’s Laura in Pittsburgh. I’m kind of pissed I don’t get to go meet her yet.) So, do any of my friends want to set me up on a blind date with another freak mommy? I could make you cupcakes!

Busy morning

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We woke up for the 2:30 feeding/diaper change and uhh haven’t really gone back to sleep since. (Shanna has been sleeping though. That’s more important.) This is one of the downsides to how early we go to bed. If that first sleep cycle was a good one it’s hard to fall back asleep sometimes. Later there will be napping.

But! Since we were both up… we had rather nice sex. I’m really enjoying all the possessiveness that is more permissible in monogamy. 🙂 He’s mine, Mine, MINE!!!! *cough* It wasn’t rock my world sex, but it was nice anyhow. 🙂 Then we talked schmoopily for a while. Then we started talking finance for a while. We decided during this conversation that it was just time to get up.

We are trying to figure out the balance between investing in a regular 529 account and a 529 independent account. For those of my friends with kids, check it out. A 529 independent account allows you to pay into an account as if you were paying for a kid to go to an expensive private school right now and that money basically turns into credit hours for the institution and you can use the credit hours later regardless of what the actual tuition is at the time. Very neat. The problem is that it is a gamble that your kid will want to go to a private school. There are a few hundred schools that are registered with this program and you can go to any of the schools on the list. It’s worth thinking about. Cause we are thinking about more than one kid it’s kind of interesting to wonder about whether one kid will want private or two or none or… ah! Where is my crystal ball?!

Then after doing a bit more research and talking about this I got off my heiny and looked into credit cards that will give us a higher rate of cash back (American Express has a fairly good card–5% back on groceries/gas/drug stores and 1.5% back on everything else once you’ve spent $6500 in a year). I couldn’t find a better card so I opened an account. Card is on its way.

Then I got around to opening the E-trade checking/savings accounts we have been talking about. They offer 3.3% interest on savings and 2.9% for checking. That’s way better than Washington Mutual Chase. Because they don’t have branches to visit they refund ATM fees so we no longer have to think in any way about finding branches. 🙂 Given that I do 90%+ of my banking online it doesn’t matter that much anyway.

I have folded laundry and I’m about to go put it away. After that I will put the diapers out on the line (I did that load overnight) cause the sun is coming up now and I can see.

Then I will come back in here and start researching renewable energy companies. We have a little bit of money we want to put into the market while it’s down and I think renewable energy is a pretty smart place to go right now. I may end up eating those words, but that’s my first guess. I need to figure out a)what companies exist b)which of them are publicly traded c) what are the actual specific technologies they are producing d)what sorts of dividends do they pay e)look at their previous history and how they are performing f)maybe look into their funding sources? Is there anything big I should look into other than what I am thinking of right now? I may start another entry later and edit it as I find more information if anyone is interested in seeing what I turn up. 🙂

And now! I go work on laundry. Not bad for 7:15.

Whine bitch moan (you’ve been warned)

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Ok, so I’m having issues with clothing. As of this morning I own (for shirts) bdsm con t-shirts (not exactly universally appropriate but I’m wearing them at home and they are starting to wear out), t-shirts advertising Santa Teresa which I now feel sort of ambiguously about, tank tops, a couple of fancy shirts (velvet, lots of lace), and three snarky t-shirts rapidly on their way to wearing out (one had five noticeable holes in it the last time I looked).

But but… my body is in flux I don’t wanna spend money on clothes I won’t wear long! So I decided to STFU and went to Target and got a few shirts today. They are all very generic and plain and suitable for any and all occasions. I bought a couple new sweaters because I wear them constantly in the winter and most of the ones I own right now have large holes in them. I keep thinking I should learn how to knit well enough to fix the big holes in my sweaters, but that’s not something I am really going to do in the short term and I don’t wear sweaters anymore once I can put my fist through the hole. I also found a few pair of leggings that will allow me to wear skirts all winter long. w00t! But I feel bad about spending money on clothing. Amusingly, Noah cheers when I come home with new clothes cause it means he won’t have to hear me bitch about the holes in my clothes anymore. 🙂 I think I need to resign myself to filling out a wardrobe in this size because I plan to get pregnant again and it’s looking like I’m not going to be the sort who drops weight rapidly while breastfeeding. I should also move the things out of my closet that “will fit if I lose 10-15 lbs” because then I feel like I *have* clothes even though they don’t fit. Screw that. I need to fess up to myself that I don’t really have many clothes right now. I need to buy more so that I can put the maternity stuff away and not wear it out.

I know I whine about this regularly. I am slowly taking steps to fix the problem. I swear. It’s just hard for me. Spending money on clothing for me seems really lame for no good reason.

Folsom

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So we went. Ten or Fifteen minutes in we were stopped by a very earnest woman with a clipboard from the NCSF. She proceeded to lecture us on how people on the religious right are trying to shut down Folsom and I am a terrible person for bringing in my baby and giving them more ammunition. There were very thin hints that if Folsom shuts down I will be at least partially responsible for taking it away from the 400,000 people there. When I relayed this story to a friend at the fair his response was, “And did you tell her to go fuck herself?” I kind of wish I had said that. We were at the fair for less than an hour and I felt pretty shamed and dirty the whole time and not in a good way. My daughter is four months old. She won’t remember this. I won’t be bringing her ever again because she might remember and that’s crossing a line.

And you know what? If Folsom shuts down it won’t be because of my four month old. And despite her scare tactics, I don’t believe that my child is going to be taken away by CPS now. Our house may be mildly cluttered, but it’s cluttered primarily with books that I am reading for a graduate degree and baby gear. Our daughter is huge and healthy and extremely happy. And it’s not as if she is using a dildo for a teething device. Give me a break.

How big of a masochist am I?

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So I was sent an email asking if I would help plan my high school’s 10 year reunion. The guy who is in charge of such things at this point is apparently someone I was mean to in junior high. (His dad is a professor at SJSU in the credentialing program and when he discovered I went to LGHS he asked his son about me. We did a project in 8th grade together, I remember none of this, and I was mean. Uhm…. ok. I guess it made a much bigger impression on the guy.)

For no good reason I am really looking forward to my 10 year reunion. I barely attended the high school. I’m barely even allowed in. Yet the reunion will have the potential for putting me in touch with people I went to school with starting in kindergarten or junior high. That part’s really kinda neat.

Hmmm. I’ll have to think about this more at a more civilized hour. 🙂

In case anyone was curious

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The Tike Masala sauce from Costco was awesome. We used half the container for two chicken breasts and simmered for a while. Meanwhile we roasted some Japanese eggplant in the oven (we like that texture) then added in the eggplant at the very end. We poured it over basmati rice and OMG it was awesome.

Pondering Folsom

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A friend asked me if I had any time to see him this weekend, cause he assumed I would be busy with Folsom stuff. First I laughed. Then I pondered. Whereas I certainly couldn’t do parties at this point (all of them are far enough away from my house that I would spend more time in transit than I would playing so it so it isn’t worthwhile) but I can maybe hit the fair itself for an hour or so.

So uhm… I think we’re gonna go. I’m more than a little amused that Shanna is going to a perv event at four months old. (I tell myself that she won’t remember…) Goodness knows I won’t think it is ok to bring her next year.

Very amusing to me.

w00t!!

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I am officially advanced to candidacy. I have to pass part two of the comp exams, and that is scheduled for the second Saturday in November. I also have to either pass the Spanish proficiency test or take the full year at De Anza. She said either is fine and I don’t have to worry about taking additional MA classes to maintain standing.

Have I mentioned that I have 19 books to go on reading? And six more weeks till the test? I’m becoming less and less fretful by the day.

Oh, and my Spanish class? It’s a cakewalk. I’m putting in more effort than anyone else in the class and she seems to grade mostly on pass/fail. Pshaw. Taking the whole year might actually be the least stressful way of accomplishing the task. 🙂 I’m going to try and take the exam at the end of the term just to see if I can get it done already.

Wow. I’m really close. This is so amazing. To be honest, there have been a few times lately when I’ve had thoughts about not finishing because it seemed like more stress than it was worth. But when I look at how little I have to do and how little stress is left I am really confident that I have to finish.

Wow. So, who is going to start calling me Master once I have the degree? I refuse to be a Mistress though. 🙂 Hey, doctorates give you the right to Doctor…