Walking Backwards

We just got back from visiting the in-laws and, because I am supposed to be studying for a test and really need to get something done, I'll save the rundown from the weekend. However, it seems as if Nicholas has gotten into the why(?) phase of being four and right now it is kind of fun. As illustration, a conversation I had with him this weekend while shopping at Target:

Nicholas (while running his hand down the aisle shelf): I want to buy all of these things.

Me: You can't honey; you don't have any money.

Nicholas: I don't have any money? Why?

Me: Because you don't have a job yet.

Nicholas: I have a job; I should have money

Me: Oh you have a job. What's your job?

Nicholas: Jumping on the bed

Me: Jumping on the bed?

Nicholas: Yeah, jumping on the bed and sleeping.

Unfortunately, there are no opening in his department. I'm keeping an ear open, though, because the benefits are incredible.

I don't know why, but things around here have not slowed down despite the best efforts of Joe and myself to make them. Instead, we are getting busier and our lives have become more dramatic. Dramatic because those around us are all going through some sort of heartrending personal tragedy or some moment in their lives where we either almost lose them or they lose something of themselves. I think I have a harder time dealing with the problems of my loved ones than I have in dealing with my own. My own problems I can break down and compartmentalize. I can form a plan and come up with steps of what to do. I can stand the idea of being injured or losing myself, but the thought of the people I care about being vulnerable and unprotected and hurt causes me great anguish.

Right now I can barely sit at the computer because two of the people I love aren't perfect or they aren't in the perfect situation, but I have done all I can and I need to let them sort out their lives with a clear head space. One of my friends was in a horrific car accident yesterday after she left my house. She and her two year-old son, who was in the car with her, are sore, but fine. Their car was crushed, the truck that they hit was flipped over. She called me to tell me they had been in an accident and I set out on foot (but was picked up by a kindly stranger) just to make sure they were okay. Seeing the state of her car as I pulled up took years off of my life. I had to keep touching them to make sure they were really there. My other friend, who I want to be with to hold her hand and to make her know that we will be there for everything, is checking out of the hospital today with her second child. She went into labor Tuesday night all alone because her husband had a psychotic break the night before and is now in an institution and out of their lives. I keep filling my head with things that need to be said and done, but all I can do is look at her infant daughter and promise that, whatever they need, we will be there for them.

While I know that, as humans, we are unable to control the fates of ourselves and those around us, I can't entirely accept that notion. The idea that these wonderful people, who have brought such joy into our lives and who are vibrant individuals, have such mercurial existences is an idea that I cannot wrap my brain around. So I sit, shaking my fist at the universe for almost extinguishing those bright flames who have warmed my soul. Capricious fate has left me looking over my shoulder and hugging my loved ones tighter for I worry that they may leave me.

You know how you get so busy sometimes that your life just becomes a haphazard series of events that you just fall into or jump in between? Just me? I hope not. I keep forgetting to update here because I am lucky to remember to get dressed before leaving the house. I only wish I was kidding. I got halfway to my son's childcare and realized that I wasn't wearing shoes.

The class is going as well as can be expected. I got 100 percent on my first exam, though I don't know how accurate that is because he counted a couple questions that were wrong as being correct and he forgot to add in the extra credit. I'm spending a little over two hours a day on average studying for this one class so I haven't had time to work on my college applications or to study up on some math testing requirements (I haven't taken a math class in eight years). Thank goodness I'm only taking the one class this time around.

On the work front, I started watching another kid as a favor to a friend. She was in a bind and although I do not have the time or energy to do it, I said I'd help her out until she can make her way through the waiting list at a new daycare. In Austin that can take awhile though, so I hope I don't regret doing this because I already have my hands full with the kids I already watch. I've also started taking on a few sewing projects for friends that are stacking up behind me. We'll see how that turns out because we really could use the extra cash, but the time spent may not be worth it. I also have the stuff I am trying to do for myself, but it seems like that is going to be permanently in the background.

So much else that I'm missing talking about like my futile attempts at a home routine, Nicholas' new habit for making up songs as he goes along, my mourning our not being able to afford tickets to ACL, how the new kitten is driving me insane at night, and how much I miss my mind and love my family.

I'm going to start cross-posting this on LiveJournal in hopes that that will encourage me to keep it up to date since I go on Livejournal to read more than I do anything else on this computer. If any of you all find this irritating let me know and I'll be done with it.

In the midst of studying hard for Latin and being oppressed by allergies, we have had an exciting week. We got a new kitten on Wednesday, I figure out how to get my pictures from the camera onto the computer (now to get them onto my server), and we found a diamondback rattlesnake in our garage. Maybe one day Nicholas will let me on the computer long enough to write a real entry :)

Right now I am in the process of composing an entry about my mid-life crisis, or what I feel qualifies as a mid-life crisis and what is probably just an ordinary 'life-crisis' that we all fall victim to from time to time, but it is all in it's genesis (the entry and the crisis). So, until I am able to potificate (yay Latin usage!) on it all, a list of things that have frustrated me and confused me and caused my brain to ache all in this one morning:

- I think I am the only person in the world who is frustrated by my lack of car space because it limits my ability to pick up cool things that other people have put out to be thrown away. You may be upset by your lack of car space, but I doubt that it is for the reason that you have been hindered in picking up other people's garbage. Someone put out an awesome chair today that looked from afar like it only needed to be recovered, but there was no way to get those legs in the door of my bottom-of-the-line Saturn. As I drove away discouraged, a truck with a camper slammed on it's brakes and I didn't even have to turn around to figure out what he was after.

- I am not a person who is driven to distraction by the cleavage-barring, tight-fitting clothing choices of those around me, but I have discovered a fashion choice that sufficiently stops me in my tracks and cause me to lose my train of thought the moment I encounter it. Sadly, it is in my Latin class and this look is arrayed by my teacher. *The man unbuttons his shirt to almost his belly button*. While I don't find this look particularly arousing, especially on a ninety year-old man, I have to give him the credit he deserves in the it lead me to look at his chest for a good two minutes forsaking all that was going on around me. I don't think he noticed me.

- I was left in utter confusion when I passed a car that said on the back 'Jesus COMING SOON' almost like a movie marquee, but I almost wrecked my car trying to get across two lanes to follow the thing when I saw that they had written on the side in the same bold white print 'God's truth about Marijuana'. That is something I really want to know. I would never have thought that God would have cared all that much.