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Thursday, April 29, 2010

moonrise

Driving out of the valley, singing along with the Beatles, heading northeast: a bright orange gibbous almost-disc nearly made me lose control of the car when it burst into view through my passenger-side window, suspended just above the oak-lined horizon next to the narrow mesa my kids like to call a volcano even though they know it really isn't one. It stayed in position, skimming along the treetops, until it hid behind an embankment as the road curved into the grade up into the Real Foothills from the Almost Foothills, and then there it was again when I reached the top, caught in closer trees and looking whiter and if possible even larger than it had from the valley. Whoosh! around a turn, and it was perfectly framed at an uphill bend in the road so that it looked like if I chose not to turn I could jump over it like a nursery-rhyme cow or a fairy-tale fairy. Back in the trees, clattering silently through the branches, laughing at me from the other side of the road -- can't catch me! -- as I dipped down into town. Top of Spring Hill: the lowered horizon left it hanging serene and still and solemn in the sky, behaving for all the world like as if it had never done anything so undignified as playing hide-and-seek-tag with that little black car speeding along toward home.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

school

See, this is why this blog is dying. I'm done with my tasks for the day, and I have something I want to write about, but I'm so tired I can barely stay awake. So this will be short (I hear you cheering).

And here's another reason it's dying: What I'm about to write, you already know if you see me on Facebook or Twitter, which just about everyone who's ever read this does. This keeps me from writing here, which stinks because six months from now everything I write today at either of those two sites will be, for all intents and purposes, buried forever (even though it will be archived at the Library of Congress which freaks me out more than a little), but this post will still be here, with nobody actually reading it ever, but, you know, here. In case I need it.

Oh Lord I have issues. Moving on to the ACTUAL SUBJECT OF THIS POST which is school. My school. Which I don't think I've actually written anything about here this semester at all.

I am about 3/4 done with a very strange semester, because I am taking one class which I wildly and ardently adore (trigonometry), and one I can barely stand to think about (sociology). So while I'm wishing the semester could last a few years so that I could keep solving trigonometric equations until I had my fill of them if that were possible, I'm also wishing that I could put myself on fast-forward for the next seven weeks so as to end the SOC-01 nightmare before the last few drops of joy have been sucked from my academic existence.

Meanwhile, my 4.0 is in no danger as far as I can tell, and I've registered for chemistry and finally after several semesters of disappointment, the much-longed-for ONLINE PHYSICAL EDUCATION class. I need two units of PE, which would, under ordinary circumstances, mean two semesters of a three-day-a-week class at the college which would entail changing out of my clothes and communal showering and other horrors, but which can be completed in the safety and comfort of my own home thanks to the wonders of the Internet. I'm not sure how exactly, but by golly if the good Lord is willing I will be finding out in August.

Also, I'm contemplating changing out the chemistry for Spanish, so as to have a break from the two trips per week to the valley, and to give my free-child-care providers a break as well. They are champs and I couldn't do this without them and I feel terrible being so beholden to them even though they swear they enjoy having my kids with them on a regular basis. And even though I don't need Spanish to graduate, seeing as how this is California, I'll need to know some Spanish anyway if I'm ever going to be employed outside the home (how do you say, "Where does it hurt?"), and like a snobby (and boy-crazy, but that's a long story for another time) dork, I took French in high school instead. French was fun and all, but its real-life applications in this part of the world are mostly limited to reading century-old British novels and seeing if I can translate the foreign-language instructions for products that are also marketed in Canada. But poor chemistry has already been shafted once, in favor of the beloved and awesome trigonometry class, and part of me doesn't want to keep putting off the core science classes that will move me forward toward the nursing program, even though realistically I won't be applying for at least two or three years anyway, until the kids are old enough to be left home on their own or enrolled in classes at the college.

Oh yeah hi this was going to be short, wasn't it. Oops. It's a good thing it's such scintillating stuff or you'd probably have clicked away by now. Hello? hello?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

ouch.

Oh, it's been a long time since I used this category. Now I'm all nostalgic.

So, how many of you have seen the rear end of a car outside of a car? Show of hands? How many of you have seen one with the leaf springs attached? Well, you all don't live the same kind of life of privilege that I do, apparently.

See, there's this automotive rear end out next to my clothesline. (He swears it isn't there permanently.) And my son (who's six feet tall and 160 pounds now) and I were at the clothesline, and somehow we ended up trying to see if we could balance each other, fulcrum-problem style (because math is everywhere, even in really stupid ideas like this one), on one of the leaf springs (I am totally going to have to go take a picture of this thing as soon as I can move my limbs again), and somehow I wound up flying through the air, catapult-in-Monty-Python-and-the-Holy-Grail fashion. For about two seconds, it was totally awesome. Then my chest came down on the ground a split second before my hips did, and it wasn't so much fun anymore, except it was still funny so I was still laughing. I even got up and finished with the laundry before I came inside to die. But one crazy thing about getting older is the way pain shows up after an incident. The way I remember it, when you're ten and you fall down, you cry and then the pain is kind of a declining gradient after that. The worst moment is the moment of impact. When you're thirtyohmygoshfive years old, not so much:

T + 0=oooh, that's gonna hurt.
T + 10 seconds: ohmygosh my SPINE is it still ATTACHED? Can I stand UP?
T + 30 seconds: OK, I can move if I'm careful.
T + 5 minutes: WTH? My shoulder? I didn't hit my shoulder!
T + 1 day: I am gonna die and really it can't be soon enough.

So. Ice when an injury is fresh, right? Finally, an excuse to sit down and knit for a while.

Thursday, April 01, 2010

some people's opinions about literature

I really, really want to do a books post but I don't have time today. Instead, this little snippet:

Kids took a break from bickering to discuss the book Claire is reading (The Mysterious Benedict Society).

LT: So who dies in that book, Claire?

Claire: Nobody. [ed. note: oops. Spoiler.]

LT: But, wait, what's it about?

Claire: Spies.

LT: But people die in spy books!

I: Not kids' spy books.

LT: BOOO-ring.

In other kidlit news, the Fuse #8 blog is down to Number 8 in its 100 Children's Chapter Books countdown. THE TENSION! It is KILLING ME! Just like a person in a spy book, right?