Sigh

I feel like myself again. Levi has finally returned - 93 days passed. That is all. Now is time for sleep.

Empty scrapbook ...

Levi's sister sent some photos today. It was overwhelming to see pictures of everyone "back home". Big dinners, shopping in Byron, walks on the beach, and sitting around the table laughing. There were some pictures of his parents, standing side by side on the beach and it gave me a distorted notion of my own parental status. Those lovely pictures reminded me that I don't have that anymore. When my Dad died I lost out on those happy pictures of my parents growing old together (I guess I should say "older"). My mom has remarried a very good friend and is happy but its not the same, and I would never replace that slot.

As Levi has been working reconstruction and clean up in New Orleans (and communication has been limited) I am beginning to ache to see him, to the point of distraction. Hope and I were in the store the other night and I was watching where I pushed the cart but wasn't actually seeing much of anything - I was somewhere else lost in the caverns of my mind. I was thinking about Levi and how amazing this summer has to be, before he leaves for D.C. in August and I go back to school. He will finally come back to VA in 3 days - after 92 days of separation.

With the uncertainty attached to life expectancy - I wonder if I will make it to the crinkled wrinkled beach alone?

All good things must be regulated ...

Hope and I circumventing rush hour traffic today and took a shortcut through the neighborhood that we grew up in. Driving past the house that I spent 13 years in was bizarre. The people who bought it from us changed the yard, stuck a tacky satellite dish in the center - but essentially it looks the same. I forgot how warm and inviting the house looks in spring and summer, green trees and the iris's my mom planted in 1993. The roads we drove down have scarred me at some point or another. Falling off my bike and skinning my knee. Trying to pop a wheely and skinning my elbow. Playing football, softball, and basketball at the elementary school at the edge of the neighborhood. I had a childhood that I am grateful for - I stayed in one place and had everything I needed, some things I wanted, and the things I neither wanted nor needed but were necessary for me to learn a lesson.

On the main drive of the neighborhood there is a hill with a bump at the very top. Every year on the school bus we would hit the hump and everyone would take flight. To see it was comical - an entire bus of school children popping up into the air at the exact same time - and no one really caring. Eventually though, all good things must be regulated, and drivers were instructed to slow down to 25 for the bump. Buzz kill. My 5th Grade teacher was the first feminist I had ever met, and she was awesome and taught me how to write poetry.

When the county built the school they left a mountain of displaced dirt and soil in between section 6 (where my house was) and the school. Eventually over the years everything settled and this mountainous hill became the perfect sledding site (and general year round danger zone). Nathan and I would go every winter, taking sledding to a new dangerous level. The one day, of the one year, I took my little sister along (out of all the years I had gone) - she cut her leg (scratched really) and that was the end of my winter fun. But eventually, all good things must be balanced, and it was bulldozed for new houses.

I chased my golden retriever through that neighborhood, learned to drive on the roads (and some ditches). I had my first kiss in that neighborhood, my first concussion (all the way through to my 13th). I spent 12 years of school less than 5 miles from that house, gained and lost friends, decided not to take up smoking at the bus stop like everyone else, chased my black lab through the muddy creeks and woods. I had a basketball hoop on the front of the garage, you should have seen my mom's face the first time I accidentally hit the car - twice. I became this person, in that place.

Mud and basketballs ...

Sometimes I lose myself and revert to the little tomboy who didn't scar. At least I didn't mind scars. As a child my legs continuously resembled chicken pox from all of the biking, hiking, climbing, and general mischief mishaps that I had. Now, like the apes evolving to humans, I use tools. This evening I was taking apart a broken vcr to retrieve its final VHS victim. Since the vcr was unsalvagable I decided to forgoe hunting and removing all of the small screws (with tools) and just smashed what was in my way with my hand. This action was instinctual and should have been thought out. Now with a gash in the heel of my palm - I know better. I am an adult now, not the little tomboy with short hair and muddy jeans. I write thesis papers but wish I was still in my childhood driveway shooting basketballs until there wasn't light enough to see my own hands. I used to scare my mother by riding my bike down the hill of our street with my helmet over my face, hands in the air and feet out to the side. Oh to be naive and have an inpenetratable shield of ignorance.

They dropped a house on me ...

...and ruined a perfectly good pair of retractable socks.

Tornadoes swept across Virginia today, some touching ground but not much damage done. This isn't the first time I have been in twisters here but the first where I stood outside to watch the wind and rain and twisting part pass us by. The sky was solid grey, but sunshine on the edges. The clouds dipped as if just exageratting their existing shape, corners melting to the ground. No harm, no foul, and unfortunately no camera.

This saturday I am going out to Farmville to stand next to Mom as the priest blesses her wedding of 2 years to Gregg. Apparently in the Catholic church is you have a wedding in your house it doesn't count, and the guy out there wouldn't let Mom take communion so an imprompto snip of the red tape and all will be right with the world. Except for original sin, they still have original sin.

10 days until Levi hits VA. 10 days until this strange mandatory sociological experiment will end and someone will put me out of my misery. I feel like I am wearing lots of different pairs of glasses. I see things differently and therefore think differently depending on whether I am playing the girlfriend (which for ages I have been no better than pen pal), Nanny and Nurse, Student, or just me (thats the scratched up pair). I guess the term would be "split focus". But for now it works.

It's like the military - but with less spit up ...

I thought I had something revolutionary to say - but then I forgot what it was.

E and I have found a groove. Once 9am hits, I am on the clock. He will have already been changed and had one bottle and some play time in his crib. We do some "exer-saucer" time watching Higglytown Heros (the strange evil cartoon for children involving russian separting dolls). Then its some fruit and cereal, storytime, play mat on the floor, a bottle and a nap (shower time for me). Then the rest of the day is spent playing and interacting, with another small nap or two thrown in. I know you don't much care but I think it is interesting how easily infants adapt to a routine being put in place. I have come to fear more teething episodes of "night walking" and look forward to when he is old enough to do "taco baby" like the older nieces and nepews. Taco baby is where you take a child, lay them on a blanket, then pick up the corners of the blanket and swing/spin/swish them around. The 2 and 3 year old love it, ask for it and will even tell you which blanket works best.

In my days, and moreso during the glorious nap time, I have been working on a number of projects. It had almost slipped my mind until Mom reminded me that I need to get a college ring. With all of the time I spent away I had lost the opportunity to be completely bombarded with school merchandizing. I still where my high school ring because it fits and it is my birthstone but I think my college ring will be more subtle. If I hold on to the thought long enough to get one I will post pictures for no other reason then I can.

I am planning a going away party for me and Levi in December. Before we head to Europe, Asia, and finally back to Oz. I think it will be some definitive starting and separating places for my family and friends, and his as well. I must remember to check out venues over summer and book them before corporate christmas parties get in.

As a segway from that, to get there I need a car. To pay for it I need a job, to get to a job I need a car. The Probe in my rear end is still busted, that's probably because I have made no effort to fix it since January. I have no passion for this car, I saw it and bought it because it served a purpose, now that it doesn't do that - I couldn't give a rats ass.

The job front is moving slowly, but I wouldn't be working a new job until mid-June anyway so there isnt as grand a rush. I have put feelers out but it is almost certain that an internship is out of the running. Maybe I will post my resume on Monster.com. I guess it couldn't hurt. I have to decide shortly when to start looking for a job and networking in Melbourne before we arrive. Thats another night's ramble though I guess.

(As an edit - I also get to spend time during my days with my eldest sister, discovering who we both have become in the last 5 years, in a good way.)

It's nap time....

My decisions have changed in my life from how many chapters I can read in one shift at work to how many loads of laundry I can finish during nap time. From getting up early to shower and be presentable in class to waiting until after I have had strained banannas flung at me to shower during ,again, nap time. I quite like it. Nap time has become my oasis where my hands are free, both of them, and I only need to listen for sounds of distress not worry about an infant disabling something or mauling the dog. There is story time and play time, and sitting on the back porch watching the dogs. In the next fortnight there will be the grocery shopping adventures and doctors appointments, real tests in society. I am just the nanny, the arms to carry the extremely cumbersome car seat. I would have to say - someone somewhere has to be able to design a car seat so it can be easy to carry without it knocking you in the shins and knees as you walk. But I am saving that one for Congress ...

The plans for the summer have not changed dramatically but my comfort with them has. The plan is still to live at the farm from June to August but (as with any 130 year old semi-renovated farm house) the plumbing is dodgy. Living just four of us was fine when the plumbing was guaranteed, but now there will be six and nothing drains except the toilet. Something will work out, or course, it always does. I just hope I can see it and convince Levi to see it as well. It is safe to assume by now that I didn't receive any of the internships I applied for - and I have figured out why. As I have complained in the past, my transcript from my last semester in Oz has been slow, so slow that it still hasn't arrived. This means that when my offical transcript was sent out with my applications it featured a big black hole of a gap from the missing semester - not very upstanding is it? So now I am investigating alternate internships and summer jobs. There is always the option of going back to Ben Franklin Crafts where I worked in high school, as an option among many I hope. The brooding question mark above any job is the lack of a vehicle, kind of makes it difficult to get around wouldn't you say. Since I left this term early I will be working on one class, Islam, over summer - which should be no problem ... during nap time.

Levi is in Kentucky and Tennesse at the moment enjoying the gorgeous countryside, thick accents, and watching horses chase nothing in particular around a circle (Kentucky Derby). I have the relief of spending my days playing with an infant and hanging out with my sister, occasionally helping her to stand up and sit down and often cooking and cleaning and minding the bobin. There was a shock this morning when the medium size beagle mix came running into the house covered in blood, followed by the small size poodle covered in dirt. I checked Daisy and found no wounds so the only conclusion is that she found a mole, played with it until it stopped playing back, and then rolled on it. Two puppy baths later and everyone is happy, clean, and moist.

So that mostly sums things up, I could recount the every change as my nephew grows and the number of outfit changes were necessitated by spit up - but who really wants to hear about that ...

For now.

CHTII

Today is the 4 year anniversary of my Dad's death. The first year I was on a cruise on the Danube River in Europe. The second year I was at a Frames concert in the rain and mud of King John's Castle in Limerick, Ireland. The third year I spent an hour sitting by the lake at school in Australia in between classes and meetings and this year I am organizing my belongings to act as opair for 6 weeks to an injured sibling. Next year I need to skydive or something.

Four years ago I wouldn't recognize me now and I remember why I was the way I was or my motivations for my actions, but I don't remember the HOW.

From books to nooks ...

Its been nearly a week since my last post, things have changed dramatically. If I had posted on the 27th I would have said that I had been drafted as master carpenter for Luck Eater (a MBC theatre production). If I had posted on the 28th I would have explained that there was a student taking the intro tech class who had her heart set on construction and cried when she found out they had asked me so I had been redesignated to lights and assistant carpenter. I would have said that the Islam class was scheduled to visit a local mosque tomorrow as a field trip - very interesting. But ... the weekend brought new developments.

On Friday afternoon I caught the train from Staunton to Charlottesville, then a bus to Richmond (why there isn't a direct route I will never know). On the bus portion I was hit on and got an unsolicitated phone number from a nice Californian named Landon. The small piece of paper was courteously disposed of once we got to the station. The weekend brought Ethan's christening on saturday afternoon and Nina's birthday in the park on sunday at noon - both eventful "family gatherings" (and all that that entails).

My eldest sister recieved a second opinion from a specialist on Friday who declared her herniated disc the second worst he had ever seen based on the MRI and scheduled her for surgery yesterday, with urgency and expediency stressed. Being that this surgery requires a mandatory 6 week recovery (absolutely no lifting, bending, or twisting) they were in a bit of a pickle. Without too much rambling, I arranged with my professor to complete my class independent study over summer and moved out yesterday. It was rather frantically done so there is still a lot that needs to be sorted. The school was very helpful and understanding and everything worked out to make the decision to break early an easy one.

So that is where I am now, I am going to move in with my sibling and her husband and help her recover, as well as take care of my 6 month old nephew. Since we are ten years apart it will give us an opportunity to catch up on the sections of growing up where I was developing my personality and she was testing her boundaries.

But I am exhausted and have much to do tomorrow ... I will update soon with more details.