Pajamas

"Mom, I'm getting tired of my pajamas," says my 9 year-old while getting ready for bed.

"But why, sweetie? Why is that?"

"They are all old and they're getting shorter!"

As he was saying that I got up from the computer and went to his room hoping to show him at least one pair of pajamas that I had transferred from his brother's drawer to his on my "day off" last Friday.

And when he said that they were getting shorter both of us started laughing uncontrollably...

Yes, sometimes growing up and being the younger brother who gets all the hand-me-downs gets funny... ;)

I do buy him some new clothes once in a while, just never pajamas. Maybe he should get him a brand-new pair, right? Poor guy!

A Day to Myself & Why I Prefer to Mother on the Go

Today is a very rare day.

My boys are at camp with my in-laws (I drove back yesterday) and I'm home alone while my husband is at work. I think I have had very few days like today in my 11 years as a mother. Of course I should be waxing my legs, blow drying my hair, packing for our return, but here I am, blogging about my children! haha... ;)

Mothering is hard work. Parenting is hard in general, of course, but in our family, the minutiae of the boys lives (making sure they have clothes to wear, that their bedrooms are in OK shape, that their favorite toothpaste is available & other million small tasks) are my responsibility.

I enjoy doing these little things. I miss my boys when they are not here, I just thoroughly adore being their mom.

Of course there are things I'm very bad at. I'm really good at being out and about with the boys -- that's one of the reasons I miss living in a big city like Philadelphia with so many things to do, so many places to go.

If you've been reading for a long time you know that beginning back in 2006 -- in October when I had a 2 and a 4 year old, I've been going on lots of long car trips with the boys. The longest (2,210 miles) was in July 2010, to Canada and back.

I think I'm good at keeping them dressed & at giving them lots of cuddles, but I'm not very good at enforcing things (such as making sure they do chores and homework and vision therapy) and even at cooking things and feeding them at regular mealtimes. In short, everything that is hard for me from my ADHD affects my parenting very strongly.

Thankfully, it never really concerned me too much that most parenting experts say that children thrive on routine. Mine thrived on relative chaos and improvisation and impromptu excursions since babyhood and they're fine. Of course they were always warm and fed and... entertained! :)

I really am most happy when I am in a car going somewhere with my boys. At home I'm not very productive, they complain of boredom, I start screaming that they need to do this or that. So... it's almost unreal to have a quiet house. I open their drawers and put away the new pajama that I bought at the outlet yesterday. I bend down to pick up tiny legos on the floor and find a tiny piece of a train that I know they'll be delighted we can super-glue back).

The boys' presence is felt everywhere. On the train tracks and trains on the living room floor to the clothes on the floor in their bedroom.

In the end, I don't blog very much about mothering and about my boys, in spite of the name of my blog. This sometimes surprises me, but mostly, it does not. Mothering is what I do on a daily basis, blogging is a space for myself to reflect on life. That's why, I guess, it's easier for me to blog about my sons when they aren't here.

Well, now I will try to go and do some things just for myself before I get going at the end of the day to be reunited with my boys!

Ooops, I Did it Again!

This post was supposed to be titled "My One Day Vacation" but... no, it was not to be... :(

This will be instead the "driving back and forth for several hours four days in a row"* kind of "vacation!" :P

All because I simply did it again three months later. I forgot the boys' bags at home. Sigh... At least I had their toothbrushes this time. ;)

I'm trying to think positively, though, because we were only 1h40mins away from home at a camp where my in-laws are spending the week, and I had forgotten other things too. Moreover, the boys also want their bicycles.

Too bad that driving halfway down I remember that a friend was supposed to drive from here to there today and could have taken the stuff, but then I was already returning home... sigh again. The good thing is that now I am wondering if her husband could possibly give K a ride on Friday (or Saturday?). That way we could change our plans. But she probably won't call me back before I need to leave (I left a message on her voice-mail & they don't have a home number). I know, I can't remain positive for very long, can I!

All right. My younger son needs his swim clothes by 2:30 pm, so I better hurry and collect everything I need to take them so I can eat a quick lunch and leave.

* I drove the boys yesterday, came back home and have to return today with their stuff, then the original plan was to drive back home tomorrow, have a date with my husband and on Friday drive back up with him.

Back to Flikr & Concerns about Blog Anonymity

I was thrilled to find out that Flikr is now offering 1 terabyte of storage space!

I stopped using Flikr long ago, back in 2006, because I refused to pay for the service (yes, I am cheap like that, sigh...). I can't believe that I had to wait seven years to finally go back! Sigh... I still kept the sidebar slide show for a long time here on the blog and only removed it last year (because of anonymity concerns).

And now comes the tough situation of wondering again whether I should connect my blog to Flikr or to have separate accounts and create a new Flikr account for the blog.

I wish with all my heart that I didn't have to blog (semi-)anonymously, but I just can't do it under my own name. :( My situation is still extremely precarious work-wise and with all that I've written on the blog over the years and which I hope to never have to delete or hide, it is unwise use my name.

And, of course, my husband doesn't want people to find him through my blog or the other way around, that was the first reason that kept me semi-anonymous. (it's only at times such as these that I wish I hadn't taken my husband's last name. Otherwise I'm OK with it).

Sigh...

I love taking photos and sharing them on my blog, but I just can't risk being found, so I need to be more selective with the photos I post. I'm actually surprised that I never had anyone try to search for the "real me" like I successfully did long ago with Jo(e) and Pithy Dithy. The truth is that I haven't been uncovered because very few people read my blog and those that do know who I am because we're also in touch in facebook and via email at times. In any case, this is oneof the advantages of having a little, unknown blog...

Regarding photos on the blog and online, the fact that Google now has image search freaks me out quite a bit and maybe the best think to do would be to delete all photos that have my face on the blog even though this would mean deleting my very first post... (big sigh again) 

I have already logged into my old Flikr account and fiddled with my 306 photos there, but I probably won't be linking that account to the blog again and I will have to delete all images that have previously appeared on the blog if I decide to use my name for that account...

Such a hassle! In any case my worries and concerns are very small compared to people who are actually "famous" in blogland. That's one of the advantages of being unknown. That and the comparative lack of trolls and vitriolic criticism.

iPad-Less

I'm happy with my iphone, but, contrary to my sons, I never had any interest whatsoever in the ipad, so two weeks ago I became the only person in our family without one.

The boys used up all their money to buy their iPad in July 2011. This one became the property of the youngest son when the oldest son bought an iPad mini this past Christmas. And now my husband decided to get one with his grant money in order to read & annotate hundreds of academic papers. He got the one with the most memory and he's super happy! No more carrying lots of paper around.

I, however, think I'll probably remain iPad-less... I don't really see why I'd like or want a tablet. Maybe (just maybe) a Kindle, but still... I really like actual books and I haven't been reading much anyway. It would probably be lighter to carry the e-edition of the textbook I teach with, but... well... I wouldn't want to spend the money if I can do most everything else (email, blogs, etc) on my phone! Otherwise, I tend to prefer a computer, preferably a desktop, for work. I know, I'm old fashioned... sigh... (for a good reason, see below).

I do have to type a lot and using a 13 inch Macbook Pro since last summer ruined my elbow (I'm still suffering with/from mild "tennis elbow" -- I thought I had blogged about it, but I can't find the post!), so I continue to prefer a desktop -- which we don't have at home!! Good thing there's an iMac in my office and I use it as often as I can. 

With all these new devices we have come a long way from when I created my original Meme on technology use years ago, back in February 2006! The changes that have taken place from then to now are unbelievable! Who knows what else the future will bring tech-wise, any ideas?

Afraid of Summer: Too Much of a Good Thing...

I began this post two weeks and three days ago (on Monday May 24)... so it's hopelessly updated. I wrote a lot, so I'll keep most of it and try to write another post that's more up-to-date. 

(Obviously this is all past nos!) My summer didn't officially start yet (I'll say it does after the kids are out of school this coming Friday tomorrow and after I present a poster at a conference the following Friday) and I'm already "freaking out." OK, OK, I'm exaggerating a little... :) and I'm definitely overusing this expression lately.

You see... I know that there are tons of things that I/we could hypothetically do this summer to be very productive, but I am deathly afraid to even think of them and then just be disappointed after they don't get done.

Sigh...

I know, welcome to my adhd life (and I went to label the post with adhd).

Wow, I do have a "Future Plans" label. How come? I'm afraid of future plans! ;)  No, not really, I love to plan trips and "adventures" of any kind, but I don't like to plan regular things like what I'm going to teach next semester, or what I should try to write and publish in order to have a shot at an academic career. And I run away in a panic from resolutions of any kind like... like...   (please fill a good simile in the blanks, in Portuguese we'd say "like the devil runs from the cross," but I don't like that very much).

In any case, I do want to make some "plans" for this summer, but I'm overwhelmed by the fact that there's so much time and so much I want(ed) to do and... consequently, so many things I'm afraid won't get done! That's why I'm saying up there in the title that I'm afraid of summer.

I started this post yesterday, on Monday, and I'm glad to report I was pretty productive today, on Tuesday against all odds! I nearly finished the poster for the conference next week and I was able to plan four vases with flowers I bought at the farmer's market, YAY!

In any case, just to try to be accountable, here are some things I hope I can accomplish this summer:

• (ASAP) Assemble a raised bed made of concrete blocks and plant veggies;
• Weed garden in the backyard, mulch and try to keep it relatively weed free (also ASAP) 
• Organize the garage more and find misplaced (hopefully not lost!) items (such as ALL our old photos);

Events/trips that are already planned:

• (tentative) day at theme park a couple of hours from us;
• Day at the water-park (free entrance for kids thanks to local library);
• Camp-meeting with my brother-in-law's family;
• 3-day industry camp for my older son;
• Camp-meeting here/ Sunday lake party with friends in neighboring state;
• (tentative): trip to Florida around the 4th of July and my birthday
• August: trip to New England and Montreal, Canada.

So... yeah... I don't know what else I can fit into what's already shaping up to be a very busy summer! Maybe in July we can do some other things (and obviously, future plans will have to come in a future post!).

Got Offer. Pity Party (hopefully) Over

I spent the day stressed out about my job and all the driving and working with the NH (new hire) and wondering if they would still honor their word and give me the full-time job I'd been promised.

I even had a quick argument with my husband over the phone about these things. "You are too negative!" he said in despair. Yes, you are right... sigh.

So... after not checking my email for over 36h I did it today and...

... lo and behold! There was an offer letter dated from  yesterday. So... yeah. One more year with an almost "real" job for me! Let's hope for many more, right? (and try to be more positive, that's for sure!)

Request DENIED to the Weakest Link, or, I need the "Serenity Prayer" right now, or...

...I don't want to be a replaceable cog in the machine anymore...

... but I need the income. Desperately so.

My proposal to teach four days a week instead of five days next semester was denied and I am obviously devastated and feeling very hopeless. Why did they even let me submit the proposal in the first place? Who decided? The coordinator or the new hire? Does that even matter? (No!!!)

I am also despairing at the thought of having to teach FIVE DAYS A WEEK at U#2, driving 152 more miles on Fridays. Sigh... Even if I sleep over there on Mondays and Wednesdays, having to drive back on Friday is so annoying (and tiresome).

I want to get out of there. ASAP. I need to get out of there. I disagree with the way the newly hired faculty person (I will be more vague about this person from now on) has decided to teach the intermediate/advanced class, I think that the course is not well organized and that new hire (NH from now on) doesn't really care much because obviously NH is primarily concerned with all NH needs to do to obtain tenure.

I wish I could just tell them that I wouldn't teach next year anymore and let them have to be in the awkward situation of piling all the classes onto NH.

I know I will be OK... THOUGH my situation is extremely precarious. So, there is the possibility that I would not only not be OK, but be kind of in trouble.

The problem is that I have NOT signed a contract yet and I have only been offered a full time load verbally. Potentially, they could cancel one of my classes since NH has only 2 students and I have 8, and then I would only be teaching two classes (that meet 5 days a week, but pay the same as 3 days) which was their original plan anyway.

It is very very tiresome to be "the weakest link" that can be broken and easily replaced. Sigh... that's the life of the adjuncts everywhere and who knows how many more years I will have to endure it.

At least at U#1 I'm slightly less replaceable (in spite of the fact that my newly designed class was simply "given" to someone else without any qualms. Nah... I'm 100% replaceable).

This awareness is very damaging to one's self-esteem. In any case, I need to find the strength to accept the things I cannot change. And keep hoping that the future may bring better things.

Underground Blogging

I'm literally blogging from under the ground in the DC subway! Some patches don't have service, but others, even underground, have excellent signal (extended, though).

July 1993... That's where/when I get transported to when I'm here. It was my first time in the U.S., first airplane trip in my life (at 23!).  

I spent 10 days at my uncle's house and I took the bus and then the metro to the national mall and visited every single museum, watched every single IMAX movie... It was amazing. 

So I DC has a big part of my heart. I just wish I/we came here more often. Now that the boys are older I think they can handle museums better. I can't believe that the last time we were here was only birthday in 2011... :( 

And today I just need to cross the city from one side to... The same side, which is silly, but it's the only way I can get from Glenmont to Bethesda this morning. Sigh.

Oh, and halfway through the post we came to the surface, but I'll keep the title anyway! ;)

Remembering Blues

This post is a reaction to Becca's beautiful post about her dog Cooper. My situation was completely different, though, and I almost envy her. Sigh...

Three years ago my husband took my first "baby," my cat Blues, to a friend's house because we were going to have a rough few days getting ready to pack our whole house, sell it, and move out of state.

I didn't get to say goodbye to him because I didn't know I was never going to see him again. And that, that broke my heart and still breaks it when I think of it.

I had no way of knowing that my friend's husband was going to leave the back door open and that he would escape to the streets of North Philadelphia. How could I know?

It was just so horrible, to lose my "baby" of over nine years without saying good-bye, without any closure whatsoever (did he die? Did someone simply picked him up and adopted him? what in the world happened?)

That's why I say I almost envy Becca. In the end, though, I can't say that I do. Because no matter how it happens, whether you make a most difficult decision to put your pet down or whether your pet disappears into thin air like mine, it is still a heartbreaking loss.

So I dedicate this post to the memory of beloved pets.

I don't think of Blues at all anymore, especially now that I have two very dear kitties (who aren't half as beautiful as my first "baby" was, though!), but Becca is right. He still is, and will always be, with me, part of me.

Nine

The photo of the "nine" cake(s) will have to come later... Yellow, with green stripes, made "as best as I could" as my "baby" instructed me... yummy cakes too (vanilla & chocolate, both vegan). ;)

And I can't even tuck him into bed tonight, though I've kissed him good-bye while his birthday party was still going at the park. (I had to come to Maryland to go to a conference tomorrow).

Nine years ago I gave birth for the second and last time (I wanted to have more babies, but my husband and my rational brain did not let me).

My youngest son is a joy. He has a strong personality (has had it since birth) and sometimes it is complicated to deal with him, but he is delightful the rest of the time. Funny, extremely bright, talkative to the extreme, very caring and perceptive ("You look so beautiful today, mama!"), he loves to interact with his best friends.

So today we had his two best friends for lunch & a play-date and then, after soccer practice, our very first "typically American" birthday party (with plenty of food, though, after all, once a Brazilian, always Brazilian): cake and food in the park with friends. Nothing planned but singing Happy Birthday. It was nice, even though I had to leave before the actual end.

He bought his gifts yesterday, but I'll blog about them later.

No photo because I think he wouldn't like it. Sigh... :)

Won't you be my neighbor?

Yesterday I came out the front door and was stunned to find a "For Sale" sign at the house of our neighbors across the street. And I quickly understood why they had been planting new grass in their front lawn and taking care of the landscaping. I mostly felt sad, though.

We haven't interacted too much, but they have two sons, 7 and 4, and their older son and my 8 year old (one year older, but two inches shorter than the neighbor boy! ;) are the best of friends. In addition, they took care of our cats when we traveled (for several trips and several weeks) which was so great. Now I have to figure out someone else to help us and I'll probably pay this other person too. :( My neighbor didn't want to be paid for her help and she loved my cats so much that she actually adopted two kitties last Winter!

And I'm wondering who will buy the house. Or rent -- the house next door to ours didn't sell, went off the market and was rented to this couple with a 3 year old girl.

Do you want to be our neighbor?

P.S. There's a new third grade teacher moving from Oregon to teach at our sons' school. She has a boy in my 8 year old son's class (so cute! red hair, freckles, blue eyes, reminded me a bit of Laura's son). It would be perfect if they bought the house! Sigh... If they are visiting the school again tomorrow (they were today), I will definitely mention the house to them! ;)

They have a pretty tree in the front yard that has two-phased blooming. :)

Out of the Driver's Seat

We can't talk about these issues, my husband and I, we end up fighting. He doesn't buy it that the problem is that he is a tenure track professor and I'm not. He thinks that I have to view this experience of having to submit as a "character development" opportunity and, basically, switching to coarse language that I generally don't use, "suck it up." Of course he's right in a way, but I'm also right in another way.

All this to say that the discussion about the syllabus that my "new boss" and I were having (through emails back and forth) was quickly over. While I was able to give suggestions and he was asking for my input, he gets to decide, he's in the driver's seat. . So... I suppose I have to just sit back and enjoy the ride, right? Ha ha. ;) It's true that it's less work for me. Especially with the way the course is structured...

... I'm firmly against using class time to watch films and we'll be watching 5 films in class during the semester.
... I think that the last film is super-ultra-violent and depressing and yet that's the last one we'll see and end the semester in a bitter note.
...I think that it won't make a lot of sense doing chapters from a grammar book together with watching this films (IN CLASS, less time to actually do language learning!), but we'll see.

Yeah... let's see what kind of "ride" this will turn out to be. I think I'm reconciled to it now. Sarcasm and irony always help me.

The Joy of Wild Poppies

I'm thinking of reviving my "365 project" blog, though that name/title has been meaningless forever now... sigh. The reason I want to do that (or maybe create a tumblr blog for photos?) is that I've been taking tons of photos with my new amazing camera (Nikon D5100).

Just a sample from the last two days -- NOT processed, edited, fiddled with, I need to learn how to do that, actually, but sometimes I think I don't want to:

I spent 45 minutes and then 30 minutes photographing these poppies Tuesday and Wednesday morning. I felt so much joy doing it... (the second up there is a bit out of focus, I selected these semi-randomly using the thumbnails for adding photos on blogger).

Half-Way Through!

I'm half-way through Anna Karenina and I'm a bit annoyed that I'm going to have guests all weekend long, so I need to prepare (clean the house, etc) and can't spend time reading. :(

A long time ago, a blogging friend whose last blog was "Smart Cookie" and who probably no longer reads my blog wrote this beautiful post about her time in Germany and this lovely relationship she had with this (second?) cousin of hers. She cited the novel in her post and I almost didn't read that part because I didn't want it to spoil my reading on the day that I finally got around to reading it.

Well... I'm glad I did read the whole post in the end and I so wish I could go back and read it again because it wasn't a spoiler at all! When I finally got to the Kitty & Levin part that she mentioned on the post I immediately remembered my friend's story and I was so thrilled and tickled!

I know that the book will have a bad ending for one of the characters at least, but I can't wait to see what else will happen! Tolstoy is a great writer, I can't wait to read more Russian novels! I probably should check out Gogol (The Namesake piqued my attention) and, of course, I've always wanted to read Dostoyevsky.

I'll try to write some comments after I'm done reading!

Slightly Nervous... Again

I shouldn't be nervous, after all, I mostly got over it. But only after spending a whole day crying non-stop, the day after the aforementioned post...

... Then I never blogged the resolution, which prompted a couple of "real life" friends who read the blog to ask me what happened.

What happened was he emailed me a week later to say that I can write my own syllabi (only this year!) for the lower level classes. It's my last one, though.

I'm slightly nervous because I have read the syllabus and materials that he prepared and give him feedback. I shouldn't be nervous, I should be happy that I'm actually having this chance, but... well... I just can't help myself.

I'll be back later today with more posts!

Fielded

I think I started reading because the past two days made me absolutely EXHAUSTED!

Yesterday was "field day" at my sons' school and I volunteered to help. I helped with the 220 ft. dash. I forgot to bring sunscreen so the boys and I got slightly sunburned (I actually got more tanned than sunburn, which never happens with me, yay! I think I needed the vitamin D).

After spending nearly all dat at their school I still had to drive an hour there and back to my son's vision therapy appointment. Sigh...

If that were not enough, my youngest son's class had a field trip today (45 minutes away) and I also volunteered to help. No wonder I had to take a nap this afternoon which was followed by a splitting headache (thankfully acetaminophen helped).

I'm ready for the real "summer" to begin. More on that in the next post.

Summer Reading

I've bought way too many books in the past few years that I haven't yet read, so today I got started on one of them:

That way I can see the film adaptation when I'm done.

I'm a relatively fast reader, but I wish I read even faster, because this book is LOOONG! I wonder if I should try War & Peace and then Dostoievsky next. :) Only after I read the other books in my collection that I have yet to read. Sigh...