September 2009

This is a big ol’ mish-mash of a blog post… yay!

This morning we sang “Happy Birthday” to Maymo and watched him beam and dance along. He doesn’t look any different today but he does claim to feel six. Tonight we’ll eat his chosen meal: Pogos, corn with butter on it, and french fries – followed, of course, by cake.

(During his meal selection process, we had to explain that Pogos and pierogies are not a reasonable combination of foods, even on your birthday.)

When dinner ends, Coffee will drive Middle One to Cub Camp for the weekend. He – Middle One – is really looking forward to it and seems quite pleased with the fact that he’ll be in a tent and not a cabin. The new Cub group is, so far at least, pretty cool.

I have finished my law paper – last night! – and printed out the final copy. It’s due on Monday morning before my other classes. Coffee thinks I should drive down to the school and delivery it today “just in case”. I am undecided since, otherwise, I don’t have to go anywhere today.

In the realm of “things to do today”, I need to make a birthday cake (lemon, with vanilla-rainbow frosting) and make sure everything is ready for camp. I also really need to get some study time in for my psychology test.

(Next week features an explosion of tests and assignments – the law paper and three tests. I have commenced the freaking out, of course.)

Yesterday I went to my campus’ Disability Services to register myself for the accommodations I need and ended up talking a lot about Middle One’s learning disabilities and how much hope I have that, if he someday wants to, he’ll be able to attend college. The counselor mentioned all the various ways the school accommodates people and we chatted about how very cool it is.

I’m now registered as needing my laptop for note-taking, and requiring “preferred seating” (back, right corner) so I won’t end up with excruciating migraines. She suggested that I also include the possibility of doing essay-form exams in the disabilities office so I could use a laptop – something I hadn’t considered, but which is a good idea. I’m going to try the first set of tests this week and see how it goes without a laptop and then make a decision.

Physiotherapy still rocks my socks, by the way. I leave the office feeling a thousand times better and my day-to-day pain is way more manageable and quite minimized. The trick, of course, is to make sure I don’t then overdo everything because I feel “fine”. I’m doing my daily exercises and putting ice on my shoulder/neck and sleeping in a “good” position and paying attention to my positions during the day and.. it’s all coming together nicely.

There. You’re sorta’ updated. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a cake to bake!

1. My hair, currently pink, is the best conversation starter EVER. I have been approached by young students, old students, been hit on by lesbians/bisexual women, been asked for dyeing tips for men’s hair, used as an example in class by my profs…
2. Groups class, the one I was dreading the most for it’s “group” slant (because I hate groups) is turning out to be one of the easiest classes for me to get through each week. Nice!
3. My weekend officially started at 10 a.m. today. I’m still at school for my appointment with the Disabilities department – re: laptop, sitting in specific areas, etc – but I’m sitting on the floor in a quiet, cool hallway.
4. I love love love that my entire campus seems to have wifi. I can whip out my laptop any ol’ time and email people, check stuff out, etc.
5. After Coffee made me cry in MSN earlier today, ahem, I emailed him right away to clarify. We will call this “personal growth”.
6. Tomorrow is Maymo’s birthday. He’ll be 6.

My car, a 2007 Kia Spectra5 with a manual transmission, has done something weird – twice – and I can’t for the life of me figure out what the problem is. The flip of that is that the problem isn’t happening regularly (twice in 3 months) and we can’t replicate the problem easily, so taking it to the dealership will likely result in that whole “no problem detected” diagnosis and waste my (currently very little) spare time.

Here’s the scenario:

We fill the car’s gas tank fully. Normal kind of gas – not premium. We start driving and all seems fine.

Then, after a period of time (5-10 minutes or longer, but always the same day and same ‘start’ as the fill-up – i.e., we haven’t shut off the car at all) she begins acting strangely.

At a stoplight, her RPMs drop (per the tachometer) and she stalls. No problem restarting, but the RPMs are still wonky for a while – but she doesn’t usually stall more than once.

Then she does a stutter in 2nd gear. Almost as if we’ve clutched poorly – but we haven’t (and, in fact, we aren’t clutching at all). This might happen two or three times. Accelerate and LURCH! and continue driving normally.

And then everything is hunky dorky for a few months.

My theory is that it’s bad gas – the common thread is that we’ve filled up the tank recently, at the same gas station each time – but we use that station plenty of other times with no problem. The internet doesn’t like my search terms and thus I get results from electrical problems to transmission problems to structural problems.

It first happened in July. And then again last week.

Anyone want to hazard a guess?

1. I cleaned the bathroom area of the laundry room (our house is.. odd.) and also managed to chuck a load of microfiber cleaning cloths into the washing machine and now I feel like I’ve accomplished something with my afternoon. Yes.
2. Arizona Lemon Iced Tea. On sale. $1 for 1.24L of sweet, sweet iced tea.
3. The out-of-print textbook that I purchased, used, on Amazon arrived today. I am pleased!
4. Being able to pop onto MSN from school today to ask Coffee a quick question.
5. My husband is delightfully – and amusingly – stubborn and determined about some things. :)

Post removed because my husband thinks it’s a bad idea to post my feelings on the book here in the event that one of the profs stumbles across it and doesn’t like my perspective. :)

1. My paper on “The Four Agreements” has been pushed back a whole week! Apparently enough people were overwhelmed by the multiple tests, assignments and papers due all in 4 days, that the prof decided to take pity on us. PHEW! I feel so much RELIEF!
2. There’s always a HUGE delay getting off-campus (as much as 45 minutes waiting in what amounts to gridlock in the parking lots and inner streets of the college – and that’s before you get to the actual roads off-campus that lead to the highway!) and I was resigned to waiting today as I always do. My school-friend Ken was behind me in his truck, also waiting. He saw me pull into a turning lane with at least 50 (or more) cars ahead of me (all waiting for a left-hand turn) and, on his way by, rolled down his window and shouted, “FOLLOW ME!”. I knew he lived North from me, so figured we had a similar route home, and decided to follow his truck. As it turns out, the shortcut he showed me bypassed all those waiting cars and brought me almost immediately onto the highway. HOLY CRAP! I’m not sure if he could see me screaming and clapping my hands but man, oh man, that MADE my day. 45 minutes shaved off of my commute on certain days! YAY! YAY!!

1. Sleeping ridiculously well at night – even if I’m groggy and sleepy in the morning. Hello, SAD-time.
2. Crossing off some chores (household, not scholarly) on my “to-do” list – before 9 a.m.
3. Starting school at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays is a sweet little thing.
4. Fleshing out some thoughts, with Coffee, on my “Four Agreements” paper. He made me feel better. As usual.
5. The kids’ genuine curiosity about my school work – even when I go on and on and on and on about it.

1. Getting the giggles a few minutes into a 3-hour class.. and having those giggles continue for the whole 3 hours. And then watching it spread to the people around me. Ha!
2. Oldest One calling me “smart” at dinner today. And Coffee backing him up on it.
3. That I have finished the first major draft of my paper for my law class – and sent it out to a few people to read. I’m looking forward to cleaning it up and submitting it!
4. Having good people to sit with in class and at lunch.
5. Coffee has not yet killed me for my complete inattentiveness to EVERYTHING lately.

My next paper, also due next week (!!), is based on the book “The Four Agreements“.

If you’ve read it, and especially if you liked reading it, I’m seeking someone(s) to read my personal ‘reflection’ essay on what I learned from the book – though I’m not quite finished writing it yet. I’m also happy to send it to any self-professed perfectionists in the realm of grammar.

Any volunteers?

Anyone interested in reading my first official college paper? It’s about 5 pages long (double-spaced!) and in a semi-APA format (altered from APA in a way that’sspecific to the prof’s instructions) and it’s in “reflection” format so it’s fairly informal to read. The entire thing revolves around my trip to court on Friday!

If you’re interested – and have time to read it and be REALLY HARSH about it – let me know, ok?