Review and reflect

It's been a tumultuous few weeks. Last night after Superman got home from dealing with the transfer of Diva he was emotionally exhausted. We snuggled on the bed for a while, talking over all that's gone down recently.

I deal with things by looking at the small picture. I try to tackle one (maybe two) things at a time, and don't consider the whole mess. It's how I can do this.

Last night I took a glimpse at a broader view of recent events in my life. By recent, I mean the past 6-9 months. I've done a lot. I've been through a lot.

Sproing came home 2.5 weeks ago. Things being what they are, situation-wise, we find ourselves homeschooling the boy. By "we" I mean mostly me. He's intense. It takes a lot of energy just to be with him. And of course I am still in school. There are two more weeks of classes, then finals week. I'm finished by the end of April.

And here's what I have come to accept. Once this semester is over, I'm finished with school. I don't need to complete this degree because I already have a bachelor's degree. I could get into grad school now, especially with the psychology course work I've done in the past four semesters. But it isn't going to happen, at least not for a while. For now I am needed at home. These kids are very very needy. I can't be in school now, especially not in grad school. This realization hit me yesterday. I'm still reeling.

What this is, folks, is the death of a dream.

OK, I'm willing to consider this a dream deferred. Deferred indefinitely...

Today in Javaland

Let's begin with Diva. Superman is, as I type this, in Columbia to transfer Diva from the hospital to the long-term treatment facility. For now she will be in the Columbia facility. As I understand it, (not well, believe me), our insurance will cover her treatment there until a space opens at another facility that accepts our insurance. They're doing some kind of override to let her go to this place in Columbia. I think. I could be wrong.

I saw Diva last week. Actually, I think it was a week ago last Friday, so that's 1.5 weeks. Superman saw her Saturday. We have talked on the phone a few times, including last night. There isn't much to say. "Hi. How's it going? Anything interesting happening there?" (no) After another minute of small talk she asked to talk to her Daddy. She is excited about leaving the hospital. I doubt she has any clue what she might experience in the new place. I doubt she's thought about it. She seems to be having fun just being in the system. It gives her a sense of identity that she was missing, at least that is my take on it. Both of my sons get very anxious about new experiences, and want to know all they can about what to expect. Diva not so much.

Sproing is testing us. I expected this. He especially puts up a lot of resistance to his school lessons. Yes, I'm homeschooling him now. We're going into it very slowly, in part because I don't really know what he can do. I need to assess his academic abilities. Also, since I'm still in school full time myself, there's a practical limit to how much I can prepare, teach, do, etc. It's the blind leading the blind right now. This doesn't worry me much, because I've been here before. OK, maybe I'm not so blind. We'll be working through the summer, too. No extended summer vacation for him! I will not be in school this summer and plan to put some creative effort into lessons for him. I like unit studies. We can study a topic and bring math, reading, writing, maybe history or science into what we're studying. It can be fun if everyone (me and Sproing) cooperates and has a good attitude.

Memo

Urgent!

Re: pollen

Enough is enough, and this is too much. Stop it right now. Bring us a heavy rain to wash it out of the air, and be done with this foolishness. People are suffering, most importantly me. We can't see through our windshields, and are sneezing so hard and so often it makes driving dangerous.

-Java

I told the stats professor yesterday that the school should shut down on account of the high pollen count. She's getting sick from it all. We had an exam yesterday (which I think I aced) and she spent the entire time coughing and sniffling. She called in sick today. Another girl in the class was doing much of the same. Though it hasn't made me sick sick, my whole face and inside my ears and throat itch like crazy. This stuff leads to bronchitis and sinus infections.

Today in spelling news:

• annihilation - WTF? Why two "n's" and what's with that "h"?

Where Junk-Mart goes, everyone goes. A few years ago our local large discount retailer did a remodel which included changing the store's color scheme from blue and gray to dark green and ... what is that color? Beige? sand, camel, tan, buff. You've doubtless seen it. Recently I have noticed many other establishments changing color. The buildings are now painted in some color that resembles the tan. The Taco Bell just turned beige and terracotta. We have a Hampton Inn that is now dark beige. Not even tan, it's dark beige. Too much green in it, I think, to be tan. Yesterday I was paying attention as I drove down retail row. Outback Steakhouse has gone to the tan side. Oh, and the Ruby Tuesday's is also a lighter shade of brown. I've seen others, but can't recall them exactly.

Memo

Re: paint colors

People, beige is a depressing color, especially when overused. All these shades of tan are turning our world into blandville. Honestly, though, gray isn't any better. I hold no direct animosity toward any color (within reason) but believe that colors should be used appropriately. Some colors serve well as accents, small areas of color to enhance the greater picture. I appreciate the importance of earth tones as a pallet for expression. I wear a lot of earth tones. But if everything is beige then nothing is special. Think about that.

-Java

Whatever else I had in mind to say has been sneezed out through my nose. If it comes back, or if any more of this rambling blather shows up, I'll let you know.

A brief history of my last 20 years book three

How we got here

Why we got here

What we're doing here

Book Three

When we last saw our heroine the horde of invaders had just left. She was standing amid the ruins with a shell-shocked look about her.

Have you seen the oft-Xeroxed quote that goes something like this?

As soon as the rush is over, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown...I owe it to myself, I worked for it, and nobody is going to deprive me of it!

That's sort of what happened. I didn't go all out crazy, but it was rough. It was springtime when they left for California, sometime in mid-March, actually, if I recall. I don't remember details about the next few months. Light could probably fill us in, but I doubt it matters much.

The next thing I recall is the beginning of the school year, mid August 2003. I enrolled Diva and Sproing in kindergarten. This was a big step for me, as I was still homeschooling Light and Twitch. It felt like I was giving up on myself. But I knew I couldn't continue to do justice to Light and Twitch's education with Thing One and Thing Two running rampant. Nor could I concentrate on their educational needs without ignoring Light and Twitch. So off to school they went. I was nervous about feeling relieved, but I did. J

School wasn't going well with the older two either. Light and I were looking into getting her started at the high school the following year, when she'd be a freshman. We learned that to enroll in high school directly from being homeschooled she'd need all manner of paper work and verification and assorted other bull shit red tape. But to enroll her in the middle school in the 8^th grade, and then have her graduate to high school was no big deal. By golly we did that! Twitch was restless and dissatisfied with homeschooling and desperately (thought he) wanted to go to Middle School. He was in 6^th grade at the time. Once we decided to send Light to school he wanted desperately to go too. We figured all this out sometime in late September or October, so we waited until the new semester began in January to send them to the middle school.

Twitch is a unique bird. Unique and Middle School do not mix. Oh, boy. He was so desperate to be like the other kids, to go to "real" school. I've been to middle/junior high school. It is hell. I knew nothing had changed significantly, but once he made up his mind there was no convincing him otherwise. I knew the only way for him to learn the horror that is middle school was to experience it for himself. This was so hard for me to do, because I knew my sweet naïve gentle boy was going to get the shock of his life. A mom hates to subject her child to that. He was totally unprepared, having never been in a traditional classroom in his life. But that was all we could do. That, and pray a lot. Which we did.

For the rest of that school year, from January to May I stayed home alone while all four kids were in school. It was bliss. I spent some time at the schools visiting classrooms, teachers, and generally being an involved parent. Especially with Twitch there were some issues that surfaced. He's ADHD and we'd just worked around his needs when at home. But classroom management is ever so much different from homeschooling, and he needed some intervention. I won't go into all that here, but suffice to say it took a lot of my energy.

Early in the summer of '04 I was toying with the idea of getting a "little job." I had in mind something part time, preferably flexible, that would allow me to be available as Mom for the kids, yet get me out of the house and bring in a bit of extra money. To that end I was perusing the classified ads in our newspaper. It was there I spotted notification that our school district was looking for bus drivers, training class to begin [near date], come to transportation office to apply. Cool! Driving a school bus! I've always wanted to drive a truck, and a school bus seemed the logical thing. So I followed through; went to the training, took the written test for my learner's permit, and spent long hot summer mornings in an un-air conditioned school bus driving or being driven around the county. I was finally ready for my road test to get the official Commercial Drivers' License. Drove that test; blew it away, baby! So all of a sudden I have a Class B CDL with passenger endorsement. And a job! And school starts in a week! Holy Shit! I need after school day care for my 1^st graders!!!

I got the kidlets enrolled in a local day care center where they would be picked up after school and taken to the center, fed a snack, and given opportunity to do homework. (It was beautiful in theory. The transportation from school to center worked well. Everything else was a bit sketchy. But everyone survived.) The older ones were properly supplied to begin a new year.

The first day of school was stressful, of course. The first day of work was OMG and Holy Shit not-what-I-naively-expected stressful. I wasn't actually driving yet, as there were no routes available at the time. I was riding on a route as a bus monitor. The boss put me on one of the toughest routes in the whole city. I wonder if he was trying to either scare me away or to see what I was made of. I'm still standin', as they say, so I guess I was made of tougher stock than either of us thought!! And I certainly learned a lot.

But back to the first day of school. We have established that there was mega-stress going on. But wait! There's more! When I got home I checked the mail. There was an envelope from our landlord which contained our official eviction notice. We had suspected that this might be in the works, but didn't know for sure, and didn't expect it so soon. My mind reeled. My knees gave way. I was not at peace. This was one of those days that will live in infamy as a Really Bad Day.

The house we were in was a rental. We'd gone into the deal as a rent-with-option-to-purchase. There were sloppy mistakes on both sides of the whole thing. One thing led to another, and the owner wanted to sell. We weren't in a position to purchase at that time, so we needed to move. It was a lot more complicated than that, and got really ugly. He threatened to sue, Superman bent over backwards to do what the landlord demanded, yet the $%&)# sued us anyway. A bad time was had by all. This was a slow and painful process that began the summer of 2004 and isn't quite finished even now. There are no "feel good" parts to that story. Another post for another time when I feel like reliving a trip through hell. Don't hold your breath. Kick the stress level up another notch. Exponentially.

What to do? Where to go? How best to adjust to this sudden upheaval in our lives? Stay tuned, citizens, for it does indeed get better. But for now this seems like a good place to stop.

(I thought I'd get to the end of the story in 3 easy installments, but it seems as though it will take at least one more. I had conveniently forgotten some of this heartache and underestimated the length of time/paragraphs it would take to bring us approximately up-to-date.)