Convergence

Yesterday, I tried to post an entry, but to no avail. It was about pop culture and mass media and me and the kids and being a parent and I kept getting interrupted by First whining in ever a new register about when he could watch the Backyardigans dvd he spent his own money on to rent. The issue I was trying to write about was completely the issue at hand. I may post that one eventually, but today is a new day with a different vibe.

Things that are converging:

• I had a massage yesterday and didn't drink enough water afterwards, not enough flushing out of toxins was the result and I'm still feeling a little sluggish. (I started getting regular massages while First was in utero. I've been the devoted client to two body workers in the last six years, both wonderful women from whom I have learned a lot. I have not been able to give up what I am sure most people I know would consider a crazy luxury: a 90 minute massage every 4-5 weeks.)

• Cap and I decided last weekend that he's "in charge" of the move. We are moving from northern California to northern NJ this summer. It's a big deal for me and I was finding it stressful to co-manage organizing our stuff and beginning to pack. He cleared out the kids' reading "nook" in the big bedroom last night. He needed the bookshelves to store stuff in the garage which is pretty officially now move "central". The books have been redistributed to available shelf space in the living room and home office. I felt pangs of sadness that the cozy reading space was gone. First was shocked when he saw the space this morning, but the kids enjoyed sorting the books to reorganize them.

• Cap and I enjoy eating out/getting take out. I often want a break from preparing food/eating the same food, we also like to mark little celebrations. Friday night we celebrated the re-opening of a local Nepalese restaurant. They had been closed for months due to a fire. In fact, we called for take-out the night they had the fire. This morning, I had the urge to go out to breakfast, so First made himself a fruit salad (he's GFCF so his options at restaurants tend to be limited, plus, he's discriminating---he knew he could make his own fruit salad more to his liking), I tossed some brown rice from the cooker into a thermos, and off we went. I enjoyed watching Kinder put away a side of 2 scrambled eggs and 3 big pieces of bacon. First enjoyed his fruit salad and downed his large oj (didn't touch the brown rice).

• Cap and I switched over household finance management a couple of weeks ago. He's done it for the whole of our time together (16 years) and now it's my turn. I've been feeling empowered, getting my hands dirty with online banking, budgeting, figuring things out and dreaming dreams. He's been feeling the opposite, guilty about the state of our fiscal health and like there isn't much he can do about it. I'm convinced that this isn't inherently heavy stuff. But, I have been reminded of the sensitive triggers that abound when there's money worries around.

• I've started watching Season 1 of Veronica Mars. Picture the angel and devil perched on either of my shoulders. I love watching tv: Oz, Homicide, Buffy, X-Files, Alias, Lost, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos.... But watching these shows on dvd (mostly free from the library, sometimes from Netflix), I sometimes watch too many episodes in one sitting. Four episodes on Friday night, four on Saturday night. Not good for the brain or the back.

• I feel like things between Cap and I are shifting. We were kind of in "pause" mode for years with the arrivals of First and Kinder, Cap's finishing graduate school, sharply curtailing my professional career, moving in with relatives, learning to live with First's allergies and Celiac diagnosis, and then, two years ago, moving to CA for Cap's first post-doctorate job after 10 plus years in MA. Well, the tides are turning. I turned 40 in January, my hormones are reverting back to "normal" (Kinder and I nursed until he was 3 and stopped in December of 2004), and the kids are needing me and a certain intense, bonded energy, less and less (ie. they "graduated" from the family bed in the last year---though they snuggle back in most mornings at dawn). With a new clarity humming in my web of systems, I am more aware of how different Cap and I are in our ways. We came together quickly, a jumble of attraction, humor, and familiar goals and values. Almost 20 years later, we're navigating a new set of scenarios as Cap starts his career as an academic and we/I start homeschooling. We are having challenging discussions about homeschooling, money, and moving, but instead of hitting "pause" to end a fight (or those ineffectual though impressively loud bangs on the side of the set in an attempt to forcibly dislodge the problem), we've been able to realign the tracking and move along past the interference of those zig zaggy lines that come across the screen sometimes---I have to say it, you get the picture! Yikes, unintentional and severe tying back to the theme of tv, but this is getting so long, and I, giddy,that I'm just going to leave it.

• Last week I gave my students a break (I teach a course online about Autism Spectrum Disorders). Today I went online and set up the discussion board for the coming week. I'm done with the lectures for the semester, we're workshopping final projects this week. I will be deluged with fifteen final projects to read and grade in about two weeks.

• A bunch of homeschooling resources came into the library and I picked them up on Friday (our library day). I've flipped through A Child's Garden of Verses, Peace Tales, and Sharing Nature with Children, xeroxing poems, stories and activities that I may end up using next year. I also listened to José Luis Orozco's cd, De Colores. In Waldorf First Grade, two foreign languages are introduced orally through songs, games, etc. I was considering Spanish as our second (Japanese will be the first), but Cap is thinking two may be too much. Purely from a planning angle, doing one is easier. I think I'm going to put Spanish on a back burner for now. It would make sense to do Finnish as the second in terms of personal family meaning. I wonder if Cap would be up for providing the Finnish language piece.

So, this was my weekend. A convergence of much.