I'm finally starting to sort of, almost be able to bear this "up early, bed at a decent hour" (day in and day out, the horror) shit. Clearly, I still haven't figured out how to update my lj while on this schedule, but I've stopped constantly feeling depressed and surreal about it in the back of my mind. Keeping in mind that I am someone who didn't even sleep at night much as a kid and that my long term life plans involve having an afternoon-evening psych practice and/or writing books late at night.

Sometimes, like yesterday as I served all of my kids breakfast and assigned their schoolwork before leaving the house at 8:30 AM to bike Elise to preschool and myself to biology, I swear I can hear Rocky music drifting into my house from somewhere.

Today I got up early enough to take a shower and study before I woke them, which was before preschool and biology O_o I even crocheted a chain for a pendant I thought would go with my outfit, on my way out the door ;)

Biology in 6 weeks is pretty intense. We had a test on an entire chapter when we arrived today, then an entire chapter's worth of lecture for an hour and a half (the kind where you have to scramble and flip around in the book and still can't copy all the notes effectively), and got the test on that before we left. I felt like a complete badass because even though I was last to receive the 2nd test (sitting so far from the teacher), I had finished it, gotten my stuff together and was out the door while everyone else was still frowning down at their papers.

FYI, teacher-guy has added lawsuits leveled against the FDA, various senators personally fearing him and how he used to irrigate his farm to his list of accomplishments. I actually found one the lawsuits via google.

I'm on my way out the door with Aaron to walk and get my Beastie right now, and then Jake and I are gonna walk to the store for some lunch/tea things, so...I think I'm just going to end this, because if I try to leave it open to finish later it's going to go the way of the last three entries I tried that with and fade into oblivion.

I'm finding myself increasingly politically frustrated, lately. I do not use facebook as a political platform, because the idea of discussing politics with my extended relatives, fellow PATH moms and old high school acquaintances sounds like a nightmare to me - but everybody else seems to. So I get exposed to a wild spectrum of thoughts and ideas, many of them shouted through offensive gifs or typed in caps lock with a bunch of exclamation points.

Anyway, the two main things I cannot stop thinking about as I drive and sweep the floor lately are:

1. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are, or what your political party is - if you are not gay, gay marriage is just NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS and actively trying to get in it's way is not ok. I just do not GET how anybody thinks it's their right or their duty or any of it to regulate or curtail the rights to LEGAL (not Catholic, not Mormon, etc) marriage in AMERICA. Going out and voting against something like that just seems so terrible to me, so wildly busy-bodyish and hateful! Secular marriage is not the same thing as Christian marriage, at all, so I don't understand why it's suddenly equated as soon as we bring in gay people. Secular marriage involves everything from immigrants trying to stay in the country through friendly arrangements that end when citizenship is achieved to celebrities on their 10th spouse; in many of our states, it can be cousins and/or it can be ended through no-fault divorce. Legal marriages are often "open" or involve swingers, they can be performed as a Pagan handfasting, or can include home-written vows and be done by a minister of the Church of Satan in a graveyard at midnight. There is place in Vegas where you can get married in your car at a drive-thru place. NONE OF THIS IS BEING LEGALLY BLOCKED, and do you know why? Because we're a free country, and people believe in individual rights for all even when they go against their own shit! GAH!

2. I've had this big hang up for a long time as a pseudo-liberatarian, that even though I believe in many democrat-type ideals I also really, really believe in smaller government. Over the last month though, more and more, I think that republicans are not in any way making government smaller. We don't have small government now. Everyone who thinks Obama is making the government too big and too powerful just make me think things like:

How is it not causing anyone to panic or be scared that our freedom is being eroded that (GMO, Monsanto, etc) corn and soy are heavily subsidized to the point that they are in every single thing we freakin' eat, and the government buys gross enormous quantities of pink slime for school lunches and that's normal - but when Michelle Obama wants to institute healthy school lunch programs and put in an organic community garden on the white house lawn, everybody panics that we're on a terrifying slippery slope? I'd rather be on THAT slippery slope, you know?

There are tons of parallels like this. Car subsidies, gas subsidies and WARS OVER OIL are fine and right in line with small govt, but gas prices going up and environmental subsidies are large govt? Wrong. You can't just call everything you don't personally agree with big government. You can say you don't like the direction things are headed in or you agree with the old ways, but that's not the same as someone, you know, destroying the constitution.

Regardless of any feelings I've ever had on the matter, mandating TRANSVAGINAL ultrasound before an abortion blows my mind. Does govt GET any bigger than that? I mean I had six pregnancies and a ton of ultrasounds and every single ONE of them was done through the belly, and yet Republicans want to make it law that the doctor has to be able to do that to you? I had to laugh at the thing I saw that said, "Government so small it can fit in your vagina". I am saddened by abortion but it is absolutely ridiculous to require a photo of your dead fetus to stay in your medical records for doctors to see along with the print record.

Right now, hospital fees are INSANE and insurance is wildly expensive, because of the vast sea of uninsured Americans who use hospital ERs as free clinics without ever paying the bills. Tax payers fund medicaid for the pregnant women and small children in that sea, and Medicare for the elderly among them. It's a totally unsustainable system that makes no sense because the people who have more are paying for everyone else anyway - the only alternative would be to turn them away at the doors and have them dying of totally preventable stuff, and we aren't going to do THAT. So...what is the problem with instituting a system? How have they not already done that? My stepmom has over a million dollars in unpaid medical bills from breast cancer, my dad half a million, they don't even make payments. I owe a hospital in Boston hundreds of thousands for Elise...they aren't getting it, unless I become a millionaire one day or something. Meanwhile I can't afford to get my thyroid checked out and my fucking hernia is a pre-existing condition. Unsustainable! Government systems suck, having to wait for things sucks, but geez man my grandparents - one of whom is a veteran with full retirement benefits - can't get a home care nurse even part time for my Nana, even while he has a needed surgery. I've always been the one there saying "But then they can determine the care we get, what if we don't get to pick our own doctors, etc" - but you know? Medicaid paid for a maternity center. The private insurance my sister has pays for a midwife. MEdicaid wouldn't pay for Nancy in Boston, so we found a way to do it ourselves. I mean geez you can't turn everything into some wild conspiracy theory that recalls Nazi Germany, sometimes a social aid program is just a social aid program. Like the one that's allowing me to go to college (Pell Grant) or get Isaac counseling and evaluation or the one that funds the Greater Miami Youth Symphony. I don't like them all! I don't like public schools! So I opt out, and it's more expensive to buy our own stuff but that's worth it to me. I don't want to forget all of history, and I know politicians are liars and motivated by their own interests, but I also don't want to constantly live in some state of paranoia that politicians are EVIL and have hidden agendas that involve destroying the nation in some calculated plan that benefits nobody.

/end rant

Feel free to weigh in if you like.

I'm going to do an epic entry about Elise's birthday with tons of pictures sometime soon, but in the meantime, I want to talk about my biology class.

First of all, it's rather time-intensive, since it's only a 6 week long course. I'm going from 9-11:20 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and there is quite a lot of reading to do outside of class hours. It's also intensive in grading policies; the professor is covering a chapter per class, each ending with a quiz, and doing a test every two weeks (three total). His quizzes and tests are all fill in the blank answers without any multiple choice, they are the entirety of your grade, and since it is a short class he has a strict no-makeup policy.

I was surprised and impressed by how much nicer the science classrooms at MDC apparently are - huge in comparison to the ones I've been in, with whole walls made of glass looking out. Wood floors, tall lab tables and 5 foot maps and diagrams floor to (high) ceiling make me feel as though perhaps I'm "really in college," although we still have tiny, slanted desk surfaces and can I just ask WHAT THAT IS ALL ABOUT?! It can't just be me, since I found this on the internet the other day:



My textbook is larger than my desk, and you absolutely cannot stand up without all your stuff falling off. I cannot tell you how familiar the sound of all of someone's stuff crashing to the floor is, in my classes.

There are no words for how I hate those desks.

Anyway, my teacher is really something. He has a moderate southern accent with a minor lisp - very Russell Edgington, or perhaps Darrell. He's also either the most interesting man to have ever lived, or is so supremely full of shit that I am dumbfounded he isn't being laughed off the podium. I haven't decided yet. Here is a list of accomplishments he's told us he has, through anecdotal stories, over the course of two classes:

-he's traveled the world
-worked in Italy on new cancer treatments
-tried to teach doctors in the US about it
-been asked advice on new car designs by the CEO of Ford, at the Republican Convention
-been asked for medical advice by Manuel Noriega (just over the phone, though)
-owns a horse
-jet skis
-was a single father to successful children
-manages at least one musical group and is "heavily involved in the music industry," as well as having had various performers live with him at different times (and ask him to come with them on visits to their own doctors)
-is the cousin of the guy who plays the Incredible Hulk
-delivered many babies and did quite a few open heart surgeries, in New England
-maintained a family practice, in central Florida, where he helped many African Americans who are prone to high blood pressure
-was the absolute best at "all procedures," including fluid drainage, spinal taps and so forth, in Connecticut, where he treated mostly Polish people who drank too much

And this man, this renowned and fabulous man, is....teaching at Miami Dade Community College.

HOMESTEAD CAMPUS.

I just...don't get me wrong, ok? I have been very impressed with some of my teachers and assignments, and MDC Homestead is very architecturally brilliant with lots of green space and a huge student body. MDC as a whole is (according to their never-ending hold messages, anyway) the biggest secondary learning institution in the country. Obama was at the graduation ceremony last year! And if he wants to live out in the Redlands or down in Key Largo, I suppose a full time teaching position would be a relatively low-stress facilitator for that.

I don't know, man. I have had to keep my laughter silent a couple of times as he goes on up there.

This teacher is extremely open about his personal opinions in a mentor sort of way, too - he's very skeptical of evolution, and urges us all to use the internet to get medical information our doctors won't give us, as well as advising us that through a controlled experiment of eating only cucumbers, mozarella cheese and TGIFridays spicy wings (not the other kinds - this is important) he was able to lose 25 pounds in two months.

The actual class - the biology part - is wonderful. I love this kind of material. Yesterday was all about chemistry necessary to biology - atoms and their parts, how they combine into molecules, radioactive and other isotopes and how they're used in medicine, solutions and their parts, blah blah blah. I already know most of it from high school retention and teaching my kids but it was like he organized all the information I had just jangling around loose in my head. I'm thinking of heat being energy and what the electrons are doing, as I wash the dishes :)

Today was about cells, and was a mixture of things I already knew (like the root causes for lactose intolerance and sickle cell anemia, and the affects steroids have on various body systems) and things I did not (like how proteins string together and the basic building blocks of all cells and how we get them to combine into polymers and, gah, I love this kind of science and how it relates to life). Water is looking different to me in the best possible way.

I'm going to be in Statistics for 3 hours+ every Saturday for the entire 12 week semester, and after this first 6 week biology session is over, I start the 2nd 6 week session in Psych of Personal Effectiveness, which sounds like bs to me but who knows. Then in the fall I do Spanish 2, retake Abnormal psych from back in the day and take one natural (as opposed to applied) science, and will be done with my AA in December.

We're going to have a busy summer, since Isaac, Jacob and Elise have two different two week sessions of beginner camp with Greater Miami Youth Symphony here in town where my four older kids have been taking classes, and Ananda and Aaron have a 6 week session of Intermediate camp up the road 40 minutes.

And for one week, those sessions overlap. But, one of our favorite TLC families is also going to have kids at Intermediate Camp and has already offered to help with that. We'll also have a second car by then so I won't be doing this ridiculous shlepping Grant to the train thing if I need the van.

Elise is so excited to get to go with her brothers this year. At the moment I think the absolute best part is that we're going to be getting her a lunch box (and she wants My Little Ponies, just like her new bedding that she purchased with birthday money).

Facebook excerpt from this morning:
It. Is. So. HOT.
After walking Elise to preschool, riding my bike to and from college, and walking to get Elise from preschool, I have sunburned upper arms and basically came in and did a "strip and shower" thing followed by chugging water. I am so glad we're getting another car before summer is REALLY upon us (since according to weather.com this is "only" 86 and feels like 90).

So, I'm getting more and more tumblr questions and lj comments and facebook messages about my book, which is really wonderful, but it's also grating on me in this unexpected way...

Maybe because I'm not really used to achieving any kind of personal success unrelated to other people.

Maybe because I wasn't really taught that long term rewards are achievable.

Maybe because I've talked a lot of shit on here for a lot of years about my writing and now THIS is the first thing that's gonna be out there to represent it and this is good writing, in it's way, it really is, I'm proud of it - it's just also insane and not for everyone.

I'm just....thinking about my neighbors, and other PATH moms, and my mother in law and aunts and cousins leafing through it, dance moms and my teachers and it kind of makes me want to hide my head under a pillow until I'm old. I think I would ideally have every single person I will never encounter IRL read it.

You're either in or you're out, right? I'm in.

It's just, somewhere in between answering a bunch of interview questions for my publisher yesterday and seeing the cover pop up on my dash because Bobby reblogged it I was like, alright. I'm not going to throw up. Really I'm not. Lol, geez. It just hit me, You are choosing to publish the contents of your head.

And I wrote this ridiculous bullshit yesterday, spontaneously and like vomiting through the keyboard like all of Twenty Troubled Ladies went for me...and I'm just looking at it, like, really? This is what comes out of your head and through your fingers? THIS? This is the contents of your head...

I'm doing a lot of narrative nonfiction, and working on my children's books, just lately, and have been thinking it's sort of odd that the way time is, and production is, I would always be working on totally different stuff by the time something from years before was getting released (you know, assuming other things get released...)

Except apparently I'm still gonna periodically write totally gritty and psychotic short stories.

---

I am pretty pleased with this past semester of school now that it's over. It's the worst grades I've gotten so far, but it proved to me that even when the shit hits the fan and school can't be a priority, I can still keep going and make it work. January-April for me was like,

-CPS and cops at my house about Isaac counseling issues (everything resolved and closed quickly and without repercussion, but holy shit), and kicking Bob out and moving bedrooms around, and so many phone calls and forms
-Taking Isaac to Kendall and Hialeah multiple times per week for hours at a time, and twice an entire day, when Grant and I weren't interviewing with someone, or filling out packets, or making my sister fill out packets, for his counseling and his psych eval
-getting rear ended and having whiplash - trips to my insurance place and meeting their inspector and sitting on the phone, trips to the chiro, and CONSTANT PAIN and reduced range of motion, for weeks....(thank God that seems to be over)
-ER trip for my hernia and subsequent surgical consultations triggering the fuck out of my PTSD and putting me into a severe dissociative funk
-Bronchitis so bad I ended up at the hospital for it, and on an inhaler for the first time in my life
-Getting ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION and spending seriously countless hours on the phone and via email with publisher contact going over cover choices, pseudonym merits, story order, dedications, intro, fonts, my bio, their marketing, interview questions and answers, and tracking down my wayward fucking diva artist for permission to use his images, and having ANNE RICE say she'll read and review my book and having a heart attack....
-Aaron's glands swelling to chipmunk proportions and requiring multiple doctor visits and tons of meds
-walking my mother through my grandmother being put in a home and my grandfather going through open heart surgery that went badly, then ok, and now how to navigate them being in this center together and eventually (hopefully?) going home. Which reminds me I need to get the freakin' cards the kids made them in the mail...
-finding out my financial aid was flagged and cancelled and bullshit AGAIN and tediously plowing through bureaucracy AGAIN to be able to pay for school
-getting offered a refinance rather than foreclosure option for our house that we couldn't afford and my husband basically having a nervous breakdown and putting all the finances totally in my hands (as in, he doesn't even wanna know) and pulling us through that, with the help of selling crap, "manifesting" near miraculous things, and a certain Wright Bank family benefactor (that means Shaun).
-Aaron attended 12 weeks of acting classes and was then part of a performance we all went to, Ananda and Elise sold Girl Scout cookies, Jake learned to ride a bike without training wheels, Laura had a baby....
-I even hung out with/caught up with Kathy multiple times, and met up with Jess and Cale for two different cool nights in Miami and some good phone calls, and spent stolen minutes with Kristin at the bike rack and in our kitchens!

I also think Grant and I might have been nearly killed on the beach, and holy shit can I just say that looking at that list right now is making me give my monitor a severe side-eye because WHAT THE FUCK is the matter with the past few months?!

Point being, I did not drop out, or miss too many classes, or withdraw from or fail anything, NOT EVEN ALGEBRA - which I am now done with, forever.

Humanities - A
Computer Crap - B <---That's really what they call it, isn't that crazy?
Spanish - B
Algebra - C

I'm in like Flynn, it's on like Donkey Kong. I'm gonna get the fuck out of this degree. I'm gonna get STRAIGHT As again if my life ever calms down, but if it doesn't, things'll work out.

One thing this semester did teach me, is that it is ludicrous and impossible for me to go to UM's med school and enter the Extremely Rigorous neuroscience program. But, I am mostly ok with that, and it will probably be there when my kids are grown, right?

I also managed to finagle full scholarships for all five kids to go to Greater Miami Youth Symphony day camp; 2 two week sessions of beginner for Isaac, Jake and Elise and 6 weeks of intermediate for Ananda and Aaron. I think A and A are gonna have a really great time this year; there are PATH friends and Girl Scout troop members who will be there with them.

---

( +20, some of which will be repeats if you've been looking at my fb/tumblr )

Elise is going to be 5 on Tuesday.

ELISE, my baby, my beastie, my youngest...is going to be 5 years old...on Tuesday.

This makes it seem very real and tangible that time is some crazy shit, and truly - like in REAL LIFE - all of my kids are going to grow up and move out. Life is wild.

And I am so in love with Elise right now ♥

She proactively gets out her own clothes for the following day, each night, after dinner (she has to wear preschool shirts to preschool and we used to have morning hassles and last minute washings and things - you know, when I was handling it, before she took over). She changes into pajamas on her own before brushing her teeth. Understand that my boys "get changed for bed" by taking off their shirts, and then I have to force them to put on a new outfit the next day. Annie's pajamas are gym shorts and camisoles - Elise puts on buttoning long sleeved shirts and pants pjs every night and lays out her clothes just on her own as a thing she likes to do.

She wakes up in the morning and gets herself dressed in the clothes she picked - which includes having all of her own socks in a little sock basket she keeps in her closet because our family wide sock basket in the laundry room is too crazy, so she picks through and finds hers - and brushes her hair, and puts on her shoes. I get her breakfast and we talk, sometimes she plays on pbskids.org.

Then she wants to run the whole way to preschool. It's her favorite thing to do now; to just run as fast as she can while I ride my bike behind her. She can do this for half an hour some days without stopping! And she's running fast. I don't stop pedaling. On days when we have and take the van she's very dissapointed, and I give her running time later on in the afternoon.

I was telling Ms Denise some of this the other day when I dropped her off, and Elise crossed her arms over her chest and told her, "I'm just like a little woman."

Two days ago after I picked her up, and watched her trade goodbyes with a little boy named Cole, I asked "You like Cole?" It was a casual thing like how I would say, "Oh are you and Chloe friends?" but she looked down and blushed and then threw her arms up and went "MO-OOM!!!" all exasperated...and then launched into a grin-rambling thing about how she can't have a boyfriend yet. 0_o

Denise tells me she's recognizing consonants vs vowels with ease and saying all the days of the week correctly and acting all impressed with her in general. I was thinking about how, with Elise, I had such a different sense of other people being involved from the beginning.

A doctor saved her life.
The NICU was necessary to keep her from seizing and dying.
When I would come and see her in the NICU every day, there was always someone bathing her or playing with her or dressing her in hand crocheted mittens and hat (that someone else made).
There were always strangers, on the internet, praying for her and sending her things.
My brother carried her for months when I couldn't, and my sister nursed her for weeks when I couldn't.

It was all welcome, truly helpful, often necessary help - it wasn't like doctors forcing me or causing problems, with Isaac and Jake, or pediatricians totally getting EVERY.THING. wrong (behavioral observation and advice wise) with Ananda and Aaron.

Putting Elise in preschool has seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and that the teacher is our neighbor and truly loves her and buys girl scout cookies from her in the neighborhood all makes perfect sense. Denise yells excitedly and interrupts everything and gives her big hugs, if she's been out and then comes back. She tears up about her history. She stops to talk with her when she walks past her yard and sees her playing. I have this sense of the world being Elise's oyster, of there just being love for her everywhere.

:)

Anyway, she also begs to do schoolwork constantly and just this week has burned through most of a capital letters Kumon book and probably a quarter of a Kumon cutting book. It is actually irritating to me how constantly eager for schoolwork she is since at her age it requires a lot of hands on attention and I'm frequently busy with something else, but, hey, if that's my complaint I'm doing ok, right? She even brought home some "sh" and "ch" beginning readers (<---very beginning, it's mostly picture clues and repetition) she's "reading".

Yesterday she had an especially awesome time at PATH because Ananda and Aaron's friends were including her and doing things with her.

Then my sister came, with her kids, and dude. DUDE!

We were sitting there with Ananda, Elise, Elizabeth and the new baby (Isabelle) and realized that somehow, all of a sudden, the two of us have FOUR DAUGHTERS. Four daughters between the two of us. I mean...I just...

Because I had three boys in a row and then she had Brian, this has really somehow blindsided me.

Coloring page Elise asked for the other day and then colored:

She just colors like this, now. I swear she was scribbling all over things indiscriminately like 3 months ago.


What she brought for Show and Tell last Friday - what? So maybe I have a mild influence, sometimes. Today, she took a stuffed panda bear she's been carrying around all week.

For her birthday she wants to go to a "fancy restaurant" with just Grant and I, somewhere where "we all have to dress up really fancy". She has a surprise dress hidden in my closet for this occasion. She also wants an Ariel cake that I have an edible image still in it's fedex packaging for, in the fridge. I got her new running shoes she's gonna have a heart attack over, too:


I mean, the rhinestones light up. LIGHT UP RHINESTONES IS WHAT I'M SAYING HERE. This is a far girlier girl than Ananda.

I keep meaning to finish this but getting distracted, so I'm just going to post it and post again sometime soon with other things...

I spent a long long time cleaning my house today, with my Domestic Labor Squad grueling along under me like the minions that they are. I haven't REALLY cleaned in awhile and I'm extremely pleased with how my house feels to be in right now. It's really like I forget that our granite kitchen counters shimmer and sparkle when they're clean, and I notice anew that we have a lot of really good looking stainless steel and glass in there....Ananda and I worked on the plants for a long time too, and Grant was out in the yard. Annie and I also went and had cappuccinos at Mama Mia's. She's talked my ears off all day long about her friends and their antics, the silly shennanigans they get up to on facebook, the next gathering they're planning, how they all became bronies, blah blah blah. It's kinda awesome just getting used to her TALKING TO ME at all. Good stuff.




Grant's worked from home two days this week, and I LOVE IT. Aside from how we seriously save $25 a day when he doesn't have to commute, it's just so different when he's here. Aaron has gotten him into and addicted to freakin' Minecraft, and now the two of them are sitting side by side at computers far too often. I know just enough to make fun of them, such as when they start in saying things like "I have twenty diamond" and I reply "Yes, and I have five kid and 42 college credit."

My pleas of "I have a shaft you can mine" fell on deaf ears all afternoon, today.

I've been feeling really grateful for my sister. She showed up here two weeks ago when I was in my hellacious funk, with a basil plant, bottled smoothies I love, and snacks, along with stories for the purpose of each and the reminder that she loves me and is right here in town. She's invited me over late at night and fed me (WITH HER NEWBORN AND ALL, meanwhile I'm just a dumbass with no reason to not be feeding my damned self), and today was the second time she spontaneously showed up at my house with Starbucks (like, drinks AND food).

This is the low resolution, not-quite-tweaked and edited version of the cover of my book, which will most likely be out next week:

There are a LOT of things that I did not properly appreciate, about Ananda and Aaron, that I only recognize now, since I have other children and nieces and nephews and know a bunch of moms, etc.

-They slept so amazingly well as babies and toddlers, like, HOLY SHIT miraculous amounts of sleep
-They were SO QUIET compared to other toddlers and preschoolers, I mean, damn
-Their attention spans and their adaptability to situations were absolutely phenomenal for the first 5+ years of life

The thing is, a lot of this is related to "problems" they have. For instance, I understand now that Ananda was anemic as an older baby and toddler and it was not normal or "ok" for her to be taking two significant naps every day and sleeping 12-13 hours at night. I just thought it was awesome because I was pregnant with Aaron and tired. Likewise, Aaron sleeping so long is something nursing mothers aren't supposed to "allow" their newborn babies especially to do - I mean literally his first night home from the hospital he slept 7 hours straight in the co-sleeper. If I were the 30 year old mother of five I now am I would have felt obligated to (WTF??) wake him up and try to get him to eat a couple of times.

They also both had delayed speech, and, well, weird behaviors due to her dyslexia and him to being on the autism spectrum. I mean she got diagnosed as being selectively mute. These are the ongoing issues that caused me to use quotation marks around the word "problems" - dyslexia and SPD(formerly known as SID) are huge parts of their personalities but I think they both fucking rock as they are and wouldn't change either of them (Annie's mostly past the selective mutism now).

Ok, honestly if I could I would give Aaron an increased ability to focus on a task and to concentrate when he wants to because it gets really prohibitive that he just can't do that, and there were things I had to "figure out" about him, sometimes. Teaching Annie to read and getting over a couple of math hurdles were also really difficult as she got older - but overall? They're ridiculously awesome kids, very smart, easy to be around, and everywhere I take them I get compliments and even requests to have them back. I went on roadtrips and stayed at other peoples' houses and ate at restaurants and things with them all the time, in their first 3+ years of life, with little to no fuss. They went to church and just...I dunno, man.

I used to be so smug, about other people with their LOUD OBNOXIOUS KIDS who used the default "outside volume" to yell everything and who never let their parents rest (didn't those fool parents know about breastfeeding and paying attention to their kids and other ways to "charge them up" so they'd be good to cruise along on their own later? Sheesh).

Then I had some (well, mostly) neurotypical children. Babies and toddlers and preschoolers who acted like babies and toddlers and preschoolers. And I found out that most 14 month olds do not dissapear into their bedrooms to quietly read board books for the afternoon, or sit in your lap with great interest as you read them long storybooks. Likewise you cannot just assume the average toddler has fallen asleep in the stuffed animal pile if they go missing/quiet. Au contraire, it's actually usually an EMERGENCY when a toddler goes quiet.

I am really glad I got them first, when I had the least outside support system and was really young. I honestly have no idea what would have become of me if I had Isaac at 18 years old.

Jacob and Elise, for what it's worth, were both better than average sleepers who were happy so long as they were being held. They were also both "advanced" in most things. But neither of them wanted to sit and listen to long books as babies or sit and look at books quietly every day alone as toddlers. They both had (well...sometimes HAVE) that crazy teeth gritting yell volume common of young kids, at times.

All three of my younger kids have a hard time coping and get irritable if they haven't slept in too long, or haven't eaten or won't eat, or if we're doing things they aren't used to or spending too much time in the car. You know, kid stuff.

I swear Ananda and Aaron just did not give a damn about things like that (note: Aaron can no longer tolerate long car trips, like since he was about 6, and he makes me nuts on a regular basis with that). It's really like they didn't notice any more than I did (because left to my own devices nothing in my life would ever be scheduled or even on a routine). Annie didn't like concrete changes like rearranging the furniture or moving, but she could care less if she woke up at 9 am yesterday and noon today.

They just ATE AND SLEPT, when they were hungry and tired.

I understand the sort of revolutionary fiction that sounds like now, but I swear they did.

Jake eats on his own when he's hungry but won't sleep. Elise will sleep but not eat.

They just did both.

Crazy shit.

It's just after noon. Today I've:

-gotten Elise and I ready and fed breakfast, filled out more financial aid crap online for college
-taken her to preschool...her new preferred mode of getting there is for me to bike so she can run the entire way. I'm kind of amazed at how fast she is, I don't ever stop pedaling.
-went to my spanish class, took final exam, consulted with teacher about remaining assignments
-biked home enjoying good weather, and spent some good time with Jakey - he's building cool things with K'Nex every day and we've started taking pictures of all of them to build a K'Nex album
-"morning hug"ed and medicated Aaron, and had a stupid (<---to me, so over the repetition) talk with him about his chores for the day getting done
-been completely confused by Isaac having an insane meltdown about my not making oatmeal today...it was totally irrational and involved things like him going back to bed, screaming at people to get out of his room. I was sitting there rubbing his back trying to get some info out of him and the best he could do is that sometimes he knows things aren't that sad but he can't stop being really sad anyway, which is something I guess.
-consulted with Grant by phone about how crazy he was acting, and left a message with the psychologist about when we get the evaluation results
-baked up 3 dozen strawberry chocolate chip muffins for us to have for tea a couple of days in a row and send with Grant to work, and fried a bunch of eggs, sauteed mushrooms, sliced tomatoes and toasted bread, for lunch - had all the kids make Get Well cards for Pa from the kitchen
-went on the bike, with Ananda on the longboard, and picked Elise up

I keep wanting to do a real update because I have a lot to say. But there is just not a lot of time. I have a MOUNTAIN of online coursework to do today, that is due today, because I've left it for the last minute....I mean damn, this last weekend I spent 4 hours studying and 2.5 hours actually IN algebra, and did a take home spanish test, and watched a play and wrote an essay about it for humanities. The end of the semester is hitting hard I guess. I mostly feel good about it. But I have two local friends I'm blowing off constantly, a publisher that just warned me to prepare for a blitz of calls and emails and we've really been getting good homeschool time in.

Rest of today:
-making a big pitcher of tea, and have Elise make a card too, and demanding that everyone do various schoolwork while Elise lays down for a nap
-package, address and mail the cards
-"Reading Hour" with Isaac, where we read to each other, because he is really having a hard time and very behind in reading and I can't figure out what's going on with that (his vocabulary is advanced, his math is way ahead, he's motivated because he needs things read to him constantly...)
-tea, outside
-By this time it'll be 3 or 3:30...Isaac and everyone else doing some other schoolwork while I start doing my school crap, right up until I need to start making dinner (which really isn't until like 7 for us, so we can eat at 8ish when Grant gets home)

And undoubtedly I'll be doing more of it in a panic after we're done eating (it's usually all due by either 11 or midnight).

---

In my last entry, in the thread of ridiculously tl;dr comments, I realized that what's been going on with me is OBVIOUSLY that I went to the hospital and have been all messed up ever since...once I realized it was "just" (haha) triggered PTSD - after the HELLO *headdesk* hour - I had some initial adjusting that involved about a dozen bouts of crying, telling Grant a bunch of stuff he already knew, and some insomnia. But since then, I feel so much better...scared as hell sometimes, but also PRESENT and myself. I was dissociating really really bad to not let the ER trips and surgical consults bother me at all, and to try to plan my needed surgery asap, like dissociating to the point that I was basically a zombie. I was also doing this crazy russian roulette style "blame everything" thing, like just ready to pin the misery on ANYTHING (diet, Grant, thyroid, anything) rather than actually process having had tests done and going back into the OR sometime soon. I was seriously more ready to cope with the idea that I might be bipolar, than start facing Real Medical Shit.

The more you know, I guess.

I am so ready to just have this shit DONE. I don't know if it's possible to imagine the degree to which that sounds like heaven to me - to just be like 6 weeks out and healed up and have it be fucking over. If you go to the dentist, or know you have to, the worst part is always the anticipation, right? Well, this is like YEAR FIVE of anticipating O_O. Over it.

This morning, after I took Grant to the train and Elise to preschool, Aaron woke in terrible pain - crying uncontrollably, even yelling. It was his swollen glands.

Aaron got what was diagnosed as mumps (he was fully vaccinated at this point and there was some argument among professionals) at 3, his face swelled up like a chipmunk, and ever since whenever he gets ill, his glands get big and tender. Throughout the last year or so, though, they seem to swell and feel tender more often - almost continuously at times. It's been hard to decipher what's going on with them since Christmas, since we have had two different illnesses that have lasted weeks and they're often subtly enlarged or slightly sensitive.

Four days ago, though, with all of us better, his glands suddenly got huge like I haven't seen them in a long time. It was a Saturday and I didn't think it was worth the ER. He layed around a lot. Sunday (Easter) was the same - he layed on a couch under a blanket while the rest of us dyed eggs on the deck, and didn't eat much candy since he can barely chew :/ Yesterday it seemed a lot better - they'd gone way down and hurt a bit less. No fever.

Then today, wailing and gnashing of teeth first thing. It takes a LOT for Aaron to act like that. The silver lining in this situation is that it snapped me immediately out of my funk and into focused action. Also, Dr Geraldi was able to see us this morning and Ms Denise didn't mind keeping Elise longer.

My pediatrician - this guy -


He has a bit of a fixation.

(I apologize for my nausea-inducing angles, I didn't really get it until I saw it myself)

And we love him, and he is amazing. He came in, with his gray braided rat tail and his heavily embroidered and colorfully sewn jeans, in his Spiderman lab coat, knowing us well enough on sight to ask about all my other kids by name. This is the guy my Aunt DeeDee used to drive all the way from Key West to see, for my twin cousins, and there was actually someone there from Orlando today. He checks Annie for anemia via nail beds and eye lids rather than doing bloodwork, he diagnosed Isaac's appendicitis in his office, and he's been cheering for Elise from day 1.

So, it's a little disconcerting to see him calling in his assistant, trading notes, looking things up on his iPhone, and hypothesizing.

Anyway his leading theory is that the glands are catching a lot of drainage from the illnesses and Aaron's allergies and they're clogged and possibly now colonizing bacteria the same way our ears can. So we're doing allergy meds, decongestants and antibiotics - and he's gotta stay on ibuprofen and pedialyte around the clock so as not to get super dehydrated, since it was hurting too much for him to eat or drink and that was becoming a problem :/ He goes back Friday.

With all that in him, he was like a new albeit low energy man and wanted to go to TLC like usual.

Again I enjoyed a good day...good as in, I felt like myself and was able to do things and act human. We picked up Elise, filled prescriptions, had pasta and sauce for lunch, went to TLC. I did some dishes and had a dinner plan. I'm enjoying Grant's company.

Somebody last night left a lengthy comment suggesting she thinks I'm bipolar. Having known several bipolar people well over the years, online and IRL, my first instinct was to say "No way", but I do spend an awful lot of time thinking I need to come back and explain how good things actually are and how excited I am about x, y and z, as well as thinking it's important to emphasize just how awful it is and how I can't deal anymore. So for the hell of it, I took an online assessment that seems to be relatively widely accepted and hosted by fairly respectable looking sites, and was like, wtf?! I got a 51 and a 48 the two times I did it, 53 being the highest possible most bipolar score O_o Lots of words like severe and where to start to get help.

I talked with Grant about this for awhile. I know a LOT about bipolar because of the people I've interacted with over the years who suffer from/through it, and if that is me I think that I either have a higher set point, mood-wise, than what I've seen in others, or else I don't have the piggy backing disorders, or it's a newer development...or all three? I'm going to the doctor either way, I had already decided I want my thyroid tested because, truly, I fit that picture to a T as well. Who the hell knows.

---

Tonight, I want to tell you how incredibly cheap it is to make a big pot of lentil soup for dinner with a bunch of chilled pineapple for dessert. Onions, (tons of) garlic, carrots, celery, chicken and beef broth (cubes for me), tomato juice (I use some from canned tomatoes and then save the actual tomatoes for something else), lentils, water, salt, seasoned salt. It's so delicious! You can garnish it so many ways and serve it with bread or salad or bruschetta or antipasto or nothing. All of my kids tear it up, and a pot big enough for all 7 of us plus lunch for a couple of people the next day is only ~$4 with me buying all the ingredients at BJ's.

Then 3 big cans of pineapple out of a case into the freezer and that's about a $2.50 dessert for all the kids. Ran through the food processor frozen and eaten with a spoon they go crazy.

And I'd like to mention, in case anyone hasn't realized this yet, that you can google image search coupons for any restaurant you're going in, pull them up on your phone, and the waittress/cashier can scan it. The 7 of us consistently do healthy all you can eat at Sweet Tomatoes for $21 this way (it would be about $58 without the coupon deals they keep renewing).

---

Last, look at my hot husband sweeping the bedroom floor after putting away tons of laundry and making the kids laugh the whole drive home: