Potential

I left school today feeling a combination of horrible and horrified.

I have a variety of students in class, from the exceptionally talented and smart, to the... how should I put it? Lazy and dumb?  But, they're not really dumb, just too lazy to do anything about it.

In that mix is a girl, let's call her "Girl Student," who is exceptionally bright, full of "potential."  And, by "potential," I mean that if she just put her back into it she would be a straight A student with colleges panting at her door offering up scholarships.  In my minds eye I see her as a math professor, because I think she could go as far as she wanted to.

However.

Before I say anything, let me emphasize that I like this girl.  Yes, she has mouthed off, and yes she is full of angry energy, and yes she thinks she is a bad-ass, but I like her.  Angry 14-year-olds can grow up to be well rounded and adjusted people, just ask yours truly.

Horrified.

Girl Student came into to class early today, looking all relaxed and happy, which made me happy for her.  Until she stood close to me to complain about being hungry and I inhaled.  What did I smell?  What does the rest of the class smell and keep mentioning/complaining about the rest of the period?

Skunk.

Now, Girl Student claims to not smell this, even though I know it is emanating from her.

Huh? those of you with soapy clean pasts may be asking, while those of us who have slid through the mud and gotten it caught in our teeth sigh "oh."

Let me catch you up.  Girl Student reeked of skunky pot (I don't know if that means it was really good weed, or cheap-ass weed).  I felt a combination of things like, "Yeah, relaxing is great," and "Holy mother my 9th grader is high" and "What do I do?  Who do I tell, if anybody?"

Horrible.

Around this time the original biology teacher comes in, let's call her Mrs. Biology.  She hears the complaints about the skunk and she smells it.  So, feeling a tad cornered with my knowledge I spill the beans to her in the hallway.

I tattletaled like a kindergartner who doesn't know the playground rules yet.  When we went back into the classroom I could see Girl Student looking at me like she knew what I had done... but, what else was there I could do?

I feel a little sick.  Mrs. Biology said she would tell/talk to the counselor, and now it's out of my hands.  I just keep thinking how Girl Student is on such the wrong track, and with each mistake she makes she is losing more and more of her foothold on the future.  Sometimes failures and mistakes are easy to move on from, sometimes they're a boon to learn from, but allowing yourself to treat yourself like shit is well... It's just stupid.

I just want to take Girl Student home and feed her ice cream.  So many angry/hurting/destructive students are lacking healthy home lives.  I feel horrible because Girl Student and I were building a good relationship, where maybe she was beginning to trust me, and I ratted her out for smoking pot.

Hopefully, it's for her own good.

But I don't wanna

Productivity is a thing that comes and goes for me lately.  I either want to or I don't.  The motivation is there or it isn't.

It makes me very moody, mainly because I like getting things done.  The last couple of weeks I've been working on my quilt, and amazingly enough I have the top and bottom done, all I have to do now is lay them out with the batting and baste it all together.

Easy, right?

Except that I am making a queen size quilt and there isn't a queen size space in my house to lay it out and baste it (I want to make sure I get everything even).  Why not do it outside on the  grass?

Because of the freakin' wind, rain, snow, and periodic hail.

Bah!

Unfortunately, I'm a little crazy.  Since I have set my sights on getting the quilt basted (loosely sewn together) it's very difficult for me to move on to something else (like making that doll for the upcoming family reunion my mom asked for).

(I should also mention that there is a folding table at Costco that I have decided I can't live without, and since I don't have it yet it is hard to start making something...  because, having it would make making something so much easier.)  

Usually when I come to this type of creative precipice I throw up my hands and watch yet another episode of Angel on Netflix.  But today, I had Glee recorded and laundry to fold, and in order to allow myself to watch Glee I had to fold the laundry.

Do I sound nuts to you yet?

So, while I was not creatively productive today, I was housewife productive.

And as soon as I buy myself that table, I will be otherwise productive as well.

poop

For those of you thinking about bringing home your very own bundle of joy, I have only one thing to say to you:

You better like poop.

Because as soon as you take that sweet squirming thing home you will have to become fast friends with its poop, there will be lots of it.

And when I say "lots of it" I mean there is going to be more poop than you are accustomed to coming in contact with.  Maybe you've had a dog or cat and they have had the periodic accident in the house, but that is still not comparable to baby.

(I understand that my bundle of joy, when she was tiny, may had produced more poop than normal because of her intolerance, but I stand solid in my opinion.)

Now, when baby poops it is unpredictable in timing and mass.  And aiming.  Say you've just taken baby's diaper off to change it, when BAM! and unexpected spray arches up and over and onto your pants.  Your.  Pants.  Or shorts, or skin, or whatever happens to be in the landing area of the poop.  Because that stuff can fly.

As baby grows up so does her poop.  It goes from a thin goo, to a thicker goo, and eventually to (depending on diet and gut issues) solid poop.  JG's poop differs on a daily basis depending on what decisions/mistakes I've made in what I feed her.  When she goes a day or two without soy in her diet (or mine) she gets some stinky, solid poops.  Okay, well, they are all smelly blobs of disgusting.

I think she prefers to be alone for her solid poops, because she'll wander off to another room and return all stinky.  Like, "Oh, my lord, are toting WMD's around in your pants?!"

Not only do I get to smell her daily gifts (suffocate, more like), but cleaning them up is always a... joy?  I get to find out if a gob of poo will find its way onto my hand, or if the diaper might fly open at the wrong moment and fling poop onto the floor.  Or, maybe the diaper has proven no match and the poo has spread up her back and out the sides onto onesie and pants.

That is always a joy.

What I'm trying to get across here is that in one way or another you will come into contact with your offspring's poop.  It's unavoidable.

Un-a-void-able.

Which is why I always try to make Alex do it.

That's what husbands are for, right?

Baby

At the grandparents:

Before a bath:

Feeding herself:

Giggling while Alex blows on her face:

 At some restaurant (I think that's her "what food are you going to give me?" look):

j

This is what you get for now.  Hope you're all having a good week.

Ah-HA!

For those of you holding on to your tippy-toes waiting for my mind to return to me, the word is Routine.  I am a very routine (not schedule) oriented person.

Here is how it usually goes:

I wake up
Change JG's diaper (if she's up)
Put JG in the midst of toys and feed the animals
Put tea kettle on to boil
Play with JG
Get the computer and waste time checking email, blogs, and playing with facebook fish...

And on and on.  I know, it is SO exciting, which may only punctuate how strange I am that when that routine changes (like not having to go to work) I break down a little.

What a weirdo.

I have to grade papers and stuff now, something I've been procrastinating all week!  Joy!

Craft Therapy

*Warning* Please be aware that some swearing follows... mainly because I feel like it, and also, swears are just words.  However, I do know that some of you feel offended or hurt by four-letter words, so please feel free to stop reading here and for this post find another blog to read to procrastinate whatever it is that you are procrastinating.  Oh, and thanks for reading.

Oh.  My.  God.

You GUYS!

I love fabric.

I love the feel of it, the colors, the possibilities!

And, a small apology for my poor me, bitchy post previously.  I needed to get some stuff off my chest, obviously.  And, anytime my schedule (the real word I'm looking for starts with a T, but for the life of me I cannot grasp it!) changes, I get anxious.  As if the whole world just crumbled and I'm standing in the middle, looking around as if it's my duty to put it all back together.

Dude, if Humpty couldn't put himself back together... wait, my analogy is getting lost even on me...so.  What I'm trying to say is that I am crazy at times, and I need to learn to weather them better.

Which is why craft therapy is such a freaking gift.  Also, that part of my brain that was with-holding my creative impulse finally turned on again - but for only one thing.

A quilt.

You should know that I've really only made one blanket, never a quilt.  The only reason I feel the compulsion to approach such a task is because of the queen size quilt batting I bought (hoarded) some... seven or eight years ago.

Yes.  YEARS.  I know how that sounds.

I haven't made a quilt in all that time because the math of it all escapes me.  I can think of designs (sort of) but the logic of putting it together confuses the hell out of me.  Then I get pissed off.  Then I quit.

Because, I am a quitter.  Usually an angry one (as you may have observed from my many complaints on this blog).

But I finally resolved to make something simple simple, something even a math simpleton like myself may be able to approach.

I will try to post photo's as I go, but you all know how good I am at that.  I'm just hoping I don't do something in the middle of it to irritate me and make me quit.

Because, like I stated before, I am a quitter.

And now I'm going to go enjoy some Angel.  Because I love David Boreanaz and Joss Whedon.

Tight

Have you ever had the sense that the fabric you are made of is being pulled taught, and the more you move the more shallow your breath becomes?

It's strange, I was really looking forward to having a week off, having time to accomplish some of the random things that have been swimming around in my head...  but, I can't seem to jump start my head into going forward.  Instead it rummages deeper into the past and finds things that I am irritated about, things I have buried and/or thought I was over.

I am still mad at Westminster for the ONE teacher who treated me like a child.  I am angry at her for staining my experience, which up until that point was splendid.

I keep thinking about my grandmother and how much I miss her.  I'm not sure if I'm angry that she's gone, but I keep replaying this memory of when I was about 14 and she gave me this pair of dangly gold earrings.  She asked if I wanted them and emphasized that if I didn't that would be okay.  I looked that the earrings, which to me at 14 seemed gaudy and over-the-top, and told her no, I didn't want them.  My friend Courtney was there at the time and said she was amazed, she could never have said anything like that to her grandmother.  I thought Grandma didn't mind, but I noticed later in the day that her feelings were a little hurt.

To this day I feel guilty for hurting her feelings about something so trivial.  She never said anything, but she was the kind of woman who's eyes spoke novels, if you looked the right way.

I'm also irritated that I can't seem to spend any money.  I know.  Lame.  Every time I go to buy something I think I want the moment I take the action to purchase it I'm not interested anymore.  I'm like a balloon, all filled up with excitement at the thought of having something new, only to deflate when I realize that owning it wouldn't do me that much good.

What happened to the consumer inside me?  I still have that little voice that urges me to buy, but apparently it's being tempered with my budding buddhism, which says that such things are unnecessary for true happiness.

It's true, but I'm 30!  I AM THIRTY, and I have this selfish need to gift myself something (sort of like a pat on the back) for the amazing year I've had: masters degree, baby, SAHM, job, other stuff.  I just can't think of what that gift should be, or when I do I don't want it anymore.  Take that capitalism!

And JG has been keeping me up all night.  She wiggles and whimpers and cries and refuses to let me sleep on my own.  I'm not sure how to rectify the situation, I know that she's miserable because of teething, but when we're both miserable the next day due to little sleep no one is the better for it.

Poor Alex, he the one having to deal with all of this.

Hey

Marriage Ref is hilarious.

and

I'm really digging Ugly Betty.  I'm going through the first season (checking it out from the library) and I find it adorable and interesting.  Some of the writing is a bit weak (repetitive), but the characters totally make up for it.  And anytime a television show is in its first season you've got to forgive some minor snafoo's.

I have only watched the first eight episodes, mainly because I was using it as an excuse to do nothing... which I really don't need any help with.  I have been doing nothing for two weeks now.

JG, on the other hand, is on the verge of walking.  It started with pulling herself up to a kneeling position.  Over the past three days the kneel has turned into standing, and she is using EVERYTHING to stand.  Along with the standing she is starting to take a couple of steps.

Oh.  Crap.

Oh, she has been refusing to sleep on her own.  I'm putting it down to teething, but man am I tired.  I'm also going to use that as my excuse for doing nothing.

(Now, when I say "nothing" I mean in terms of crafting or anything productive for me.  I have been lesson planning and whatnot for my one class.  But, I get home, I do nothing.  I watch Ugly Betty.)

This next week I have spring break.  Spring mother-loving-break!  Nine consecutive days of no schedule, no driving an hour all over the valley to get to where I need to be, and hopefully getting things done.