Tag Archives: life

Looking up

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This morning I had a couple of reasons to feel morose. One was the comp exam and the second was personal enough that I am not going to explicitly state it on livejournal. ooooh cryptic

I went and saw a prof at SJSU about the comp exam. He told me that I barely failed and it was because I was too general. He said it is pretty obvious that I know the material and what I should do to prep for the next time is do more practice runs of timed writing trials to push myself into better form for such excursions. I can do that. No more reading? No more reading!! (Although I will probably do some more reading.) And the poetry section was my strongest essay. How is that for funny?

The second thing that made me morose has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for the past couple of weeks. Things on that front are now to a level that I feel good about. *phew*

Oh, and I got a B+ on my last Spanish test and she gave us most of the questions for the final in class tonight and we did them as a group. Things are looking way the heck up tonight.

Balance

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A long-time friend unfriended me recently so I wondered what I had posted that was so awful. After reviewing my recent entries I have come to the conclusion that it probably had nothing to do with what I am posting.

I did notice that I post about negative stuff a lot. That’s lame because I am generally in a good mood and my life is good. I’m not sure why it is easier to bitch and whine.

I spend a lot of my time reading (books I want to read- yay!), putzing around doing chores and errands, and caring for Shanna. I am finding that because most of my life is just so nifty that I feel extra frustrated when I feel frustrated at all. That seems odd to me.

I’m really enjoying being a homebody. I get out to socialize one or two times a week and I run errands usually one day a week. I double up on socializing and errands sometimes when Miss Laura wants to see me. 🙂

Next week I have finals for Spanish. I am going to start baking on Thursday. I’m pretty excited. 🙂

Hazy

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It’s amazing to me how this stay-at-home-mom gig works. Caring for Shanna requires continual physical effort (it’s not *hard* physical effort, but it is physical work) and almost no intellectual effort. Yet I don’t have the mental bandwidth to do much else at the same time. Studying Spanish is hard. I don’t retain the stuff I do while I’m playing with her. I have to be interruptable at all times (As I come back from a diaper change that had to happen mid-entry). I feel like my brain is not working the way it used to. I feel like I am less smart, like my brain is on hiatus.

This doesn’t make the prospect of studying for the comp exam any happier. My daughter is the whole scope of my world right now, or at least I wish she was. I’m so happy most days. I love seeing how she changes day by day. This is all I want to be doing right now. It’s interesting because I have always derived so much of my self-image from my intelligence and what I am doing right now has no part in that.

I want to be done with school so bad I could scream. I have missed four semesters of school entirely in the past 23 years. Otherwise I have been in school for at least some portion of every term. I am starting to hate school. I am starting to lose any desire to learn what can be taught in school. There are still many things I want to learn–don’t get me wrong. I just want to go out into the world, damnit.

But I have a Spanish presentation tonight. And finals next week. And I have many more months of studying ahead of me for the comp exam. And I have two more terms of Spanish if I pass the exam. I have decided that I am going to study like mad and take the test in April. If I fail I am not going to bother with finishing Spanish. I have too much resentment as it is. I hope I don’t fail. I am going to work pretty hard to ensure I don’t. *sigh*

So this is what freedom feels like.

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At the very least I have two weeks of freedom. Wow. That’s pretty incredible. I am still in my Spanish classes until May if I wuss out on the translation test, but honestly they take up about 7 hours of week for class time and homework time. That’s just not hitting my radar compared to what I’ve been doing for uhm years. My job is to take care of Shanna and do at least my share of housework. If I do more than my share of housework then Noah has more free time to spend with me and he’s in a generally better mood–which is a pretty damn good trade-off in my book.

I started off this freedom by cleaning up the garage to the point where we can now put our car in it! I’m thrilled because putting Shanna in and out in the rain really blows. I also cleaned the bathtub. Today I will putz through more cleaning and laundry. I also want to do cooking and prep stuff for meals for the week because we eat better when I do that.

My projects for this week include: putting furniture together, more house cleaning [we have a lot of cobwebs, finish dusting, finish cleaning the bathroom, maybe vacuum the living room, do a real scrub down of the kitchen], read more books to Shanna, start sorting Christmas stuff [I’m so excited about Christmas this year it isn’t even funny. I’m not doing the major decorating stuff till after Thanksgiving, but I can get a head start on stuff like Christmas cards so that I don’t feel much pressure in December], and enjoy the fact that I don’t have to read anything I don’t want to read! Do you know how many years it has been since I had no pressure about what to read?! For the past five years I have always had it hanging over my head that I needed to do reading for the exams. I haven’t always done it but the pressure was always present.

That said: what books do you like that I should add to my reading list? I may read a summary online and decide oh hell no but feel free to make suggestions. 🙂 I don’t even know what is out there past the canon…

Oh! and posts I want to write: “Ok snarky bitch, here is why I use cloth diapers despite your snotty article you sent me”, “Why are some books included in the canon while others are excluded”, and “Why I’m feeling some unpleasant feelings about the constant barrage of requests for money.”

about etiquette

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I am so bad at taking constructive criticism, but I’m keeping an open mind. Some of the feedback on the letter is very helpful and I thank you all for offering opinions when I ask for one.

One point though for the folks who are telling me not to send such an email unless prompted, you are giving me etiquette feedback, not tactfulness feedback. It’s different. I am aware that according to tradition you should not send things like this unasked for. My family won’t take this amiss though. They are well acquainted with me being extremely forward and blunt and by now they just smile and nod. Noah’s family may think this is too forward but I don’t really care as long as they get the message. I would rather they think I am a bit on the rude side than to continue sending crap I don’t want. His family doesn’t know me and in the main they don’t know him either so they send random shit. Given that I have a problem with being sent tacky shit I will send to Goodwill as soon as I unwrap it I’d rather just say this stuff up front. If it means that a few of them decide I am awful and no longer send presents that would be jim-dandy-fine as well.

But ya’ll did give me some good tips on rewriting it to sound less demanding. I appreciate that. 🙂

Anxious and fussy

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I should so be asleep right now. I’m not. Here’s some of what I’m looking at right now.

The comp exam is in 11 days. I’m not fully prepared. On Thursday I head up to Davis to do some studying with a fellow English geek, and I’m not even really ready for that. Shanna had a really hard day today for no obvious reason and I got zero studying done. If I look at the calendar, what I really ought to do is bail on the two social things I was hoping to do this weekend and study pretty much straight through. I’m getting really scared. If I fail this test it is going to be a rather hardcore blow to my ego that I don’t need. On one hand I objectively think that I am pretty damn prepared, on the other hand I subjectively believe that my last failure on this exam (when I was completely unprepared) is an indication that I am stupid and deserve to fail. I know this isn’t reasonable. I know that they honestly won’t expect that amazing of essays given that we have three hours to write three essays.

I’m dropping weight like crazy with eating to my daily maximum of points and I think that as a result I am thinking less clearly. I am having more trouble than usual finding the words I want to use in casual conversation and that is scaring the shit out of me. Right now, judging by the scale in my bathroom, I am dropping 1/2 a pound per day. That’s uhm, noticeable. Noah pointed out that dropping weight quickly (No really–I am eating all that I am supposed to be eating and I’m eating a rather healthy variety) will cause blood sugar issues which make it harder to think. Maybe for the next 11 days I should start eating more food of higher fat/calorie level. [See–this entry so far I’ve had to stop and think for several minutes more than once to think about what words I should be using; that’s just not cool.]

I’m giving up my idea of making a costume for Shanna. 🙁 I’m sad and pissy and frustrated. I just ran out of time with studying and I feel upset and strangely cheated. Yes, I was given a costume I could put her in but frankly it’s not something I would have selected and as I result I just don’t want to. I’m feeling ridiculous and petulant on this topic for no good reason.

There are a variety of things on the sex/play front that are taking up a lot of space in my brain. I don’t have anything useful to say about any of them. It’s all….. AHHHHHHHHHH

And I have a god damn oral report for my Spanish class coming up. I need to do research tomorrow before class so that I can talk to my partner about it. Have I mentioned that I could give a flying fuck about it just now? Oh, I got a B on the last Spanish test. Not that bad.

Not sleeping isn’t going to help me think. But all I want to do is cry.

Oh, and my mom is arriving right after the comp exam for a visit. I think she is staying with us but that hasn’t been actually decided and as my family typically sucks ass at communicating I may not know until she calls me saying, “What’s your address again?” *sigh* So I feel rather shitty about the fact that my house is a huge mess. The clutter isn’t so bad, but it’s rather grossly dirty and frankly that’s low on my priority list to change. Noah will say, “We could pay someone to do it.” Yes, but then I would feel humiliated and pathetic that I can’t do something so simple as to clean my house when that’s a large portion of my job. And I would have to call and schedule it and blah and it’s more energy.

I think I’m going to cry now.

10 good things

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1. I had a good walk to the park and Shanna had fun in the swing.
2. I have a safe, comfortable life.
3. I have the best husband ever.
4. I have really awesome friends.
5. I had a great sandwich for lunch.
6. The Barenaked Ladies kids album makes me ridiculously happy.
7. I’m glad that being a parent has been so easy so far. It could change, but damn I’m lucky so far.
8. I loved the snuggle fest Noah, Shanna, and I had in bed this morning.
9. I have a house full of awesome books. I so win.
10. That it’s ok for me to be lazy.

Do you know how many of things are cause of Noah? Yeah, almost all of them. I’m a lucky girl.

God damn technology.

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I’m not an early adapter. I don’t trust all these “advancements” until other people suffer through the bugs. That said, I am lazy. I looked around for a better cash back rate on a credit card and was lead to the wonders of American Express. This card is some serious shit. Right now I am suffering through the hassle of setting it up to automatically pay all of my monthly bills for me. How cool is that? I won’t have to do it anymore! w00t! And they will give me 1.5% of that money back. Seems pretty neato to me given that I have to pay the bills anyway. (No, there is not an annual fee–I checked.) This is a serious pain in the ass.

And my phone is dying. It was fully charged yesterday afternoon. I haven’t used it and it is aready dead. Stupid phone. I’m not sure what I want to replace it with.

bitch.moan.complain. 🙂

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.

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.

Just ’cause

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I’m home! Did anyone miss me? 🙂 I had a good time in the PNW seeing people. I got in a good many quality visits this time which I often don’t manage to do. w00t!
Shanna was awesome. Her fuss was limited to times when she was exhausted or really hungry and even in those times her fuss was very minimal. I declare her a good traveler.
It was exciting trying to figure out how to sleep on a queen sized bed since we are used to a king. Then we got put on a double bed for a night. Maybe we shouldn’t have bitched about the queen… 🙂
My packing list was pretty much perfect. My timing on laundry and what-have-you worked out exactly as I planned. The only extraneous thing was about ten baby wipes and I’m ok with that.
My kid weighs 14.5 pounds. whoa. She’s big. (that’s at 3.5 months)I
Shanna loved playing outside in the grass nekkid. She was walking around and seemed to like the grass under her feet.
I missed the swing.
I didn’t do anything in Portland or Seattle other than seeing people and eating food. I didn’t even go to Powell’s. Seeing people was enough taxing of the kidlet’s patience.
I got to see quite a few little ones on the trip and that was very fun. I’m trying not to compare Shanna in any sort of competitive way but instead just be thrilled at seeing how humans vary.
I’m glad we aren’t traveling again for a few months. That was an awful lot of work for all of us, but mainly for me. I had ridiculous anxiety around packing and getting to places on time and making travel connections. My stomach needs a break from that much acid.
Ok, so I can see how those baby buckets are somewhat convenient. I’m still very happy that I don’t own one because I would be somewhat tempted to let her sit in it and then I would have one more thing to feel guilty about. Oy.
I have a ton of laundry and cleaning to do. This morning I have already cleaned mold out of my cat’s water bowl and cleaned her box. She already hates me less.
I semi-skimmed lj a couple of times when I was gone but not consistently. I may or may not actually catch up. I will do the meme Peter tagged me for though because, DUDE! I got tagged! (I hardly ever get tagged and it’s instant love…)

Choices

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So the neighbors two doors down have a son who is six weeks older than the munchkin. I went with the mama to Gymboree today. It was silly, but I’m going to give it a shot for a little while because it will be something concrete in my week to do and a reason to socialize with other parents who have kids the same age and who are actually near me physically. Dude. Concept.

This means I ended up talking to my neighbor a lot. She’s very insecure. She’s very nice–don’t get me wrong, but insecure. I feel like I am going to spend a lot of time validating her. Today the biggest theme was “Am I bad because I want to work” and I kept telling her that it’s ok that she wants to work. Hanging out with a baby all the time is bloody boring. It’s ok that you don’t find babbling intellectually stimulating; no, you are not a bad parent. She asked how I can handle it then. I had to laugh. It’s not as if my job was about adult interaction anyway. 🙂 I told her that it takes all kinds. I like to be able to control my days and do projects in my house and do things like cleaning during the day so that when Noah is home we don’t have to deal with much of the ‘work’ of life we can just play.

It is fascinating to me how people have trouble believing that their choices are ok. I’m in the same boat a lot of the time so I’m really not criticizing. 🙂

And speaking of choices, I choose to go to New Zealand. This trip is made possibly largely through the largesse of a really awesome lady. I’m so excited.

Today’s awesome

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Today has *three* awesome things.

First was lying on the floor playing airplane with the munchkin. I put a burp rag on my chest to absorb the dripping spit. (That part was for you Mo.) She laughed her ass off. She giggled for probably fifteen minutes straight until my arms got sore. That was just great.

Second was reading that one of the moms on the board I read is getting a new foster child. I’ve been reading her posts for a while and she seems like a pretty good parent (yes, I’m getting a limited view). She posted looking for advice about the next size up of diapers to buy for this new kiddo cause her child was EC’ed and out of diapers by this age. I’m sending her some of the size mediums we bought because she is poor and I am not. I think that foster parents need support. I included a teddy bear in the box so the baby girl can have one of her own. When the mom sent me her address she said she was crying because she’s so grateful. I feel good about being able to help her in this way.

I also got a card from a friend. This is the second one she’s sent me. They always make me happy. 🙂 Yay!

Less awesome but still good: I did a bunch of cleaning. 🙂 I even mopped again. I feel kind of embarrassed that mopping twice in a month is a big deal and something to be proud of. ha. The recently splattered oil means that it really needed it again…

Good little housewife

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Today my (self-appointed) tasks were laundry and food prep. Now, that may not sound like a lot, but it is with Shanna. I only did two loads of laundry, but I chopped up four days or so of vegetables, made soup, prepped all of tomorrow’s food, and got today’s dinner ready all by four pm. That along with reading (I’m a fair ways into Frederick Douglass’ writing) and playing with the munchkin has made me feel fairly busy.

Noah and I went down to the Scott’s Valley Art & Wine Festival on Saturday. I don’t think I have ever been to one before. I had way more fun than was reasonable for the event. Being with Noah can make anything better. Then we drove up to Los Gatos and walked around downtown. I must say that the Thai restaurant was awesome. Even the non-curry, Britt. 🙂

Sunday we went grocery shopping and slacked. Just another day in paradise with the best boy ever.

I’ve been thinking that I should fill the hot tub. That’s about as much water as Shanna reasonably needs for this level of learning to swim and I miss sitting in water. 🙂