9/14
Some Bay Area e-advice from the Bench Presser: "Stick with IT guys. They make a lot of money." Innnnteresting. And from Amrapali: Cut dairy -- get your calcium from broccoli and kale. But the thought of cooking my oatmeal with water (yech) is in itself too much to ask. (I love the calcium guise. It allows for so many yummies, like cheese and ice cream.) Also from the BA, Mommy Penny sends love and photos so I can complete my last-summer photo album. (The San Fran half needs serious work, but the China part is done, minus captions.)
Brother Mart departs for his own PRC adventure in less than a month. His Mandarin instructor is the only chaperone for 20 kids -- good luck to her. Their trip, an educational exchange, is being called "Grand Holiday" and I see plenty of sightseeing and tomb-inspections, not to mention shopping in HK, on the itinerary. Can I come?
9/15
At tonight's clan birthday party, we actually won a few games. (Yah, you can have your cake and eat it too, at these things, but first you have to earn it.) E's B won cookies and Lego. He's still an amateur when it comes to Bingo, though. He won that stuff from Price is Right. I won school supplies cuz I rock the Bingo house. It was a Bingo shakedown at our table. B to the ingo. We take our Bingo very seriously in this family and if you don't like it, well, you can leave. But give me your cards first.
... I'm just trying to make up for being a boring blogger. This is harder than it looks, dammit. Like walking and chewing for some people.
9/16
For the second day in a row I couldn't find my discman and was not permitted to play Ludacris or even Chad Brock on the living room player so I went outside and foolishly forgot that pavement doesn't act like a treadmill. I got tired as soon as I hit Kiddiepark, where my brain SUBconsciously steered my body (defensive? me?), but that would have been a terrible place to slow down so I had to sprint till I was out of sight. That is not an easy sprint. I could have run around the back of the new athletic complex (or whatever they've tagged the new, bigger and better gym) but decided not to wimp out. Till the moment I was out of sight, that is.
I made the big loop around E. Manoa and up Lowrey but decided to cut back through the school to get home. I saw Yo Boy unlocking the bathroom for some kids and noticed that they finally replaced the girl's bathroom lock. I saw Max, and I heard some of the other kids, and saw some parents I would have loved to talk to. But I ran on. (Okay -- I shuffled on. Valiantly.)
One of the first things I wrote about Kiddiepark in here: "work redeems the days that are unbearably hot and filled to capacity with people who suck." Of the two jobs I had at the time (the other was tutoring jocks in remedial English 101 sections), Kiddiepark was "the cool one." I loved it unconditionally for about a year. B2 didn't bother me to the point where it mattered, Yo Boy wasn't beating up kids, etc. See, it was never the kids. If all the adults evaporated, I'd be loving it unconditionally still.
Actually, all the adults did evaporate. More or less. The Twins got fired (there's just no nice way to say it), and the Nice Ones and Eugene's Brother and I are happily employed at K-School, with free afternoons and weekends. (Ack, too many wireless phone ads. We've always had free weekends.)
Free afternoons mean I can go to school, and on the days I don't have school I can go to the library, swim laps, study, read, lie in the middle of my yard for all the world cares, making mud angels and watching the clouds go by. I love it. I can't lie, though -- I really, really, really miss my job. But this works for me, too.
9/17
I'm wearing the correct days-of-the-week underwear for once in my life. My life is coming together.
Ya, seriously rethinking this blog thing.
Ahem, in other news, I'd forgotten how great it is to take the shuttle to school. I can walk to the faculty housing shuttle stop in about 20 or so min (with daydreaming and inspecting gardens and petting cats along the way), and if I'm truly lazy and take my car, parking is nowhere near the feat of parking near UH. And forget the structure -- I refuse to pay $3 anymore, except under the direst of circumstances. Besides, nothing beats being able to space out in air-conditioned comfort.
Class itself isn't the most exciting part of my day. But I kind of like it -- I keep learning all this stuff that a) I want to remember for when I have kids and b) I want to apply to the kids I work with. Also, despite the wonderful professor's best efforts to make it a personal learning experience, it's still a >100-student class and we are just a sea of faces and social security numbers. And that, I like. It's a part of the UH experience I didn't get that much of, because as a freshman I weaseled my way into the Selected Studies program and took a lot of A-section courses, which were restricted to 20 or so students. The only "auditorium classes" I remember were Math 100, Biology 101, and Oceanography 101. Oh, and Geology 101, The Science That Got Away. (Rocks. What can I say? What can anyone say about rocks?)
Time for a shower. I weeded this afternoon and I smell a lot like mud. Guess I should post this, before it grows longer and even more boring. I'm so disappointed in myself. I thought my life was a lot more exciting. Sigh.