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a slow roll

Like dominoes or watching one of those clocks where the numbers flip like paper fans, the numbers roll over. Five becomes six. Tick. Nine becomes ten. Tick. Eleven becomes twelve.

Tick.

Aidan will be as tall as I am very soon. It’s not too hard at five feet tall. (There it is - another number.) I only noticed yesterday as we walked to the restaurant that Connor isn’t that far behind him.

Tick.

I gave Aidan an mp3 player for his birthday present. Jim got him cool headphones. Uncle Benny bequeathed him his skateboard. All are evidence of someone thoroughly on his way to his teens.

Be a tween a little while longer, love.

It was a happy birthday. A family bowling excursion and cake this weekend will round it out. More slow rolls.

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Teo isn't really THAT big

Posted 04/24/2008
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Near the close

Here in Virginia for a drive through. (Arrived late Friday night, leaving with the boys back for Rochester after breakfast).

Wish I ‘d had more time to contact the folks I know in DC. Wish I’d been able to make it to the mall (the Smithsonian...although IKEA would have been fun too). But as it gets near the end of the quarter, the amount of stimulus I can handle outside of hearth and home decreases by quite a bit.

Aidan will be twelve in a few days. He’s nearing my height and I kid with him about how alarming it is - but it is. He’ll be solidly in his tweens. So far, no visible insecurities - and I wonder if boys just don’t have them to the same degree girls do?

Midterms are done. Final exams are coming. Then there is that last bit o grading. It’s that final push before the next group gets kicked to the curb. Summer promises to be lazy. I want that promise kept. But first things firts - before I get there, I need to wake up the boys and roll home.

Posted 04/20/2008
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I am

I am alive.

I am healthy.

I am loved.

I am fed.

I am sheltered.

I am employed.

I like my job.

My loved ones are safe and mostly happy. My friends ring around me and support me in my day to day. There are no dire things happening in my neighborhood to make me fear for my life. My parents are healthy. My children are still young enough to think me a goddess.

These are all those things I suppose I could write every single day. Maybe I should write them because they are not true for everyone.

So, Itzel, that is my life. Not much drama to recount or recall. The most alarming thing might be the dog escaping (which he has not done in quite a while). The greatest conflicts are just the ones where the boys pound on one another - but that is their nature.

Life is good.

Posted 04/17/2008
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Chore Wars: the adventure begins
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Brilliant.

I tried to interest the boys in this two years ago and they were clearly not very enthused. This time it has taken.

ChoreWars is set up as an adventure game where players create avatars who can claim xp (experience points) and get gold for completing adventures. In our case, the adventures are things like “Cleanliness is Next to Godliness” for 30xp in the 2nd Floor Dungeon. This entails taking a shower and tossing all dirty laundry into the hamper. Negative xp if they take longer than 10 minutes.

We have “100 toy pick up” for 10xp each shot.

And so on.

The gold can be converted to 1 cent per gold. So 1,000 gold is 10 bucks. They can rack that up in about a week and a half or two depending how much they pick up around the house.

I’m playing too. The gold I earn will go toward moi. (I like Tona’s idea that some of one’s earning should go to something that isn’t bills or food).

Posted 04/07/2008
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just pretending

I’m still feeling like I am playing at being a grown up. Not sure if it will ever take.

The small part of being the adult in the house is the doing of the mom thing which seems to involve plenty of “no” and “stop” and “tell your brother you’re sorry.”

Gabriel’s eyes are not even open. “What? Oh, it’s not a school day.” He opens them enough to find me.

“Can I play on the computer, mommy?” He watches me consider it and adds, “I love you.”

And then comes the grown up moment where I say, “Go find Green Eggs and Ham. You need to practice reading to me first.” He gives an exasperated sigh. “I KNOW how to read,” rolls his eyes and grunts. So we slog through “The Cat in the Hat.” ("Green Eggs and Ham” has gone missing.) For Gabriel, this is not fun.

The day progresses with more not fun but grown up kinds of things like: laundry and dishes and dusting. (Cooking is recreation. It does not count.) I’m doing these things the same way Gabriel does his reading, with an inward stomping of my feet and a quiet of mantra of “stupid laundry”, “stupid dishes”, and “stupid dusting”. I am guessing grown ups do these things because they like to do them. Maybe the idea that there is joy in the doing is something that comes with maturity and homemaking self-actualization. This may not be true.

Posted 04/06/2008
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light

Light headed and exhausted.

My students (all working diligently right now) are saying whatever it is I’ve got, it will end in lots of phlegm.

I guess me saying, “no! no! no! no! no! no!” will not be enough to stave it off.

On the positive side, the sun is shining. Weather is fine. Bob Marley is singing to only me in my head. If I’m going to be dizzy, it’s nice to have the experience to a techno reggae beat.

Posted 04/03/2008
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I’d like to be Tonks

but I think I’m probably Mrs. Weasley.

Posted 03/31/2008
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stay puff marshmallow (wo)man

You know what that means.

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Posted 03/28/2008
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peeking out of the hole

If I could get just the first few words right, and maybe the last five - then the story would be made.

There hasn’t been much reflecting on the doing lately. Much of the doing has been the mundane. It feels as though I’ve been hibernating, or maybe I’d set my self on a shelf for the winter. I’m waiting for the crocuses. They’ll let me know when it’s time to come out.

Posted 03/27/2008
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ambiguous ending

A montage of love: first glances, flirtation, first kiss, breakfasts and lovemaking. It was me. And even in dreams it was a flashback. There was the guy walking away, surrounded by memories. I watched it rolling away from me. It wasn’t worth chasing. I don’t even know how it ended except that it did - and why go back? That hollow feeling is the feeling of no anger or sadness.

So I told Liz about this love montage - that was in past tense. She started laughing and almost dropped the barbell on her head. (Sorry about that).

I guess it’s funny. It wasn’t when I woke up.

If that dream was the end of a story, it would be sad. But if that is the opening scene - well, that’s an entirely different story, isn’t it?

Posted 03/20/2008
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something about snow and how I cannot zen the answer

The alarm went off at 6. Maybe I don’t have to leave my bed. I listen for traffic hoping it sounds muffled - like the wheels are pillowed. But there is no sound of any passing cars. I analyze what information I could get from sound or non-sound. If a car drives through a snow bank but there is no one awake to hear it...I have effectively killed any more sleep.

There’s nothing for it. I have to get out of bed to look. The street is gone, it’s covered in white with a few tracks. Hope.

The screen is bright and it takes too long to focus. A tank top and shorts is not cutting it in the downstairs wintered living room. I am getting old. Doing the bifocal thing. I tilt my head up to look down. So 6:09 and there are no school closings. Yay snow truck guys? (Not really. Selfishly, I wanted us all here trapped for the day).

Posted 02/27/2008
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not too late

Disorienting when awakening unsure of the day and whether or not one is late.

Gabriel asleep next to me on the bed. Connor asleep in a sleeping bag under the eaves next to Teo. Right. We stayed up late and watched “Castle in the Sky” on my laptop. So that means…

That we’re probably not late.

It isn’t true, but it feels like a vacation.

So now I am making champorado and packing up to go to RIT for Saturday office hours. I am expecting a small stream of folks. I’ll have the boys watch cartoons on my laptop. Then it will be a weekend of us hanging out and cleaning house. Such a simple thing, but I am not taking our time together for granted after so many weekends too full of work.

Posted 02/23/2008
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mo politics

So I find myself hitting nytimes.com, npr.org and washingtonpost.com to follow the ongoing political story that is this year’s election. I would like to put a plug in for a presidential election in about twenty years...and that would be for Lawrence Lessig for president.

Just a man to keep one’s eye on.

Right now there is merely a movement to draft him in a run for congress.

Anyway. In typical Lessig fashion, a brief lecture punctuated powerpoint.
10 Minutes on Whether Hillary Can Win


Posted 02/19/2008
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untitled because I can’t think of one

Sunday morning, I loaded the boys into the car at 8:30 to take them to their dad’s. Gabriel asked if it was a school day? Nope. Is it a weekin day? Yes...but I have to go to work. Gabriel clearly does not approve of me having no weekins.

The final video shoot ( I can say that) went smoothly. Shot two hours. Came home, editted video for the next four hours and then dropped them off at Vince’s. Vince and Steve were camped out at Vince’s dining table surrounded by hard drives and four computers trying to look for flaws in the one hundred plus question survey. As much work as I’ve been doing for the project, they have too (if not more).

I wish them luck. I think I am done. Still, I check my email every two hours for the rest of the evening to make sure nothing else pops up.

Despite the slight paranoia of some thing missing, it is time for decadent celebration.

Alone. Not lonely. There is a difference.

The house is clean. I roasted potatoes, sauteed the brussel sprouts in olive oil and garlic. I grilled salmon. I made hollandaise (whichis always scary because I can see all the cholesterol I am about to eat). I made a lovely presentation of the whole thing and cracked open a bottle of white wine.  I sat down to watch The Lord o the Rings. I unwound my spring.

Posted 02/18/2008
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Aging is not for sissies

That’s the take away line from a new report this morning.

“The old old” are the largest growing segment of the population. There were positive things there about living a long while so long as all those things that are always good to do continue to be done: exercise, eat healthily and such.

Mom is going to Morocco to visit Elice, Chakib and Ibrahim. The boarder asks, “Has she traveled alone before?”
“Sure.” I think about it some more. “No.”

There is that changing perception. There was a line as I grew up that divided us cousins from the titas and uncles. This was the demarcation between the young and the old. Somewhere after I had kids, I crossed that line. but the line moved on and now there is there are the moms and dads, and the lolos and lolas.

Didn’t occur to me to be worried until the boarder asked. Should I be worried about a lola traipsing off by herself? Silly me. The woman raised the five of us by herself while dad was stationed on remote.

Back to work. Loose threads of not wholly knitted thoughts. Listening to a mix of summer songs. Looking to the future in lots of ways.

Posted 02/14/2008
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