kdiddy.org

The baby finally lost his other front tooth. It hung in there, literally, for a couple of weeks. I kept trying to pull it but there was one little piece that wouldn’t let go, but a stray smack to the face in gym class today did the trick. (I am not a fan of the kid who delivered the dental blow but I’ll let it go this once.) It’s hard to see the nice big gap the way he’s smiling, but trust me. The cute. It’s ridiculous. And I totally hadn’t thought of the endless entertainment of making him say “s” words until he mentioned wanting to read a “Dr. Theuth” book. And since I’m such a nice mom:

I’m taking requests.

Anyway, I’ll probably be pretty scarce ’round these parts until next week. Classes end this week, then the baby’s birthday is on Saturday, I’m going to a baby shower on Sunday, then I have a final and an article due on Monday. Then I’ll probably collapse for a day or two.

As I just said when I shared this on Google Reader, “There’s an Ice Cube ‘It Was a Good Day,’ ‘didn’t even have to use my AK’ joke in here somewhere and I just can’t get it out.”

Why, yes, I am avoiding thinking about my Grammar mid-term that starts in an hour and a half. Why do you ask?

(L to R: first day of pre-K 2006, first day of kindergarten 2007, first day of first grade 2008)

First grade. The baby’s never been too traumatized by starting school. On his first day of preschool, waaaay back in 2004, I cried the whole day. How could I not?

Last year, when he got on the bus to go to kindergarten, I cried. I was used to the whole school thing, but that was the first time I had, you know, put my kid on a big vehicle with a stranger.

This year, all systems go. No tears. No anxiety. We’re old pros. The only hiccup was that we have a new bus company and a new bus driver this year and they apparently do not believe in the dry run. They were a half hour late and apologized profusely but dude, you could have scoped this all out yesterday don’t you think?

So, I was late for work and the husband was late for class AND we had to swing back past the bus stop because I left my coffee mug there. Which is funny because as I was setting it down I thought, “I’m going to forget this here. NO! I won’t. I will force myself to remember it.” Which I did. When we got back home. I would have been distraught if it was lost forever since my dad brought it home for me from Caffe Ladro in Seattle and he made a big deal about it.

But all is well.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the first day of school that I had back in 2001, when I was about 6 months pregnant. It was rough. I was 22, grappling with a lot of emotional difficulty, on top of feeling not very cute. I remember walking past the clothing stores and lamenting all of the cute fall clothes that I was missing out on in favor of some barfy selections from JC Penney’s lackluster maternity line.

I stuck out like a sore thumb at school, squeezing myself into writing desks and letting my professors know that I was due right around finals. I huffed and puffed up and down the steep stairs of the Cathedral of Learning. The other students stared or ignored me.

The next semester I could be spotted toting my baby with me to my advising appointments or frantically trying to stop my milk from soaking my entire shirt.

Obviously, the baby can’t remember any of this. But I think that in some unconscious way he remembers me sucking up my usual fears and social anxiety in the face of a really awkward situation. I hope that that courage will stick with him through many more first days of school.

Husband’s classes started yesterday. Mine started today. The baby starts first grade (the FUCK?!??!) on Thursday. So far, so good.

I’d forgotten how relatively awesome it is to only take one class per semester. I looked at my syllabus today and didn’t have a total breakdown. That seems like a step in a healthier direction. I felt so relatively unstressed about the whole thing that I got all cavalier, like, “Pssshhh! I’m practically AUDITING this shiz!” and then realized that the prof had asked a question and I am, in fact, taking this for a GRADE for my MASTER’S and daydreaming should mayhaps cease for a few hours a week.

We went to the baby’s school tonight for their “welcome back” thingy that they stupidly scheduled to begin at 5 (hello? jobs?) and met his teacher. Weirdly enough we went to high school with her. She is actually two years younger than me which is a little wild. And she has a gigantic engagement ring.

This is pretty much all I know about the woman who will be educating my son this year. I win.

With all of this stuff going on this week, I’ve been a little more frazzled than usual. I’ve had to go to these interviews for candidates for this upper-level admin position at my job and today I successfully made an ass of myself in front of the candidate by a) showing up at 3:45 when I was scheduled for 3:15 b) busting into his previous meeting thinking I was a few minutes late and startling the woman he was speaking to c) smugly asking a question about something on his CV and then realizing that I had grabbed the wrong CV.

I should have just rolled with it. Been like, “Tell me about this initiative that you started…What do you mean ‘what initiative?’ You don’t have an initiative? Aw, man. That’s a problem. You should really have an initiative.”

I shall perfect my mind games.

I’M DONE, BETCHES. PRAISE BE JEBUS!

Now, all I have to do is tend to Big Work Thing on Saturday and I can relax! Well, I’ll probably also spend a good portion of my days hoping that that paper wasn’t a TOTAL piece of shit, but yeah.

DONE. With this semester. I still have two more years of edumacation but let’s not dwell on that.

I think I’m going to pass out.

I swear I have never taken this long to write a paper in my whole goddamned life. Word limit is 1500. I’m striving for 1200. Currently at 933 (that’s including my name and crap because fuck all). I’ve been writing this piece of shit since Friday.

I have a big work thing on Saturday, then after that it’s party central.

The baby’s tee-ball team is having their pictures taken on Saturday. I am going to purchase one of those huge buttons and put it on my purse. And get a mom bob.

Classes are over, betches. I’m pleased.

That’s all I wanted to say. Also, the baby is, I guess, entering that phase where he tries to touch everything with his penis. That’s a phase, right? Like, I’m not raising a flasher, right?

*Wooderson in Dazed and Confused

My sister-in-law graduated from college today. She didn’t want to go to the big commencement ceremony, which was kind of a relief for everyone since they’re generally 3 or 4 hours long. Instead, her department had breakfast for graduates and their families.

I didn’t even think of it until now, but I graduated from college exactly five years ago today. The baby was not quite a year and a half old at that point and the husband was still the boyfriend.

Holy shit, I checked someecards.com for something to send to the sister-in-law and found this:

I’m beginning to think that the sole inspiration for someecards is my life.

I had insomnia last night. I slept from 12 until 2:30 a.m. when the husband’s choice of going-to-sleep music woke me up. I dozed off for a few minutes here and there but some time after 3 I was just awake. Then at 4:30 the birds started singing and I started wishing for pestilence to wipe them all out, ecosystem be damned.

It’s stress. I’m freaked out about my final projects for my classes and all of the big stuff coming up at work. I have a paper due today that I mostly wrote last night until I went to bed. Then around 5:30 when I realized there was no hope, I got up and worked on it some more. I was at the point that I often get with such assignments where I no longer care about the quality, I just want it out of my hands so that the wretched experience of working on it will be behind me. But I decided to glance at it before sending it off and I’m glad I did. There were some strings of words that I think were supposed to be sentences but trailed off into the ether. I had to call them back home and wrangle a period onto them.

Since I’m deliriously tired, I’m still not sure if the paper makes any sense. But I think I’m just done.

But! While I was up this morning, I installed a plugin that displays comments in threads, so you and I can reply to each other directly. Won’t that be fun?

Also fun: hallucinating. I love insomnia.

I have about 7 weeks left of this semester.

It might as well be 700 years.

In the fall I’m taking another core course and a seminar, so it’ll be about 1.5 classes. That will be very nice. I had planned on steaming through, taking two courses in spring 09 and two more in fall 09, but honestly I don’t think I can do it. I’m so unhappy. SO unhappy. There’s no point in pushing through this so quick if I don’t have enough time or energy to do quality work and I’m fucking up in all areas of my life.

I think I could probably handle doing one course in spring 09, doing this other required course in summer 09, one course in fall 09, and then one more in spring 10 (010?). So I’ll finish one whole semester later than I planned.

I WANT to finish as soon as possible, but I seriously don’t want to feel like this anymore. I oscillate between wanting to drink, cry, or throw myself off a bridge and sometimes all three. I only took one psychology class in college, but something tells me that’s not healthy.

Plus, the longer I take, the more time I have to figure out what I might possibly want to do with this degree…what I CAN do.

Ugh. Tell me funny stories, guys. I need some cheer.

Completely unrelated, I read the transcript of that speech that Obama gave yesterday. I was really glad that he spoke pretty bluntly about race and privilege and pretty much stated, “Guess what? Slavery fucked things up royally and the situation still hasn’t been rectified and continues to shape our economy and our society to this day,” because people need to hear that shit. But I felt uncomfortable that he kept driving home the point that his pastor was WRONG WRONG WRONG OMG HE’S SO STUPID. I wish he would have said, “I can disagree with my pastor because I have a mind of my own and surprise! You do too! And maybe we should stop making rules and laws based on what a very few religious dudes deem ‘right.'”