It's not every day that your child pretty much sums up everything that's wrong with your generation while he's trying to think of hypothetical questions to distract you from the fact that you told him to get ready for bed and he's supposed to be brushing his teeth right now.
We do this dance every night... I tell him to go get ready for bed, he obediently heads down the hallway, then pops back up with some inane question 30 seconds later and tries to start a conversation about it. I have begun sneaking the time I tell him to go get ready for bed even earlier in 5 minute increments to compensate for this habit. He noticed and it hasn't deterred him any. At this rate, soon he'll be heading down the hall at 7.
Anyway, tonight he popped out to stall for more time, and the following conversation ensued:
HIM: So say that it's January and someone says, "In two months it will be February." Is that a fact or an opinion? (He's big on fact and opinion lately... I think they must be studying it in school.)
ME: It's wrong.
HIM: But they don't teach wrong in school! Why is that?
ME: Because they don't want to damage anyone's self-esteem.
HIM: What??
ME: They don't want to make anyone feel bad by telling them they got the wrong answer.
HIM: Oh, so they just call it an "opinion", even though it's actually wrong.
See... that right there is a lot of what's wrong with humanity today. Black and white concepts like "right" and "wrong" are steadily being fudged in exchange for shades of gray, and far too much weight is being given to how people feel about being wrong... especially in schools.
2 + 2 is still 4, regardless of how little Johnny feels about it. And when little Johnny guesses "6" in school, some PBIS-robot teacher (I can say that now since I'm not teaching anymore) will say something like, "Good try." Let me tell you (and little Johnny) something, though. When he gets out into the real world and has a real job, he's going to make a mistake and expect his boss to say, "Good try." Depending on the severity of the error, Johnny might be really surprised to find out that "good try" doesn't always count in the real world. Sometimes wrong is just wrong, and sometimes Johnny gets fired for it. Especially if Johnny is an accountant and there were a lot of zeroes after those 2s that he added to get 6. Or if Johnny is an architect and his "good try" created an unstable structure that collapsed and killed some people. These are of course extreme examples, but still you see my point... sometimes wrong is just wrong.
Most younger people, however, particularly those my age and younger, expect that when they make a mistake in the real world they can just laugh it off and go, "Oh, my bad!" and it'll all be okay. And it isn't, really. That's not how life works. And insisting your incorrect "opinion" is valid, no matter how many times you repeat it, does not make you any less wrong. In fact, it kind of makes you look even dumber, because you're persistently being wrong over and over again and not learning anything at all from your mistakes.
And then there's that whole thing about the younger generations seemingly being unable to take responsibility for their mistakes when they make them. I'd start going on about that too, but this post is already making me sound kind of like a cranky old woman and I'm not even thirty yet. (Getting close, though.)
So I think I'll just go to bed early, because between move-out inspections, five-page reports, rent week, taking applications, showing apartments, and the odd 30/14, I'm already having a long week and it's only Monday night. And I'm not just saying that... I'm actually already two hours over for this week, so I have to go in late and take me some long lunches to get my hours balanced out by Thursday evening. Yikes!
April 30, 2012
April 29, 2012
The Great Adventure, 2012....
So yeah, haven't posted anything in a couple of months, but I have a really, really good excuse, I promise. The excuse is as follows: I changed careers and I moved earlier this month. For most people (including me, in some respects) that looked like a really sudden thing. So now I'm going to take you back in time to late February and explain what led up to this turn of events.
Sometime around the last week of February, I was cruising the job listings on Craigslist, because I was in the habit of doing that just about every night. Not that I so much hated working where I was working, but that I felt I had completely stagnated, had no potential for advancement, didn't feel like I was being challenged, didn't feel like my full potential was being realized, yadda yadda. On this particular evening I saw a post titled "Office Assistant/Leasing Agent", and after reading it I decided to send in my resume. Worst thing that can happen is that nothing happens... that's one idea I've gotten used to lately.
Imagine my surprise, then, when something happened. They called me, did a brief phone interview, and said that if I was chosen to interview in person I would hear from them again. A few days later I was called in for an interview. I went in, not really sure what to expect, and ended up actually having a quite pleasant conversation with the interviewer. We established over the course of this interview that I basically had no property management experience, very little office experience, and would have to be trained pretty much from the ground up if I were to be offered the position. She helpfully suggested some changes I might like to make to my resume and asked questions that were actually relevant rather than the standard "Where do you see yourself in five years?" (I hate that question, by the way... I don't know where I see myself next week, much less in five years.) We parted ways on very good terms that day, and I told my mom on the phone that night that I thought it was a very good experience but that I really doubted I would be hearing from them again.
Thus, imagine my shock when I was called back sometime in the second week of March. I was told on the phone that the nature of the position had switched a bit. Instead of being "Office Assistant/Leasing Agent" it was now "Leasing Agent/Office Assistant", with the emphasis on Leasing Agent, and if I was still interested in the position knowing that, they would be interested in having me in for a second interview. I was sort of like, okay, sure. If you're interested enough to talk to me again, I'll be interested in the position. Why not? And I went in for a second interview late in the second week of March (I think we had a snow day that day, so I wasn't working anyway).
I had an interview with a man and a different woman that was a lot more difficult than the first one had been, and they also made me take a test on Microsoft Word and Excel. I'm far more comfortable with the former than the latter, having done nearly all of my six years of translation work in Word. I took one semester of Excel class in college and never used the thing again. So I wasn't sure how that was going to turn out, but I gave it my best shot. And once again I figured I probably wouldn't hear from them again.
Now we get into the timeline... I know these dates precisely. Monday, March 19th, I had a call on my voicemail when I got home from work. It was from this place I had interviewed at, and merely requested that I call them back. So I did. The nice lady on the phone (from the second interview, not the first) said that they had decided to offer me the position and that there were two options. The first option was to take the job at a wage of $13 an hour (slightly more than I was making). The second, and the one that she strongly hinted that they preferred, was that we move to Gresham and manage the apartment complex on-site, where I would get a free apartment plus $10 an hour.
Talk about mind-boggling decisions that have to be made really quickly. I asked her a few questions, jotted down some notes, and asked her for 24 hours to think it over. She agreed and we hung up. I then called my mom. And over the course of that conversation and thinking out loud, doing the math, and talking through the pros and cons of each choice, I realized that the Gresham option was actually looking pretty good aside from the whole moving to someplace I've never been part. Seriously, I had no idea where the place even was, but I had gotten the address on the phone and I Googled it.
I talked to the Chamaco about it some that night. He was uncertain on the idea. So was I, honestly. But I decided that this was a decision that needed to be made as a family and needed to be an informed decision. So the next morning I called in *cough cough* sick to work and called the Chamaco's school and told them he wouldn't be in that day "for family reasons". And we got our MapQuest guide and set out.
First off, the area was not what I was expecting. I was expecting big city urban... buildings and traffic, etc. The area is actually pretty calm. Yes, it's right on a major street, but not nearly as noisy and busy and urban looking as I was expecting. We played stupid and went into the apartment office like we were just off the street looking for an apartment. The guy in the office said the manager had stepped out and he didn't have access to the keys to show me an actual apartment at that time, but he did walk us through the furnished "model" apartment that was adjoining the office. He took my name and phone number and said he'd have the manager call us when she got back (she was taking longer than expected) and he was generally so nice that I felt like I was lying to him. So I finally told him that I had been offered a job with the property management company and that we'd been invited to move there. He said, "Oh, you're the one we got told to hold an apartment for!" I told him that was probably so. He said he still didn't have keys and the manager would call me when she got back.
So the Chamaco and I decided to go investigate the other important thing - school. I had deduced in my online investigating which school he would probably be attending should we make the move, so he and I went to check it out. We went into the office, and the secretaries were very friendly. We told them we were considering a move to the area and wanted to check out the school. We gave them the address and they confirmed it was indeed the right school and offered us a tour. We got to walk the school, which the Chamaco told me he gave "8 and 3/4 out of 10 stars". And as we were getting in the car my phone rang. It was the apartment manager, who was now back on site.
We went back to the apartments, not far at all from the school, and when I explained to her who I was and what the situation was, she offered to show me the apartment they were holding, which was being worked on that day... it wasn't quite ready for move-in, but almost. The workers were in there all right... it was an upstairs apartment, and I liked that there wasn't carpet. Vacuuming is not one of my favorite things. The walls were freshly painted (we were warned not to touch them, in fact), there was a nice balcony, and it was on the back side of the complex where there were trees and a nice fence in between the complex and the retirement community that is behind it. It seemed like a pretty quiet area, and again far less urban than I'd been expecting.
After that experience, the Chamaco and I decided it was lunch time. We found a Taco Bell not two minutes from the apartment complex, which we thought was neato considering that Molalla doesn't even have a Taco Bell, and sat down to eat and discuss. I asked him what he thought we should do, and he said he thought we should probably move. I asked him if he had any concerns about that or anything that would bother him if he moved. The first thing he said was that he didn't want to leave his friends. I expected that one. We negotiated a bit, and I agreed to allow him to get an e-mail address so that he could e-mail friends from Molalla, and he already has a phone so he could stay in touch that way. His second thing, and this was the one that almost had him in tears, was that he didn't think he would get to spend Friday nights with Grandma anymore since she would be farther away. Yes, 32 miles is a little farther than 7, but Grandma and I agreed that we could probably work it out. Only after addressing those two concerns did he even ask about his dad. I admitted that it would probably be tricky to work out those visits since his dad doesn't drive or pay gas money either one, but I told him we could probably figure it out... it just might take a week or two to get the details sorted. He deemed that acceptable. And I asked him one final time, "Do you think we should move?"
"Yes. I think we should."
That was pretty much what I was thinking at that point too, so we sat in the parking lot at Taco Bell, I dialed the phone and formally accepted the job offer. We swung by the office on the way home and I filled out some paperwork (I still had to be background checked before they could officially hire me), and hammered out the details of when I would start. I managed to wrangle a full two weeks at my old job out of them so I could give two weeks notice, but that was all... I would end my old job on Friday the 6th and start the new one on Monday, April 9th. And we would be moving Saturday, April 7th. This was all decided on Tuesday, March 20th, and we'd been planning to leave town on March 24th to visit my grandparents over spring break. Yikes.
I almost cancelled that trip, in fact, but I decided that I would need the de-stress time if there was any way at all I was going to survive the move. But I did put out the word on Facebook that very night that I would be moving and I was looking for boxes. The next night at church, Jacob and Amy brought me boxes, and I started putting some non-essential items into them. I had four boxes packed by the time we left for Gold Beach on the 24th, most of them from my bedroom... I'm not hardly in there except to sleep anyway.
We made the drive home from Gold Beach on the 28th of March, and then the real fun started. I spent the last few days of spring break packing and planning.
The work-week that started April 2nd and would be my last at my old job was pure hell. I got up at six, was at work by 7:45, got home around 5, helped the Chamaco with his homework, got dinner done, spent some time with the kid and put him to bed by 8:30, and then I spent the time from 8:30 to about midnight packing, then collapsed into bed. Wake up at 6 a.m. Repeat. For five days. I wasn't sleeping well in the few hours that I did sleep, and I was stressed out and emotional... I was crying at everything, which is nowhere near normal for me. Thursday was my last day with the kiddos and both classes had small parties for me because it was my last day. I managed to keep it together for them, even as I said goodbye to kids I knew I would probably never see again. Friday I did center meeting and managed to hold it together for a few hours, even when my coworkers took me out to lunch.
Friday night at about 10 o'clock, when I was still packing, hadn't even started on the kitchen yet, and knew there was no way on earth that I was going to have everything packed and ready to go by 10 the next morning when the U-haul got there, that was when I lost it. I called my mom almost crying on the phone and explained that it still wasn't even close to done and I was completely and totally exhausted and I was going to have to stay up all night packing, I was going to be dead the next day, and I had no idea how I was going to get everything moved and get the new place set up enough to be functional by Monday morning... I just didn't think I had it in me. She told me to go to bed (she and Dad were both pretty appalled that I was still awake at that point) and promised that she would come down early in the morning to help finish the packing before everyone got there to help move.
Speaking of everyone, I should probably mention here that I have the best church family ever. I had put out the word that I would be moving on Saturday the 7th at 10 a.m. and would appreciate the help of anyone who might show up to put things in the truck. I expected maybe four people plus my parents, and I figured if I got four to six people it would probably only take an hour and a half or so to load everything in the truck. What I got was five men (at least a couple of which were capable of lifting large pieces of furniture unassisted) and three boys, plus my parents and the Chamaco. The truck was loaded in less than an hour. And the entire crew actually followed me to Gresham and helped unload the truck and carry everything up to the apartment and get it sort of in the right rooms. And when we got to Gresham we were met by some of my aunts and uncles, a couple of cousins, plus a couple of guys from the church in Portland that I had never met before but they'd come to help anyway since they were friends of my aunt and uncle. Despite the fact that the new apartment was a considerable distance from the parking lot and was also upstairs, that truck was empty in no time. By 1:30 we were on our way back to the U-Haul place with an empty truck. I was completely exhausted, yes, but I was also so grateful that I wasn't sure whether I should sleep or cry. (The Chamaco chose sleep... he slept with his head in my lap in the U-Haul on the way back. Fortunately my dad was driving.)
I should also mention here that I have awesome parents. My mom did come down early as promised (a bit after 7 a.m., if I recall correctly) and she pretty much packed my entire kitchen herself while I busied myself putting in boxes those last things that I hadn't been able to pack because they were things we used every day... toothbrushes, contact lens case, etc. Dad helped load/unload and drove the truck. And once we had the empty truck back to the U-Haul place, Mom stayed with me at the old apartment and helped me clean for several hours. She cleaned the kitchen pretty much by herself, I did the rest of the house, minus the bathtub which my brother showed up and did for me. When we were done, that apartment pretty much looked like we were never there, which was my goal all along.
Anyway, we spent Sunday afternoon after church getting situated. The Chamaco unpacked and set up his own room. I told him he could make it however he wanted so long as it didn't pose any sort of safety hazard. I did the rest of the house, starting with the kitchen, then the bathroom, the living room, and finally my own bedroom. Sunday night as I started packing the Chamaco's lunch for his first day at his new school, I realized I didn't have any drinks to put in it... this was at about 11 p.m. after he was already in bed and I was exhausted. I learned that night that it takes me exactly 9 minutes to drive to Safeway, buy drinks and get home.
I took him to school that first day, met his teacher briefly, and then did one of the hardest things I've ever done. I left him there. I turned around, walked out the door, and left him there in a place where neither of us knew anyone. I realize that most moms probably get over this right around the first day of Kindergarten, but I didn't do that because I was actually working at his school when he started kindergarten. Not only had I hand-picked every teacher he'd had up until that point because I knew them all, but also I would see him at various points during the day while he was in kindergarten... I always knew where he was, who he was with, and what he was doing. This held true even in first, second, third, and fourth grade because even though I no longer worked in his school I still knew the staff and knew the routines... I even knew most of the students. Here neither of us knew anybody, and the friends he'd been in class with since Kindergarten were miles away. All I knew about his teacher was her name, and I told him goodbye, told him I'd see him after school, and then left him there. I got out of the room okay, but before I got halfway down the hall I had tears in my eyes. By the time I got to my car I was crying like a baby, and it was only 8 a.m. And I had to go to my own new job. I was still mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted and the week was just starting. (Interesting fact: My mom later confessed that she cried when she dropped me off for my first day at Molalla Middle School too. I was in sixth grade, and she had not been employed at the school I attended K-5. Also by that point we'd been living in Molalla for pretty much all of summer vacation. Hmm.)
That first week was interesting. Damian's school called around lunchtime on the second day and told me that he was in the office with a 101.3 fever and needed to go home. Normally I would have asked my mom to go get him, but she was kinda far. Also if he was that sick, I figured limiting exposure was in order. So I asked my aunt to go get him and see how he seemed, and if he seemed bad I would see about coming home. Because remember, it was only my second day at my new job too, and I wasn't sure how it would go over if I left early, especially since it was my boss's birthday and we were out to lunch to celebrate it. So toward the end of lunch I called my aunt to ask how my kid was doing. She said he'd thrown up in her car. Crap. Fortunately everyone, even the birthday girl, was very understanding. Even when I pointed out that Damian would not be allowed to go to school the next day no matter how well he felt by that point, and if I couldn't find someplace for him to go I wouldn't be able to go to work. They said to let them know. So I went home with a sick boy and worrying that I was already starting to look like a flake to my new employer, on whom I depended for my housing. (By the way, if I'm ever fired or otherwise decide to leave my job, I have 24 hours to vacate my apartment. It's in my contract.) The good news was that I found someone who was willing to keep the sickie the next day. The bad news was that she was in Molalla. So we got up extra early the next morning and drove to Molalla and I left Damian with my sister, who is also awesome. Then I drove all the way back to Clackamas where our corporate office is. Damian was fine that day, by the way, and my sister reported that he was eating everything in sight. So that evening I drove back to Molalla to get him, then to Woodburn to pick up my contact lens order that was in, then back to Molalla to drop off my sister who had gone to Woodburn with us, then back home to Gresham.
Now that we're beginning our fourth week here, things are starting to level out. I'm working on-site now, having gotten the basic training at the corporate office, which means that my commute is a three-minute walk from our apartment to the office. Damian's getting the school thing figured out and is doing awesome with his new set of responsibilities here... seriously, I could not be more proud of the kid. When he gets off the bus at 2:30, I take a break (either a 10 or my lunch, depending on how the day's been) and walk him to our apartment and let him in. I don't get off work until six, so he stays home by himself and does his homework, any other little chores I might ask him to do, and entertains himself until I get home and make dinner. He's got a phone so he can call or text me if he needs to, and if he really needed to he could come to the office or I could run home, so it's not like he's cut off, but he's handling it very well. He's even starting to make friends with some of the kids in our apartment complex. Pretty much the only driving I'm doing now is to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, plus a trip to Molalla once a week to pick Damian up from his dad's (my mom is getting him there after he does his overnight at her house, and she's been meeting me in Oregon City to get him). Also I drive to the store sometimes (less than a mile) and a couple of times I've taken Damian to school (just over a mile). We've also begun to explore the area and have found a couple of decent parks that aren't too far away, as well as the local library. I'm still teaching English on Saturdays, and in fact the move has put us close enough to one of my earliest English students (who stopped coming to class when she moved to Gresham because she didn't have transportation) that I was able to pick her up and take her to class yesterday and then take her to church today.
April has been a pretty hectic month and one that we won't soon forget. I think overall this move will be good for us in the long run, though. Damian's learning to adapt to new environments and make new friends, and I'm working at a more challenging job where I will gain (and am already gaining) new skills that I could potentially take a lot of other places in the future. Once I get a full paycheck (my first check was a partial one because of when I started working), we should be doing better financially as well since I won't be dedicating a large chunk of my income to rent and I'm dodging the current high price of gasoline by pretty much not needing to drive anywhere. It's been an adjustment, for sure, but I think both of us are going to come through this as better, stronger people.
I think I mentioned back in January that I had a sense this was going to be a year of change, didn't I? ;-)
Sometime around the last week of February, I was cruising the job listings on Craigslist, because I was in the habit of doing that just about every night. Not that I so much hated working where I was working, but that I felt I had completely stagnated, had no potential for advancement, didn't feel like I was being challenged, didn't feel like my full potential was being realized, yadda yadda. On this particular evening I saw a post titled "Office Assistant/Leasing Agent", and after reading it I decided to send in my resume. Worst thing that can happen is that nothing happens... that's one idea I've gotten used to lately.
Imagine my surprise, then, when something happened. They called me, did a brief phone interview, and said that if I was chosen to interview in person I would hear from them again. A few days later I was called in for an interview. I went in, not really sure what to expect, and ended up actually having a quite pleasant conversation with the interviewer. We established over the course of this interview that I basically had no property management experience, very little office experience, and would have to be trained pretty much from the ground up if I were to be offered the position. She helpfully suggested some changes I might like to make to my resume and asked questions that were actually relevant rather than the standard "Where do you see yourself in five years?" (I hate that question, by the way... I don't know where I see myself next week, much less in five years.) We parted ways on very good terms that day, and I told my mom on the phone that night that I thought it was a very good experience but that I really doubted I would be hearing from them again.
Thus, imagine my shock when I was called back sometime in the second week of March. I was told on the phone that the nature of the position had switched a bit. Instead of being "Office Assistant/Leasing Agent" it was now "Leasing Agent/Office Assistant", with the emphasis on Leasing Agent, and if I was still interested in the position knowing that, they would be interested in having me in for a second interview. I was sort of like, okay, sure. If you're interested enough to talk to me again, I'll be interested in the position. Why not? And I went in for a second interview late in the second week of March (I think we had a snow day that day, so I wasn't working anyway).
I had an interview with a man and a different woman that was a lot more difficult than the first one had been, and they also made me take a test on Microsoft Word and Excel. I'm far more comfortable with the former than the latter, having done nearly all of my six years of translation work in Word. I took one semester of Excel class in college and never used the thing again. So I wasn't sure how that was going to turn out, but I gave it my best shot. And once again I figured I probably wouldn't hear from them again.
Now we get into the timeline... I know these dates precisely. Monday, March 19th, I had a call on my voicemail when I got home from work. It was from this place I had interviewed at, and merely requested that I call them back. So I did. The nice lady on the phone (from the second interview, not the first) said that they had decided to offer me the position and that there were two options. The first option was to take the job at a wage of $13 an hour (slightly more than I was making). The second, and the one that she strongly hinted that they preferred, was that we move to Gresham and manage the apartment complex on-site, where I would get a free apartment plus $10 an hour.
Talk about mind-boggling decisions that have to be made really quickly. I asked her a few questions, jotted down some notes, and asked her for 24 hours to think it over. She agreed and we hung up. I then called my mom. And over the course of that conversation and thinking out loud, doing the math, and talking through the pros and cons of each choice, I realized that the Gresham option was actually looking pretty good aside from the whole moving to someplace I've never been part. Seriously, I had no idea where the place even was, but I had gotten the address on the phone and I Googled it.
I talked to the Chamaco about it some that night. He was uncertain on the idea. So was I, honestly. But I decided that this was a decision that needed to be made as a family and needed to be an informed decision. So the next morning I called in *cough cough* sick to work and called the Chamaco's school and told them he wouldn't be in that day "for family reasons". And we got our MapQuest guide and set out.
First off, the area was not what I was expecting. I was expecting big city urban... buildings and traffic, etc. The area is actually pretty calm. Yes, it's right on a major street, but not nearly as noisy and busy and urban looking as I was expecting. We played stupid and went into the apartment office like we were just off the street looking for an apartment. The guy in the office said the manager had stepped out and he didn't have access to the keys to show me an actual apartment at that time, but he did walk us through the furnished "model" apartment that was adjoining the office. He took my name and phone number and said he'd have the manager call us when she got back (she was taking longer than expected) and he was generally so nice that I felt like I was lying to him. So I finally told him that I had been offered a job with the property management company and that we'd been invited to move there. He said, "Oh, you're the one we got told to hold an apartment for!" I told him that was probably so. He said he still didn't have keys and the manager would call me when she got back.
So the Chamaco and I decided to go investigate the other important thing - school. I had deduced in my online investigating which school he would probably be attending should we make the move, so he and I went to check it out. We went into the office, and the secretaries were very friendly. We told them we were considering a move to the area and wanted to check out the school. We gave them the address and they confirmed it was indeed the right school and offered us a tour. We got to walk the school, which the Chamaco told me he gave "8 and 3/4 out of 10 stars". And as we were getting in the car my phone rang. It was the apartment manager, who was now back on site.
We went back to the apartments, not far at all from the school, and when I explained to her who I was and what the situation was, she offered to show me the apartment they were holding, which was being worked on that day... it wasn't quite ready for move-in, but almost. The workers were in there all right... it was an upstairs apartment, and I liked that there wasn't carpet. Vacuuming is not one of my favorite things. The walls were freshly painted (we were warned not to touch them, in fact), there was a nice balcony, and it was on the back side of the complex where there were trees and a nice fence in between the complex and the retirement community that is behind it. It seemed like a pretty quiet area, and again far less urban than I'd been expecting.
After that experience, the Chamaco and I decided it was lunch time. We found a Taco Bell not two minutes from the apartment complex, which we thought was neato considering that Molalla doesn't even have a Taco Bell, and sat down to eat and discuss. I asked him what he thought we should do, and he said he thought we should probably move. I asked him if he had any concerns about that or anything that would bother him if he moved. The first thing he said was that he didn't want to leave his friends. I expected that one. We negotiated a bit, and I agreed to allow him to get an e-mail address so that he could e-mail friends from Molalla, and he already has a phone so he could stay in touch that way. His second thing, and this was the one that almost had him in tears, was that he didn't think he would get to spend Friday nights with Grandma anymore since she would be farther away. Yes, 32 miles is a little farther than 7, but Grandma and I agreed that we could probably work it out. Only after addressing those two concerns did he even ask about his dad. I admitted that it would probably be tricky to work out those visits since his dad doesn't drive or pay gas money either one, but I told him we could probably figure it out... it just might take a week or two to get the details sorted. He deemed that acceptable. And I asked him one final time, "Do you think we should move?"
"Yes. I think we should."
That was pretty much what I was thinking at that point too, so we sat in the parking lot at Taco Bell, I dialed the phone and formally accepted the job offer. We swung by the office on the way home and I filled out some paperwork (I still had to be background checked before they could officially hire me), and hammered out the details of when I would start. I managed to wrangle a full two weeks at my old job out of them so I could give two weeks notice, but that was all... I would end my old job on Friday the 6th and start the new one on Monday, April 9th. And we would be moving Saturday, April 7th. This was all decided on Tuesday, March 20th, and we'd been planning to leave town on March 24th to visit my grandparents over spring break. Yikes.
I almost cancelled that trip, in fact, but I decided that I would need the de-stress time if there was any way at all I was going to survive the move. But I did put out the word on Facebook that very night that I would be moving and I was looking for boxes. The next night at church, Jacob and Amy brought me boxes, and I started putting some non-essential items into them. I had four boxes packed by the time we left for Gold Beach on the 24th, most of them from my bedroom... I'm not hardly in there except to sleep anyway.
We made the drive home from Gold Beach on the 28th of March, and then the real fun started. I spent the last few days of spring break packing and planning.
The work-week that started April 2nd and would be my last at my old job was pure hell. I got up at six, was at work by 7:45, got home around 5, helped the Chamaco with his homework, got dinner done, spent some time with the kid and put him to bed by 8:30, and then I spent the time from 8:30 to about midnight packing, then collapsed into bed. Wake up at 6 a.m. Repeat. For five days. I wasn't sleeping well in the few hours that I did sleep, and I was stressed out and emotional... I was crying at everything, which is nowhere near normal for me. Thursday was my last day with the kiddos and both classes had small parties for me because it was my last day. I managed to keep it together for them, even as I said goodbye to kids I knew I would probably never see again. Friday I did center meeting and managed to hold it together for a few hours, even when my coworkers took me out to lunch.
Friday night at about 10 o'clock, when I was still packing, hadn't even started on the kitchen yet, and knew there was no way on earth that I was going to have everything packed and ready to go by 10 the next morning when the U-haul got there, that was when I lost it. I called my mom almost crying on the phone and explained that it still wasn't even close to done and I was completely and totally exhausted and I was going to have to stay up all night packing, I was going to be dead the next day, and I had no idea how I was going to get everything moved and get the new place set up enough to be functional by Monday morning... I just didn't think I had it in me. She told me to go to bed (she and Dad were both pretty appalled that I was still awake at that point) and promised that she would come down early in the morning to help finish the packing before everyone got there to help move.
Speaking of everyone, I should probably mention here that I have the best church family ever. I had put out the word that I would be moving on Saturday the 7th at 10 a.m. and would appreciate the help of anyone who might show up to put things in the truck. I expected maybe four people plus my parents, and I figured if I got four to six people it would probably only take an hour and a half or so to load everything in the truck. What I got was five men (at least a couple of which were capable of lifting large pieces of furniture unassisted) and three boys, plus my parents and the Chamaco. The truck was loaded in less than an hour. And the entire crew actually followed me to Gresham and helped unload the truck and carry everything up to the apartment and get it sort of in the right rooms. And when we got to Gresham we were met by some of my aunts and uncles, a couple of cousins, plus a couple of guys from the church in Portland that I had never met before but they'd come to help anyway since they were friends of my aunt and uncle. Despite the fact that the new apartment was a considerable distance from the parking lot and was also upstairs, that truck was empty in no time. By 1:30 we were on our way back to the U-Haul place with an empty truck. I was completely exhausted, yes, but I was also so grateful that I wasn't sure whether I should sleep or cry. (The Chamaco chose sleep... he slept with his head in my lap in the U-Haul on the way back. Fortunately my dad was driving.)
I should also mention here that I have awesome parents. My mom did come down early as promised (a bit after 7 a.m., if I recall correctly) and she pretty much packed my entire kitchen herself while I busied myself putting in boxes those last things that I hadn't been able to pack because they were things we used every day... toothbrushes, contact lens case, etc. Dad helped load/unload and drove the truck. And once we had the empty truck back to the U-Haul place, Mom stayed with me at the old apartment and helped me clean for several hours. She cleaned the kitchen pretty much by herself, I did the rest of the house, minus the bathtub which my brother showed up and did for me. When we were done, that apartment pretty much looked like we were never there, which was my goal all along.
Anyway, we spent Sunday afternoon after church getting situated. The Chamaco unpacked and set up his own room. I told him he could make it however he wanted so long as it didn't pose any sort of safety hazard. I did the rest of the house, starting with the kitchen, then the bathroom, the living room, and finally my own bedroom. Sunday night as I started packing the Chamaco's lunch for his first day at his new school, I realized I didn't have any drinks to put in it... this was at about 11 p.m. after he was already in bed and I was exhausted. I learned that night that it takes me exactly 9 minutes to drive to Safeway, buy drinks and get home.
I took him to school that first day, met his teacher briefly, and then did one of the hardest things I've ever done. I left him there. I turned around, walked out the door, and left him there in a place where neither of us knew anyone. I realize that most moms probably get over this right around the first day of Kindergarten, but I didn't do that because I was actually working at his school when he started kindergarten. Not only had I hand-picked every teacher he'd had up until that point because I knew them all, but also I would see him at various points during the day while he was in kindergarten... I always knew where he was, who he was with, and what he was doing. This held true even in first, second, third, and fourth grade because even though I no longer worked in his school I still knew the staff and knew the routines... I even knew most of the students. Here neither of us knew anybody, and the friends he'd been in class with since Kindergarten were miles away. All I knew about his teacher was her name, and I told him goodbye, told him I'd see him after school, and then left him there. I got out of the room okay, but before I got halfway down the hall I had tears in my eyes. By the time I got to my car I was crying like a baby, and it was only 8 a.m. And I had to go to my own new job. I was still mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted and the week was just starting. (Interesting fact: My mom later confessed that she cried when she dropped me off for my first day at Molalla Middle School too. I was in sixth grade, and she had not been employed at the school I attended K-5. Also by that point we'd been living in Molalla for pretty much all of summer vacation. Hmm.)
That first week was interesting. Damian's school called around lunchtime on the second day and told me that he was in the office with a 101.3 fever and needed to go home. Normally I would have asked my mom to go get him, but she was kinda far. Also if he was that sick, I figured limiting exposure was in order. So I asked my aunt to go get him and see how he seemed, and if he seemed bad I would see about coming home. Because remember, it was only my second day at my new job too, and I wasn't sure how it would go over if I left early, especially since it was my boss's birthday and we were out to lunch to celebrate it. So toward the end of lunch I called my aunt to ask how my kid was doing. She said he'd thrown up in her car. Crap. Fortunately everyone, even the birthday girl, was very understanding. Even when I pointed out that Damian would not be allowed to go to school the next day no matter how well he felt by that point, and if I couldn't find someplace for him to go I wouldn't be able to go to work. They said to let them know. So I went home with a sick boy and worrying that I was already starting to look like a flake to my new employer, on whom I depended for my housing. (By the way, if I'm ever fired or otherwise decide to leave my job, I have 24 hours to vacate my apartment. It's in my contract.) The good news was that I found someone who was willing to keep the sickie the next day. The bad news was that she was in Molalla. So we got up extra early the next morning and drove to Molalla and I left Damian with my sister, who is also awesome. Then I drove all the way back to Clackamas where our corporate office is. Damian was fine that day, by the way, and my sister reported that he was eating everything in sight. So that evening I drove back to Molalla to get him, then to Woodburn to pick up my contact lens order that was in, then back to Molalla to drop off my sister who had gone to Woodburn with us, then back home to Gresham.
Now that we're beginning our fourth week here, things are starting to level out. I'm working on-site now, having gotten the basic training at the corporate office, which means that my commute is a three-minute walk from our apartment to the office. Damian's getting the school thing figured out and is doing awesome with his new set of responsibilities here... seriously, I could not be more proud of the kid. When he gets off the bus at 2:30, I take a break (either a 10 or my lunch, depending on how the day's been) and walk him to our apartment and let him in. I don't get off work until six, so he stays home by himself and does his homework, any other little chores I might ask him to do, and entertains himself until I get home and make dinner. He's got a phone so he can call or text me if he needs to, and if he really needed to he could come to the office or I could run home, so it's not like he's cut off, but he's handling it very well. He's even starting to make friends with some of the kids in our apartment complex. Pretty much the only driving I'm doing now is to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, plus a trip to Molalla once a week to pick Damian up from his dad's (my mom is getting him there after he does his overnight at her house, and she's been meeting me in Oregon City to get him). Also I drive to the store sometimes (less than a mile) and a couple of times I've taken Damian to school (just over a mile). We've also begun to explore the area and have found a couple of decent parks that aren't too far away, as well as the local library. I'm still teaching English on Saturdays, and in fact the move has put us close enough to one of my earliest English students (who stopped coming to class when she moved to Gresham because she didn't have transportation) that I was able to pick her up and take her to class yesterday and then take her to church today.
April has been a pretty hectic month and one that we won't soon forget. I think overall this move will be good for us in the long run, though. Damian's learning to adapt to new environments and make new friends, and I'm working at a more challenging job where I will gain (and am already gaining) new skills that I could potentially take a lot of other places in the future. Once I get a full paycheck (my first check was a partial one because of when I started working), we should be doing better financially as well since I won't be dedicating a large chunk of my income to rent and I'm dodging the current high price of gasoline by pretty much not needing to drive anywhere. It's been an adjustment, for sure, but I think both of us are going to come through this as better, stronger people.
I think I mentioned back in January that I had a sense this was going to be a year of change, didn't I? ;-)
 |
| Our new living room, back when it was still in a state of empty. |
March 4, 2012
Random facts and figures...
WARNING: I'm in a bad mood right now. Don't read this if you don't want to hear (read) me complaining. If you read it anyway, don't say you weren't warned....
10 1/2 (approximately): The number of years that have elapsed since, as an 18 year old, I thought it would be a pretty smart idea to get married on June 23, 2001.
9 (approximately): The number of years it has been since my ex-husband and I separated for the third and final time. (After he left, came back, left, came back, then told me he was leaving again. I told him not to bother coming back if he left. So of course, now our divorce is my fault because I told him not to come back.)
4 years, 2 months (almost exactly): The number of years we've been officially divorced. (Someone wouldn't help pay for it (because it was my fault), so it had to wait until I could afford to do it myself.)
Once a year or less: The approximate frequency with which either of the above two facts bothers me in the slightest. (In truth, I'm much more likely to celebrate those same facts on any given day.)
And if I'm gonna be totally fair, it's not him specifically I miss. Okay, actually I don't miss him at all... like I said, in retrospect I'm glad he's gone. I mostly just miss the bed not being empty. Odd if you consider that for the greater part of our marriage we worked opposing shifts and were never in the bed at the same time anyway, but I digress.
In general I've adapted pretty darn well to the single-parenting lifestyle. Since we separated I've managed to get myself a college degree, get myself a job, get myself an apartment, and somehow raise a kid who isn't screwed up in the head (yet). I can kill my own spiders, perform my own basic automobile maintenance, move my own heavy stuff and open my own jars. I have managed to keep us fed, clothed and housed for the most part without even the aid of monthly child support payments (someone doesn't pay them). Some of the above successes are partly attributable to supportive family members, both blood relatives and church family. And a lot of it just attributable to the fact that I do not need a man to survive... I learned that about 9 years ago when he walked.
Of course, that same fact is also the source of my current dilemma. Or at least part of it. That's just the problem... I don't need a man. Most of the time I don't even want one. Sometimes I entertain the notion that the ideal arrangement for me would be one of those marriages where you maintain separate houses and have sleepovers. (Actually, were it not against my religion, the ideal arrangement would probably be more what is termed a "friend with benefits"... no legal entanglements whatsoever.) Some would say that I've never even been in a healthy, functional romantic relationship and just don't know what I'm missing. They're probably right about that, but what am I supposed to do about it? It ain't exactly raining men around here... in fact, it's been more of a nine-year drought. And yes, there have been a couple of close calls in those nine years, but they mostly served to make me realize even more what I don't want to put up with.
Yeah, maybe that's the problem. Having nine years to think it over has made me really picky. I have a long list of deal-breakers. Like these:
NO SMOKING: If you want to poison yourself slowly, go for it. Just do it far away from me. I already tried being married to a smoker. It didn't work for me and I won't do it again, which is why I won't even bother dating a smoker. I don't date people who have zero marriage potential, and smoking is an automatic disqualifier. Sorry!
NO DRUGS: Again, already tried this one in a marriage. It doesn't work. I am not and will never be "420 friendly", and yes, pot is a drug. Go stare at the walls in your own house and stay outta mine.
NO FIXER-UPPERS: This is a more recently adopted rule. Women in general are guilty of this and I think probably Christian women doubly so... we meet someone with a sad and tragic past and we get this romantic notion in our heads that we can somehow make it all better with the power of love or some trite BS like that. Yeah, well, guess what... it doesn't work that way. If a guy has more issues than TV Guide and/or more baggage than the average United Airlines flight, don't get involved.
And before I start sounding too negative, the deal-breaker list isn't my only list. I also have a "must-have" list. Because I work for Head Start and have been thoroughly PBIS indoctrinated, I'm going to call them the "be" rules.
BE a Real Grown-up: I already have a kid. Not looking for another one at this point. I do not want to feel like your mother or your babysitter. Any potential man should be like me in that he is completely capable of functioning solo without anyone to clean up his messes (both literal and metaphorical). Any potential cleaning up of each other's messes would be purely by mutual agreement to do so, not necessity or obligation.
BE Funny: Sense of humor. It is a must for anyone who is going to put up with me for more than, say, five minutes. It is also a must for anyone that I am going to have to put up with for more than, say, five minutes. Witty banter skill is an absolute requirement.
And as if that didn't reduce the field of potential candidates enough, I threw this one on:
BE a Christian: And just like that, I've narrowed my potential field of choices down to two! (Either of which could potentially be reading this... hi guys!) And I'm not saying that there are no other single, Christian men in the universe, I'm just saying that I don't know any personally and I have failed to stumble across any in the last nine years or so. That's all I'm saying. If I insist on church-going, faithful Christian men, the number of proverbial fish in the proverbial sea decreases exponentially.
But I guess really this was just a very roundabout way for me to say this: I'm lonely tonight and want someone to cuddle with. Just tonight, though. I'll probably be fine again tomorrow.
Song o' the Day: While not strictly related to the topic at hand, I'm gonna go with "Just Tonight" by The Pretty Reckless, because I have it in my head right now. See/hear it here.
10 1/2 (approximately): The number of years that have elapsed since, as an 18 year old, I thought it would be a pretty smart idea to get married on June 23, 2001.
9 (approximately): The number of years it has been since my ex-husband and I separated for the third and final time. (After he left, came back, left, came back, then told me he was leaving again. I told him not to bother coming back if he left. So of course, now our divorce is my fault because I told him not to come back.)
4 years, 2 months (almost exactly): The number of years we've been officially divorced. (Someone wouldn't help pay for it (because it was my fault), so it had to wait until I could afford to do it myself.)
Once a year or less: The approximate frequency with which either of the above two facts bothers me in the slightest. (In truth, I'm much more likely to celebrate those same facts on any given day.)
And if I'm gonna be totally fair, it's not him specifically I miss. Okay, actually I don't miss him at all... like I said, in retrospect I'm glad he's gone. I mostly just miss the bed not being empty. Odd if you consider that for the greater part of our marriage we worked opposing shifts and were never in the bed at the same time anyway, but I digress.
In general I've adapted pretty darn well to the single-parenting lifestyle. Since we separated I've managed to get myself a college degree, get myself a job, get myself an apartment, and somehow raise a kid who isn't screwed up in the head (yet). I can kill my own spiders, perform my own basic automobile maintenance, move my own heavy stuff and open my own jars. I have managed to keep us fed, clothed and housed for the most part without even the aid of monthly child support payments (someone doesn't pay them). Some of the above successes are partly attributable to supportive family members, both blood relatives and church family. And a lot of it just attributable to the fact that I do not need a man to survive... I learned that about 9 years ago when he walked.
Of course, that same fact is also the source of my current dilemma. Or at least part of it. That's just the problem... I don't need a man. Most of the time I don't even want one. Sometimes I entertain the notion that the ideal arrangement for me would be one of those marriages where you maintain separate houses and have sleepovers. (Actually, were it not against my religion, the ideal arrangement would probably be more what is termed a "friend with benefits"... no legal entanglements whatsoever.) Some would say that I've never even been in a healthy, functional romantic relationship and just don't know what I'm missing. They're probably right about that, but what am I supposed to do about it? It ain't exactly raining men around here... in fact, it's been more of a nine-year drought. And yes, there have been a couple of close calls in those nine years, but they mostly served to make me realize even more what I don't want to put up with.
Yeah, maybe that's the problem. Having nine years to think it over has made me really picky. I have a long list of deal-breakers. Like these:
NO SMOKING: If you want to poison yourself slowly, go for it. Just do it far away from me. I already tried being married to a smoker. It didn't work for me and I won't do it again, which is why I won't even bother dating a smoker. I don't date people who have zero marriage potential, and smoking is an automatic disqualifier. Sorry!
NO DRUGS: Again, already tried this one in a marriage. It doesn't work. I am not and will never be "420 friendly", and yes, pot is a drug. Go stare at the walls in your own house and stay outta mine.
NO FIXER-UPPERS: This is a more recently adopted rule. Women in general are guilty of this and I think probably Christian women doubly so... we meet someone with a sad and tragic past and we get this romantic notion in our heads that we can somehow make it all better with the power of love or some trite BS like that. Yeah, well, guess what... it doesn't work that way. If a guy has more issues than TV Guide and/or more baggage than the average United Airlines flight, don't get involved.
And before I start sounding too negative, the deal-breaker list isn't my only list. I also have a "must-have" list. Because I work for Head Start and have been thoroughly PBIS indoctrinated, I'm going to call them the "be" rules.
BE a Real Grown-up: I already have a kid. Not looking for another one at this point. I do not want to feel like your mother or your babysitter. Any potential man should be like me in that he is completely capable of functioning solo without anyone to clean up his messes (both literal and metaphorical). Any potential cleaning up of each other's messes would be purely by mutual agreement to do so, not necessity or obligation.
BE Funny: Sense of humor. It is a must for anyone who is going to put up with me for more than, say, five minutes. It is also a must for anyone that I am going to have to put up with for more than, say, five minutes. Witty banter skill is an absolute requirement.
And as if that didn't reduce the field of potential candidates enough, I threw this one on:
BE a Christian: And just like that, I've narrowed my potential field of choices down to two! (Either of which could potentially be reading this... hi guys!) And I'm not saying that there are no other single, Christian men in the universe, I'm just saying that I don't know any personally and I have failed to stumble across any in the last nine years or so. That's all I'm saying. If I insist on church-going, faithful Christian men, the number of proverbial fish in the proverbial sea decreases exponentially.
But I guess really this was just a very roundabout way for me to say this: I'm lonely tonight and want someone to cuddle with. Just tonight, though. I'll probably be fine again tomorrow.
Song o' the Day: While not strictly related to the topic at hand, I'm gonna go with "Just Tonight" by The Pretty Reckless, because I have it in my head right now. See/hear it here.
January 28, 2012
Finding my happy place....
"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the economy, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny." - Albert Ellis
"Most barriers to your success are man-made. And most often, you're the man who made them." - Frank Tyger
"One man's creativity is another man's brain damage." - Roland Fischer
"Imagination and fiction make up about three-quarters of our real life." - Simone Weil
"Live on the abnormal and unheard of... sing the anguish of ultimate grief and discover the cavalries of the earth, arrive at the tragic by way of what is mysterious." - Santiago Rusinol
These are just a few of my favorite quotations that now decorate and pretty much define my newly made happy place. I'm not going to post all the pics on the blog, because we'd have more pics than blog, but anyone who would like to go over and see the album on FB can do so here. I hope I've got the settings right to have made it publicly available.
Back at our old house three years ago shortly before we moved, I created what I was calling my "creativity corner", which back in the day consisted of a card table in a corner with some random stuff pasted to the walls around it. Then we moved, I became employed (yes, in that order), and creativity of any kind sort of got lost in the shuffle, much less the making of a space for it. I sort of pasted a lot of that same random junk on the wall by the computer downstairs, but that was as far as I ever got. Strange, because most of my creativity happens in my bedroom, and it happens after dark. Apparently I cannot create in the daylight. I sort of discovered accidentally last year that lava lamps and purple chili pepper lights, for whatever reason, put me in a creative happy place. I discovered accidentally a few weeks ago that blacklight doubles this effect, especially when I'm surrounded by an awful lot of stuff that glows in blacklight. Also, for years now, I have had a file on my SD card titled "quotebag", in which I keep track of all the little quotes I stumble upon on the internets that make me happy.
The coalescing of all these events has finally culminated in the creation of my new Happy Place... the place where hopefully I'll finally get some songs written and go about doing this thing I've recently decided I'll never forgive myself if I don't at least try to do. There are an awful lot of band things in my Happy Place (not nearly enough pics of Shaun Morgan yet, but I'm working on that.) That much I expected. I was not expecting so many skulls to show up, but they did. I guess skulls just make me happy... especially the decorated Mexican ones. (Brings back fond memories of catrina-hunting in Metepec, maybe, I dunno.) The quotes on blacklight-reactive post-its were a stroke of genius, however.... proof that the magic of the Happy Place is in effect. Also I've noticed that I'm blogging more since I started pulling the bits of the happy place together, which is either a sign that the creative juices are starting to flow again or a sign that I like boring my literally ones of readers with the minutiae of my attempts to grow out of the box I used to put myself in.
Either way, you're stuck with me. I'm not going away. In fact, I'm probably only going to get louder as this thing progresses. I've finally found my voice, and I'm about to start using it. So stand back.... *evil laugh*
Song o' the Day: "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna Coil. I do not know why, but this song just makes me happy at this point in my life. (Not as happy that the white Cristina in the vid looks like Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord, but you can't have everything I guess.) Follow me, follow me, as I trip the darkness one more time....
"Most barriers to your success are man-made. And most often, you're the man who made them." - Frank Tyger
"One man's creativity is another man's brain damage." - Roland Fischer
"Imagination and fiction make up about three-quarters of our real life." - Simone Weil
"Live on the abnormal and unheard of... sing the anguish of ultimate grief and discover the cavalries of the earth, arrive at the tragic by way of what is mysterious." - Santiago Rusinol
These are just a few of my favorite quotations that now decorate and pretty much define my newly made happy place. I'm not going to post all the pics on the blog, because we'd have more pics than blog, but anyone who would like to go over and see the album on FB can do so here. I hope I've got the settings right to have made it publicly available.
Back at our old house three years ago shortly before we moved, I created what I was calling my "creativity corner", which back in the day consisted of a card table in a corner with some random stuff pasted to the walls around it. Then we moved, I became employed (yes, in that order), and creativity of any kind sort of got lost in the shuffle, much less the making of a space for it. I sort of pasted a lot of that same random junk on the wall by the computer downstairs, but that was as far as I ever got. Strange, because most of my creativity happens in my bedroom, and it happens after dark. Apparently I cannot create in the daylight. I sort of discovered accidentally last year that lava lamps and purple chili pepper lights, for whatever reason, put me in a creative happy place. I discovered accidentally a few weeks ago that blacklight doubles this effect, especially when I'm surrounded by an awful lot of stuff that glows in blacklight. Also, for years now, I have had a file on my SD card titled "quotebag", in which I keep track of all the little quotes I stumble upon on the internets that make me happy.
The coalescing of all these events has finally culminated in the creation of my new Happy Place... the place where hopefully I'll finally get some songs written and go about doing this thing I've recently decided I'll never forgive myself if I don't at least try to do. There are an awful lot of band things in my Happy Place (not nearly enough pics of Shaun Morgan yet, but I'm working on that.) That much I expected. I was not expecting so many skulls to show up, but they did. I guess skulls just make me happy... especially the decorated Mexican ones. (Brings back fond memories of catrina-hunting in Metepec, maybe, I dunno.) The quotes on blacklight-reactive post-its were a stroke of genius, however.... proof that the magic of the Happy Place is in effect. Also I've noticed that I'm blogging more since I started pulling the bits of the happy place together, which is either a sign that the creative juices are starting to flow again or a sign that I like boring my literally ones of readers with the minutiae of my attempts to grow out of the box I used to put myself in.
Either way, you're stuck with me. I'm not going away. In fact, I'm probably only going to get louder as this thing progresses. I've finally found my voice, and I'm about to start using it. So stand back.... *evil laugh*
Song o' the Day: "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna Coil. I do not know why, but this song just makes me happy at this point in my life. (Not as happy that the white Cristina in the vid looks like Yolandi Visser from Die Antwoord, but you can't have everything I guess.) Follow me, follow me, as I trip the darkness one more time....
January 26, 2012
The Creative Process....
(Sweet Sacrifice - Evanescence) (I should probably note that there will be a lot of female artists floating around on this blog today, because I'm listening to a playlist on my iPod rather than iTunes proper on my computer.) (Swimming Home - Evanescence)
Well, it's certainly been an eventful couple of weeks in my life! Perhaps this is just me overly romanticizing my life again, but I have this weird sense that last Saturday was sort of a turning point in my existence.
In the wake of my successful (in my view, though I didn't actually get in the band) audition last week, I had another browse of Craigslist. I made contact with a guy in Oregon City who composes his own stuff, tracks his own demos, and is looking for a female vocalist to sing for his demos and maybe join the band if it works out well. (What You Want - Evanescence) He sent me six mp3 files of rough demos he's cooked up for me to play with. And by "play with" I mean "listen to repeatedly and try to write lyrics and melodies for".
Surprisingly, this task does not seem as daunting to me as it probably should. (What I See - Lacuna Coil.... I'm getting distracted by LOTS of shiny things right now) It's a challenge, yes, but it's so far been a fun one. So I thought I would share with you all the tactics I've decided to use for this project, plus my own semi-whacked maunderings, and if anyone who reads this has ever done anything similar before they should feel free to leave a comment advising me on my technique.
So, what does someone with no professional experience in music do when presented with the task of composing lyrics and melodies to six heavy metal tracks? Well, first I put my kid to bed. Then I go into my bedroom, turn on the lava lamp, the black light, and the purple chili pepper lights, and I grab the good headphones (the purple Skullcandy ones that are the most expensive pair of headphones I have ever owned), the laptop, a bottle of water, and the official notebook designated to be the repository of any and all song/band-related ideas from here on out until it has no more pages. (Since You've Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson)
These items gathered, I migrate to the desk and establish base camp there. Headphones are plugged into the laptop, pen and notebook are laid out beside the laptop, bottle of water within easy reach (not because of singing, but because water is the beverage of champions), and the six mp3s are downloaded into a single folder on the desktop for convenience.
The first song to be listened to has been determined randomly by a system we call "the order the computer put them in, which is not alphabetical". (Dolphin - Poe) First listen through, I don't think about it too much... I just listen and sort of get a feel for the rhythm and tone of the song. The correct position for this is eyes closed, elbows on the desk, hands over the earpieces of the headphones making sure no extra noise gets in. For the second listen through, I pick up the pen. I listen once again with eyes closed, but if I have a sudden flash of insight I open my eyes and scribble it down.
This is the bit where it's gonna sound like I'm on crack, but I swear I'm sober. Tired, but sober. Anyway, by the second listening, I start to hear words. No joke. Just fragmented sentences here and there, but generally sticking to a theme. I jot all of these down, even if I'm not going to end up using all of them (or any of them!) (Choking the Cherry - Poe) The third listen through I do pretty much the same thing, and usually by the end of it I at least have an idea of a melody in my head. I have been told that the guy writing all this music would like to have melodic female vocals combined with male screaming/growling (a combination I happen to like), and occasionally I even think of some good parts for the guy and jot those down too. I'll listen to the song a fourth time to see if I get anything I missed, but that's about it.
See, this guy (who is called Paul) has just asked me to pick one or two of the six songs that I want to play with and develop those two, then he can judge for himself if he likes the directions my mind wanders in. (Sorrow - Flyleaf) The titles he has assigned the mp3 files, he says, are only identifying titles he knows the songs by and not necessarily the final title of the song or at all indicative of what he thinks the song is about. So mostly I'm to ignore those, though some of them would make good band names... lol. I think probably that's indicative that we would at least jive creatively, since I like his completely fake song titles and think they might make good band names.
(Fly Away - Poe) I have so far only been through this much of the process with four of the six songs, and of those four I have a clear favorite and another that I will consider if I end up not liking the two I haven't listened to yet. My idea is, once I have narrowed down which two I want to work with, I will take my quick impression notes for those two songs and try to develop them into full lyrics for the song. If and when I get that far, I'll make a seriously low-quality recording (possibly on my phone, but maybe with my computer) of myself singing my lyrics and melody along with the rough demo he sent me. This I shall submit for his approval, and if he likes it I presume the next step would be to get together and record some better quality demos and start getting the band together. This, at least, is my understanding.
(I'm Not an Angel - Halestorm) So anyway, I'm enjoying having the creative freedom to pretty much give these songs whatever treatment I want. I'm feeling all Lacuna Coil up in here, and I Like It (to borrow the title of a Lacuna Coil song). And just for fun and games, I took a nice little picture of my workspace this evening and I thought I'd add it to the blog to give it that homey feel....
Oh, and Wide Awake by Lacuna Coil came on the iPod while I was fiddling about pulling the picture off of Facebook to stick on the blog. Perhaps this is fitting, given my current state of wakefulness at a time at which I should reasonably be sleeping rather than blogging or lyricizing (which may not actually have been a word, but it is now!)
Speaking of things that just came on my iPod, I didn't even know there was such thing as Italian Reggae until I discovered Radici nel Cemento because one of my Italian friends posted the song Bella Ciccia on their Facebook wall. Once you get over the absurdity of Italian Reggae as an extant genre, it's kinda catchy... lol.
Song o' the Day: "Swimming Home" by Evanescence, because I was singing it in the shower earlier after Zumba. My neighbors will probably be really glad when I finally move out... lol. I'd link you to a place to see/hear this one, but I'm feeling lazy. YouTube it yourself. You won't find a vid because there isn't one, but no doubt some fanboy/girl has uploaded the song to YouTube along with a montage of stunning photos of Amy Lee.
For the record, Cristina Scabbia is hotter. And generally more likeable as a person, from what I can tell. ;-)
Well, it's certainly been an eventful couple of weeks in my life! Perhaps this is just me overly romanticizing my life again, but I have this weird sense that last Saturday was sort of a turning point in my existence.
In the wake of my successful (in my view, though I didn't actually get in the band) audition last week, I had another browse of Craigslist. I made contact with a guy in Oregon City who composes his own stuff, tracks his own demos, and is looking for a female vocalist to sing for his demos and maybe join the band if it works out well. (What You Want - Evanescence) He sent me six mp3 files of rough demos he's cooked up for me to play with. And by "play with" I mean "listen to repeatedly and try to write lyrics and melodies for".
Surprisingly, this task does not seem as daunting to me as it probably should. (What I See - Lacuna Coil.... I'm getting distracted by LOTS of shiny things right now) It's a challenge, yes, but it's so far been a fun one. So I thought I would share with you all the tactics I've decided to use for this project, plus my own semi-whacked maunderings, and if anyone who reads this has ever done anything similar before they should feel free to leave a comment advising me on my technique.
So, what does someone with no professional experience in music do when presented with the task of composing lyrics and melodies to six heavy metal tracks? Well, first I put my kid to bed. Then I go into my bedroom, turn on the lava lamp, the black light, and the purple chili pepper lights, and I grab the good headphones (the purple Skullcandy ones that are the most expensive pair of headphones I have ever owned), the laptop, a bottle of water, and the official notebook designated to be the repository of any and all song/band-related ideas from here on out until it has no more pages. (Since You've Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson)
These items gathered, I migrate to the desk and establish base camp there. Headphones are plugged into the laptop, pen and notebook are laid out beside the laptop, bottle of water within easy reach (not because of singing, but because water is the beverage of champions), and the six mp3s are downloaded into a single folder on the desktop for convenience.
The first song to be listened to has been determined randomly by a system we call "the order the computer put them in, which is not alphabetical". (Dolphin - Poe) First listen through, I don't think about it too much... I just listen and sort of get a feel for the rhythm and tone of the song. The correct position for this is eyes closed, elbows on the desk, hands over the earpieces of the headphones making sure no extra noise gets in. For the second listen through, I pick up the pen. I listen once again with eyes closed, but if I have a sudden flash of insight I open my eyes and scribble it down.
This is the bit where it's gonna sound like I'm on crack, but I swear I'm sober. Tired, but sober. Anyway, by the second listening, I start to hear words. No joke. Just fragmented sentences here and there, but generally sticking to a theme. I jot all of these down, even if I'm not going to end up using all of them (or any of them!) (Choking the Cherry - Poe) The third listen through I do pretty much the same thing, and usually by the end of it I at least have an idea of a melody in my head. I have been told that the guy writing all this music would like to have melodic female vocals combined with male screaming/growling (a combination I happen to like), and occasionally I even think of some good parts for the guy and jot those down too. I'll listen to the song a fourth time to see if I get anything I missed, but that's about it.
See, this guy (who is called Paul) has just asked me to pick one or two of the six songs that I want to play with and develop those two, then he can judge for himself if he likes the directions my mind wanders in. (Sorrow - Flyleaf) The titles he has assigned the mp3 files, he says, are only identifying titles he knows the songs by and not necessarily the final title of the song or at all indicative of what he thinks the song is about. So mostly I'm to ignore those, though some of them would make good band names... lol. I think probably that's indicative that we would at least jive creatively, since I like his completely fake song titles and think they might make good band names.
(Fly Away - Poe) I have so far only been through this much of the process with four of the six songs, and of those four I have a clear favorite and another that I will consider if I end up not liking the two I haven't listened to yet. My idea is, once I have narrowed down which two I want to work with, I will take my quick impression notes for those two songs and try to develop them into full lyrics for the song. If and when I get that far, I'll make a seriously low-quality recording (possibly on my phone, but maybe with my computer) of myself singing my lyrics and melody along with the rough demo he sent me. This I shall submit for his approval, and if he likes it I presume the next step would be to get together and record some better quality demos and start getting the band together. This, at least, is my understanding.
Oh, and Wide Awake by Lacuna Coil came on the iPod while I was fiddling about pulling the picture off of Facebook to stick on the blog. Perhaps this is fitting, given my current state of wakefulness at a time at which I should reasonably be sleeping rather than blogging or lyricizing (which may not actually have been a word, but it is now!)
Speaking of things that just came on my iPod, I didn't even know there was such thing as Italian Reggae until I discovered Radici nel Cemento because one of my Italian friends posted the song Bella Ciccia on their Facebook wall. Once you get over the absurdity of Italian Reggae as an extant genre, it's kinda catchy... lol.
Song o' the Day: "Swimming Home" by Evanescence, because I was singing it in the shower earlier after Zumba. My neighbors will probably be really glad when I finally move out... lol. I'd link you to a place to see/hear this one, but I'm feeling lazy. YouTube it yourself. You won't find a vid because there isn't one, but no doubt some fanboy/girl has uploaded the song to YouTube along with a montage of stunning photos of Amy Lee.
For the record, Cristina Scabbia is hotter. And generally more likeable as a person, from what I can tell. ;-)
January 22, 2012
So I'm not in a band... but who cares?! :-)
Though I was not notified directly (at least not as of the time of this writing), it would seem that the band I auditioned for yesterday has decided to go a different direction. I ascertained this from the guitarist's Facebook posting referring to the new vocalist as "him" and then checked my anatomy and determined I was out of the running.
Hardly surprising... rock is still a man's world, but we're making headway!
However, I feel the need to elaborate a bit on some of the positive things that came out of this experience, lest people think I'm going to sit around and cry now. No, I'm not crying. I haven't cried. I'm not going to cry. I think that covers all my verb tenses.
See, here's the thing... yesterday, I did something I've always wanted to do but only dreamed of doing. Cross one off the bucket list. And you know why I never did it before? Because the idea scared the crap out of me, that's why. I'm totally comfortable singing in cars, showers, my own house, etc., but going and singing in front of complete strangers knowing that they're judging me every second? Heck naw, bro! But I did it anyway and you know what? It was amazing. It was fun (after the first few moments of terror), I met some cool people, and perhaps more importantly I learned that I can do stuff I didn't think I could do. Seriously, I pretty much feel like I could take the world on now... so what if a bunch of musicians picked a dude instead of me?! I learned that I can overcome the fear and self-consciousness and do instead of just dream, and I think that's a pretty valuable lesson, TVYM. Well worth the two hours I spent on the audition process.
In that spirit, I've done two things today... I set for myself a rather lofty goal which I shall perhaps detail in another post, and also I e-mailed another musician off of Craigslist. This one was specifically looking for a female, according to the ad, so already I have one of the major qualifications. Go me!
I shall take the advice "Tall Chris" gave me, and not stop doing what I'm doing. Because for the first time in a long time, I was excited about something and it was very cool. I guess you could say I had a little taste and it hooked me... I'll definitely be back for more.
Oh, and those guys have my number for when the guy they picked flakes out on them... lol. And until then....
Song o' the Day: "So What" by Pink. (I refuse to put an exclamation mark in her name. That's just stupid. Sort of like Ke-dollarsign-ha, which is how I prefer to pronounce "Ke$ha" out loud. Pee-exclamationpoint-nk is just too cumbersome, though.) I really recommend watching the video because it's funny and I like the overall snarky tone of the song, though I mostly picked it for the chorus. Those too cowardly to watch the video can read the chorus lyrics below. Those brave enough can click the song title for a link to the vid.
So what? I'm still a rockstar!
I've got my rock moves
And I don't need you
And guess what? I'm having more fun
And now that we're done
I'm gonna show you tonight
I'm all right, I'm just fine
And you're a tool, so
So what? I am a rockstar!
I've got my rock moves
And I don't want you tonight
Hardly surprising... rock is still a man's world, but we're making headway!
However, I feel the need to elaborate a bit on some of the positive things that came out of this experience, lest people think I'm going to sit around and cry now. No, I'm not crying. I haven't cried. I'm not going to cry. I think that covers all my verb tenses.
See, here's the thing... yesterday, I did something I've always wanted to do but only dreamed of doing. Cross one off the bucket list. And you know why I never did it before? Because the idea scared the crap out of me, that's why. I'm totally comfortable singing in cars, showers, my own house, etc., but going and singing in front of complete strangers knowing that they're judging me every second? Heck naw, bro! But I did it anyway and you know what? It was amazing. It was fun (after the first few moments of terror), I met some cool people, and perhaps more importantly I learned that I can do stuff I didn't think I could do. Seriously, I pretty much feel like I could take the world on now... so what if a bunch of musicians picked a dude instead of me?! I learned that I can overcome the fear and self-consciousness and do instead of just dream, and I think that's a pretty valuable lesson, TVYM. Well worth the two hours I spent on the audition process.
In that spirit, I've done two things today... I set for myself a rather lofty goal which I shall perhaps detail in another post, and also I e-mailed another musician off of Craigslist. This one was specifically looking for a female, according to the ad, so already I have one of the major qualifications. Go me!
I shall take the advice "Tall Chris" gave me, and not stop doing what I'm doing. Because for the first time in a long time, I was excited about something and it was very cool. I guess you could say I had a little taste and it hooked me... I'll definitely be back for more.
Oh, and those guys have my number for when the guy they picked flakes out on them... lol. And until then....
Song o' the Day: "So What" by Pink. (I refuse to put an exclamation mark in her name. That's just stupid. Sort of like Ke-dollarsign-ha, which is how I prefer to pronounce "Ke$ha" out loud. Pee-exclamationpoint-nk is just too cumbersome, though.) I really recommend watching the video because it's funny and I like the overall snarky tone of the song, though I mostly picked it for the chorus. Those too cowardly to watch the video can read the chorus lyrics below. Those brave enough can click the song title for a link to the vid.
So what? I'm still a rockstar!
I've got my rock moves
And I don't need you
And guess what? I'm having more fun
And now that we're done
I'm gonna show you tonight
I'm all right, I'm just fine
And you're a tool, so
So what? I am a rockstar!
I've got my rock moves
And I don't want you tonight
January 21, 2012
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Too excited! Can't sleep! Gonna blog and then go dye my hair (again) instead! (Lost in Paradise - Evanescence).*
Yeah, anyway, our story begins about a month ago. I was bored one night right around this same time (9:20) (Diamond Eyes (Boom Lay Boom) - Shinedown). So I got on Craigslist. This is because I think Craigslist is a cesspool of humanity and it amuses me to see some of the lame that goes on there. I checked out the "musicians" community where bands that need members put ads and members that need bands put ads. Because generally the musician types make some pretty funny posts. I saw one there that said "MOLALLA" and suddenly I was intrigued. Because I happen to live there. I read the ad and liked most of the influences listed, so just on a whim, I e-mailed the guy, who was the guitarist, and asked if they were opposed to the idea of a female vocalist. Because some macho rock bands just don't want chicks up in their business, that's why. I then got off of Craigslist, because if I start replying to things I know I'm really bored and need to go get a life. Total time on Craigslist: about 5 minutes.
Much to my surprise, the dude e-mails me back less than twenty minutes later and says no, they're pretty open-minded and they don't mind the idea of a female singer, so did I want to audition? (Give it Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers) After a momentary fit of "they weren't actually supposed to respond!" panic, I thought, "Well why not?! I've been dreaming about being in a band for years... why not audition?" So I emailed him back and said sure, and he almost immediately gave me a date and time: January 21st at 2:00.
I decided almost immediately what song I would like to do at the audition, then promptly forgot all about it for nearly a month. I did not start thinking about it again until yesterday. And even then, I didn't get nervous. I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go sing a song." I was fine in English class this morning. I was fine when I got home from English class this morning. The nerves hit when I got in my car for the less-than-ten-minute drive to the audition. Fine timing, that! (Zithande - Freshlyground) I sang my song in the car and told myself that I was just going to fake confidence and go in and do my thing, and whatever happened would be okay.
I got out of the car and went toward the house and was greeted by the bass player. I later learned that he is called "Tall Chris", "Bass-player Chris", (the guitarist is also named Chris) or "Long-legged Freak". Chris the guitarist is "Bald Chris" or "Short Chris" or "Chris Dawg". Not only was I on time for my audition, but I was actually five minutes early. The drummer (who is not named Chris) was not there yet. In the end, in fact, he was over half an hour late. (Insert joke about unreliability of drummers here.) (Natural Life - Breaking Benjamin) This gave me time to talk with Chris and Chris, and Bald Chris and I discovered that we actually went to school together briefly during my sophomore year, and we have had a friend in common since that time. I pretty much clicked with them right away, so by the time the non-Chris drummer got there I was feeling much more comfortable. Right until the point where we got down to business about 3 o'clock.
They had a card table set up in the practice space, and the three of them sat at the table with spiral notebooks, ready to take notes on my performance. And suddenly the nerves hit again, because it was on. (I Am Not Your Gameboy - Freezepop) Three guys I just met are sitting at a table with notebooks and pens, staring at me, waiting for me to start singing so they can write down notes/critiques on my performance. Yikes.
The song I picked to sing for the audition was "Make Me Wanna Die" by The Pretty Reckless. (Click the song title if you wanna hear it... I put in a link.) None of them had heard of that band, and all of them liked it. Score points for me! Anyway, I just tried to pretend I was in my car and nobody was listening, and that was how I got through the first verse. Right around the first chorus, I realized that the acoustics in the practice room were awesome. I was really enjoying the way my voice was bouncing off the walls, and I started having fun and playing with it, seeing what I could make the noise do. Nerves gone. (I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith) As always, though, the song got over just when I was really getting into it... curse these short songs anyway! (And I just want to mention, I killed on the high note at the end... better tone than I've ever done, I think. Basically I knocked the audition out of the park.)
When I was done I noticed they were all looking at me kind of surprised-like, then Bald Chris said, "Wow... that was really good." The other two quickly agreed, and I sat down at the table and they asked me some questions about the style of music I like and what experience I have (next to none), and we made chit-chat for a few minutes, then Tall Chris said, "Let me just say something... Even if we decide to go with someone else, don't stop doing what you're doing. Find another band or start your own, because you've got some talent." Now that made me extra happy. Because it was the first time I'd scraped up the courage and fake-confidence to actually audition for a band (which is something I've always wanted to do... I've always dreamed of being in a band), and the guy tells me that. Insert happy face here. :-)
(Blind - Korn) I hung out with them until about 4. Partly because the non-Chris who got there late had parked me in, but also because I was just having fun hanging. I even like Bald Chris's wife, who was also hanging around there. The guy who was supposed to audition at 3 flaked out, which made me look really good, and when Bald Chris called him he made some lame excuse about his girlfriend's car breaking down and rescheduled for tomorrow. But also I was just having fun getting to know them and talking to grown-ups (a rarity for me). They're all late-twenties to mid-thirties, all of them have at least one kid (Tall Chris has six), and they pretty much seem like mature adults. Who happen to be in a rock band that is far more successful than I knew about.
I am glad I didn't know this ahead of time, because it probably would have intimidated the heck outta me, but this is a band that won Portland's Battle of the Bands the first year they entered it. The second year they did it, they came in second place. They were offered a $20,000 contract from a small independent label, but turned it down because they figured out they would have had to pay out about $5,000 out-of-pocket for the tour and none of them had it, and the profit they would have made from CDs and downloads was pretty negligible (lousy contract, I guess). The walls of the practice space are almost completely covered with posters from gigs they've played. They have opened for a couple of touring bands that came through Portland that are more well-known. They are the real deal. (Someone Who Cares - Three Days Grace) While I was there hanging out being parked in, Bald Chris started cleaning out a storage tub in the practice space and found a bunch of old merch and a stack of demo CDs. They gave me two of the demo CDs, a stack of band logo stickers, and a band logo T-shirt for the Chamaco (they didn't have any left in my size). It probably should be mentioned at this point that their plan is to find a new singer and basically start over fresh. They want to write new songs and find a new band name. The old one (which I won't mention here, but if you really want to know you can ask me) is to be no more, which is why they were giving away the merch. So even if I don't get into the band, I didn't walk away empty-handed... I got some pretty cool souvenirs. Not bad for my first audition! (The Big Issue - Chumbawamba) Definitely it has given me the courage to try it again sometime if I don't get into this band (which I hope I do).
Anyway, they have I think 3 auditions scheduled for tomorrow, the last of which is at 5, I believe, and then they plan to make a decision immediately. I could very realistically know one way or the other by 7 or 8 p.m. tomorrow. And I say again - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! As much as I told myself I was just going to do it and whatever the outcome was would be fine (and it is... I'm not going to cry if I don't get in, but I will be more disappointed than I initially thought I would be), I'm currently more excited than I've been about anything in quite some time and I don't know at all if I will be able to sleep tonight. (Día Especial - Shakira)
Only adding to my general elation with the day, when I got home and went over to check the mail, my new Lacuna Coil CD, "Dark Adrenaline", which I pre-ordered, was in the mailbox. Three days BEFORE the release date! Yay for pre-ordering and fast shipping! You can't even walk into a store and buy it until the 24th! So when I got home and settled, the Chamaco and I first listened to "Dark Adrenaline" (I am in love with "Trip the Darkness") and then the demo CD the band gave me. My house has been very musical tonight... even more so than usual.
Somewhat frustrated now, because I want to sing loudly in my house and can't because I live in an apartment and it's after "quiet time" (which never stops my neighbors from singing loud, drunken karaoke, but I'm nicer than them, I guess). (Sk8er Boi - Avril Lavigne) Also the Chamaco is in bed. So I'm going to go do unspeakable things to my hair and try to find an outlet for my sudden creativity overflow. Maybe I'll try writing some lyrics down just in case... or I'll ponder potential band names. (I spit out one randomly at the audition that they all actually kind of liked.) (Sacred Lie - Disturbed) I'll have to think of something to do until I get tired enough to be sleepy. Gonna be a fun morning getting up for church tomorrow!
Thanks for reading my excited-babble!
Song o' the Day: Gonna have to repeat myself and do "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna Coil. Check it out if you didn't already!
*If you didn't catch on to what's up with the random song titles scattered throughout the blog, I put iTunes on shuffle when I blog and type the name of each song that comes up whenever it does. So not only do you get a small taste of my musical schizophrenia, but you also get to see roughly how long it takes me to focus long enough to type a paragraph at 80+ wpm. Yes, I type that fast, so when I get about 1 song per paragraph it's because something slowed me down. Probably something shiny.
Yeah, anyway, our story begins about a month ago. I was bored one night right around this same time (9:20) (Diamond Eyes (Boom Lay Boom) - Shinedown). So I got on Craigslist. This is because I think Craigslist is a cesspool of humanity and it amuses me to see some of the lame that goes on there. I checked out the "musicians" community where bands that need members put ads and members that need bands put ads. Because generally the musician types make some pretty funny posts. I saw one there that said "MOLALLA" and suddenly I was intrigued. Because I happen to live there. I read the ad and liked most of the influences listed, so just on a whim, I e-mailed the guy, who was the guitarist, and asked if they were opposed to the idea of a female vocalist. Because some macho rock bands just don't want chicks up in their business, that's why. I then got off of Craigslist, because if I start replying to things I know I'm really bored and need to go get a life. Total time on Craigslist: about 5 minutes.
Much to my surprise, the dude e-mails me back less than twenty minutes later and says no, they're pretty open-minded and they don't mind the idea of a female singer, so did I want to audition? (Give it Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers) After a momentary fit of "they weren't actually supposed to respond!" panic, I thought, "Well why not?! I've been dreaming about being in a band for years... why not audition?" So I emailed him back and said sure, and he almost immediately gave me a date and time: January 21st at 2:00.
I decided almost immediately what song I would like to do at the audition, then promptly forgot all about it for nearly a month. I did not start thinking about it again until yesterday. And even then, I didn't get nervous. I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna go sing a song." I was fine in English class this morning. I was fine when I got home from English class this morning. The nerves hit when I got in my car for the less-than-ten-minute drive to the audition. Fine timing, that! (Zithande - Freshlyground) I sang my song in the car and told myself that I was just going to fake confidence and go in and do my thing, and whatever happened would be okay.
I got out of the car and went toward the house and was greeted by the bass player. I later learned that he is called "Tall Chris", "Bass-player Chris", (the guitarist is also named Chris) or "Long-legged Freak". Chris the guitarist is "Bald Chris" or "Short Chris" or "Chris Dawg". Not only was I on time for my audition, but I was actually five minutes early. The drummer (who is not named Chris) was not there yet. In the end, in fact, he was over half an hour late. (Insert joke about unreliability of drummers here.) (Natural Life - Breaking Benjamin) This gave me time to talk with Chris and Chris, and Bald Chris and I discovered that we actually went to school together briefly during my sophomore year, and we have had a friend in common since that time. I pretty much clicked with them right away, so by the time the non-Chris drummer got there I was feeling much more comfortable. Right until the point where we got down to business about 3 o'clock.
They had a card table set up in the practice space, and the three of them sat at the table with spiral notebooks, ready to take notes on my performance. And suddenly the nerves hit again, because it was on. (I Am Not Your Gameboy - Freezepop) Three guys I just met are sitting at a table with notebooks and pens, staring at me, waiting for me to start singing so they can write down notes/critiques on my performance. Yikes.
The song I picked to sing for the audition was "Make Me Wanna Die" by The Pretty Reckless. (Click the song title if you wanna hear it... I put in a link.) None of them had heard of that band, and all of them liked it. Score points for me! Anyway, I just tried to pretend I was in my car and nobody was listening, and that was how I got through the first verse. Right around the first chorus, I realized that the acoustics in the practice room were awesome. I was really enjoying the way my voice was bouncing off the walls, and I started having fun and playing with it, seeing what I could make the noise do. Nerves gone. (I Wanna Talk About Me - Toby Keith) As always, though, the song got over just when I was really getting into it... curse these short songs anyway! (And I just want to mention, I killed on the high note at the end... better tone than I've ever done, I think. Basically I knocked the audition out of the park.)
When I was done I noticed they were all looking at me kind of surprised-like, then Bald Chris said, "Wow... that was really good." The other two quickly agreed, and I sat down at the table and they asked me some questions about the style of music I like and what experience I have (next to none), and we made chit-chat for a few minutes, then Tall Chris said, "Let me just say something... Even if we decide to go with someone else, don't stop doing what you're doing. Find another band or start your own, because you've got some talent." Now that made me extra happy. Because it was the first time I'd scraped up the courage and fake-confidence to actually audition for a band (which is something I've always wanted to do... I've always dreamed of being in a band), and the guy tells me that. Insert happy face here. :-)
(Blind - Korn) I hung out with them until about 4. Partly because the non-Chris who got there late had parked me in, but also because I was just having fun hanging. I even like Bald Chris's wife, who was also hanging around there. The guy who was supposed to audition at 3 flaked out, which made me look really good, and when Bald Chris called him he made some lame excuse about his girlfriend's car breaking down and rescheduled for tomorrow. But also I was just having fun getting to know them and talking to grown-ups (a rarity for me). They're all late-twenties to mid-thirties, all of them have at least one kid (Tall Chris has six), and they pretty much seem like mature adults. Who happen to be in a rock band that is far more successful than I knew about.
I am glad I didn't know this ahead of time, because it probably would have intimidated the heck outta me, but this is a band that won Portland's Battle of the Bands the first year they entered it. The second year they did it, they came in second place. They were offered a $20,000 contract from a small independent label, but turned it down because they figured out they would have had to pay out about $5,000 out-of-pocket for the tour and none of them had it, and the profit they would have made from CDs and downloads was pretty negligible (lousy contract, I guess). The walls of the practice space are almost completely covered with posters from gigs they've played. They have opened for a couple of touring bands that came through Portland that are more well-known. They are the real deal. (Someone Who Cares - Three Days Grace) While I was there hanging out being parked in, Bald Chris started cleaning out a storage tub in the practice space and found a bunch of old merch and a stack of demo CDs. They gave me two of the demo CDs, a stack of band logo stickers, and a band logo T-shirt for the Chamaco (they didn't have any left in my size). It probably should be mentioned at this point that their plan is to find a new singer and basically start over fresh. They want to write new songs and find a new band name. The old one (which I won't mention here, but if you really want to know you can ask me) is to be no more, which is why they were giving away the merch. So even if I don't get into the band, I didn't walk away empty-handed... I got some pretty cool souvenirs. Not bad for my first audition! (The Big Issue - Chumbawamba) Definitely it has given me the courage to try it again sometime if I don't get into this band (which I hope I do).
Anyway, they have I think 3 auditions scheduled for tomorrow, the last of which is at 5, I believe, and then they plan to make a decision immediately. I could very realistically know one way or the other by 7 or 8 p.m. tomorrow. And I say again - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! As much as I told myself I was just going to do it and whatever the outcome was would be fine (and it is... I'm not going to cry if I don't get in, but I will be more disappointed than I initially thought I would be), I'm currently more excited than I've been about anything in quite some time and I don't know at all if I will be able to sleep tonight. (Día Especial - Shakira)
Only adding to my general elation with the day, when I got home and went over to check the mail, my new Lacuna Coil CD, "Dark Adrenaline", which I pre-ordered, was in the mailbox. Three days BEFORE the release date! Yay for pre-ordering and fast shipping! You can't even walk into a store and buy it until the 24th! So when I got home and settled, the Chamaco and I first listened to "Dark Adrenaline" (I am in love with "Trip the Darkness") and then the demo CD the band gave me. My house has been very musical tonight... even more so than usual.
Somewhat frustrated now, because I want to sing loudly in my house and can't because I live in an apartment and it's after "quiet time" (which never stops my neighbors from singing loud, drunken karaoke, but I'm nicer than them, I guess). (Sk8er Boi - Avril Lavigne) Also the Chamaco is in bed. So I'm going to go do unspeakable things to my hair and try to find an outlet for my sudden creativity overflow. Maybe I'll try writing some lyrics down just in case... or I'll ponder potential band names. (I spit out one randomly at the audition that they all actually kind of liked.) (Sacred Lie - Disturbed) I'll have to think of something to do until I get tired enough to be sleepy. Gonna be a fun morning getting up for church tomorrow!
Thanks for reading my excited-babble!
Song o' the Day: Gonna have to repeat myself and do "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna Coil. Check it out if you didn't already!
*If you didn't catch on to what's up with the random song titles scattered throughout the blog, I put iTunes on shuffle when I blog and type the name of each song that comes up whenever it does. So not only do you get a small taste of my musical schizophrenia, but you also get to see roughly how long it takes me to focus long enough to type a paragraph at 80+ wpm. Yes, I type that fast, so when I get about 1 song per paragraph it's because something slowed me down. Probably something shiny.
January 13, 2012
January update... welcome to 2012!
So, I remembered a few minutes ago about this thing I used to do in blogs where I would put iTunes on shuffle and just add the name of any song that came on in parentheses like this (Para tu amor - Juanes) for the duration of the entire blog. Not only does that give the reader a glimpse into the sort of diverse music I put in my ears, but also it gives you a general sense of how long it takes me to write a blog. Not because I type slow, because I certainly don't... I can type 110 wpm when I get going. Mostly just because I keep getting distracted by shiny things. And Facebook. Is Facebook shiny? I don't know.
Anyhoo, I figured I'd do some sort of catchy-uppy-thingie about how things are going since I do not blog nearly as often as I used to. (Cuando tú no estés conmigo - Flans) Something about having a life now, I guess... ha ha ha! I'll go roughly by categories.
WORK LIFE: Well, I'm working full time... 40 hours a week. Sometimes 42, like this week. (Ifa um canto pra subir - Margareth Menezes) I am also actively seeking other work, because I really do not like my job. This year I changed to a new center (same organization) because it was only a mile and a half from my house instead of 35 miles. And it was full time instead of 25 hours a week. I like the short commute and more pay, and I like the people I work with, but I dislike the job itself and I extra dislike the current state of the administration. They have become like a many-handed Hindu goddess and none of the hands have the foggiest clue what the other six or seven are doing. You could throw a query out into the ether of administration and receive back three or four very authoritative and very different replies, all from parties who insist that they are correct and the others have it wrong. (Sálvame - RBD. Why is everything coming up in Spanish or Portuguese tonight?) It was bad enough in September and October that I would have quit had I had anywhere else to go to. Since then it has improved to the point of being tolerable, but it's definitely not enjoyable. And I know people say, "It's not supposed to be fun! That's why it's called work!" To those people, I say, "Perhaps you have accepted that you have to spend the majority of your waking hours doing something you hate, but I refuse to be robbed of my joy unnecessarily." There are lots of other jobs out there, and as soon as I find one that seems like a good fit, I shall be on my way. (Misery Business - Paramore)
FAMILY LIFE: I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I feel like the Chamaco and I have a closer relationship now than we have had in previous years. I don't know if it's just that he's getting old enough and witty enough to be good conversation or if it's just that my longtime policy of openness and honesty with the child finally seems appealing now that he's getting old enough to ask questions about adult topics. In other news, the Chamaco acquired a little brother in October of 2011 (not through any doing of mine, mind you). A lot of people seem to think I should be upset about that for some reason... one person asked me, "Doesn't that just make you feel..." and then he mimed being stabbed through the heart. Answer: No, it does not. I ceased to care at all where my ex-husband chooses to put his penis several years ago when it became clear that I was not among his top choices. And personally I'm thrilled that the Chamaco finally got a brother and I did absolutely nothing! (How Do You Like Me Now? - Toby Keith) In fact, he and I were just having one of our "grown-up" conversations the other day and he asked me if I would ever have another kid. I said, "Probably not, because even if I were to get pregnant tomorrow you would still be almost 11 by the time the kid was born. That seems like kind of a large gap to me." He agreed that it was. It still boggles his mind that by the time his little brother enters kindergarten, he will be nearly 16. That kinda boggles my mind too, honestly. (So What - Pink) We even had a discussion about how I'm not one of those "career mommies" whose sole mission in life was to have children. I told him I had it figured out that when he's 18 I'll be just barely 37, and I rather liked the idea of being that young and not having young dependent children. He said he thought he understood that notion. He really is surprisingly adult for his age sometimes. (My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson)
HOBBIES: Well, I'm still a language nerd. Some things never change. I spent a large chunk of summer 2011 working on my Italian. I'm not yet fluent, but definitely conversational. My Italian is probably at the same level that my Spanish was when I first arrived in Cuernavaca in 2005. The difference is that I'm not about to go immerse myself in Italy for 6 weeks and have it be like taking both 3rd and 4th year Spanish in a month and a half. I'm giving consideration to picking up either French or Portuguese next, or I might re-learn German. I had two years of German in college and promptly forgot almost all of it. I actually work with someone who speaks German now, and it might stick if I had someone to practice on.
On to the music bit... I'm still trying to self-teach guitar when I find the time. Also I will be fulfilling a longtime dream next week by auditioning to be the vocalist in a rock band. No joke. If I actually get the gig, that would be another longtime dream fulfilled, so fingers crossed all! (When it Rains - Paramore)
While my 2011 weight loss sort of stalled out after June, I managed not to gain much of it back either and I have made sure to keep my activity levels up. I got Just Dance 2 for the Wii, and I can easily spend an hour playing that and not noticing the elapsed time. This past week I started going to Zumba classes at my new gym (the old one went out of business, which was a blessing in disguise I think) and I love it! Dancing has always been one of those things that I really liked but was too self-conscious to do publicly (sort of like being a singer), and I'm secretly glad that I seem to be shedding some insecurities as I get closer to 30. I have no idea what the steps are (I've only been to 2 classes) and I'm sure I look like an idiot, but when I mentioned to one of the other ladies in the class that I was having a hard time figuring out the steps, she said, "It doesn't matter! Just keep flopping around and have fun!" I like this attitude, and I think I'll take her advice until I figure out what's going on. (Sympathy for the Devil - Guns and Roses)
Oh, yeah, and I'm still teaching ESL at the church on Saturday mornings, which I guess counts as a hobby since I certainly don't get paid for it! (Reasons to be Beautiful - Hole) A few months ago I started co-teaching with Kyle, and I sort of like that system in that my primary function seems to be to have ideas bounced off of me and to answer questions asked in Spanish. Oh, and read out loud the Spanish sections of the book we use. Really I don't mind that. Mostly because it gives me a good 2 hours a week in which I can pick on Kyle. ;-)
SOCIAL LIFE: Huh? What's that?
Kidding... sort of. My social life mostly consists of gripe sessions with Adrianne, Teresa and Rachael before and after work and my Friday evening hangouts with Sammich. As I mentioned in the last blog, I went on one date in 2011... a 100% increase over the amount I went on in 2010, and in fact every year previous to that. It was actually the first official date I have ever been on. That is what happens when you marry someone you met before either one of you was old enough to drive. (Monsters - Matchbook Romance) It is also what happens when, after you divorce that person, you have such a dismal opinion on humans in general that you don't even bother looking for a date for close to a decade. Encouraged by my little sister's successes with online dating, I signed up on a site in the later end of last year that resulted in one date. It didn't go horribly or anything... the dude just talked incessantly and reminded me a little too much of someone I divorced in that I couldn't get a word in edgeways. But I got Chinese food out of it and successfully killed a Sunday afternoon. (Stay and Play - Saron Gas) Oh, and then there's the part about how he lives in Montana. At the time he was a long haul truck driver and was coming in to Salem every other weekend, but he has since changed jobs and I doubt he'll be back in the area again. Just as well, I say. Anyway, just in the last couple of weeks I've started conversations with a handful of guys, so we'll see how that turns out. I've already ruled out one of them... another perk of my advancing age is that I don't worry so much about offending someone by saying out loud what will and will not work for me.
That's pretty much the summary of now. As for the future... I know I said this last year and I was kind of right but not as right as I thought I would be, but I really think the calm stability of the last few years is coming to an end. At least if I get my way! This year I actually have goals, which is a nice change. I would like to change careers ASAP, and I want to move by the end of the year (ideally ASAP after changing jobs). Now that the Chamaco is older and more self-sufficient, I think it's time for me to branch out a little bit and try some new stuff... like Zumba and auditioning for bands. And a new profession. And, knowing me, probably several new hair colors. (I'm Sorry - Flyleaf) I do not want to be one of those moms who is without purpose once her kids have moved out. Don't get me wrong, I love my son, but I also think it's natural and healthy to have other interests outside of parenthood. I'm not even sure it's healthy when people say things like, "My kids are my whole world." Because kids aren't permanent, that's why. They grow. And so should you. (Un fantasma tra noi - Lacuna Coil) Being able to do things aside from breeding and raising our offspring is what sets us apart from the animals! Diversify! Specialization is for insects.
So I will sing and dance and embarrass my son in the kitchen. I will continue to play guitar badly. I will learn how to get into trouble in as many languages as possible. I may even learn how to get myself out of trouble in a few more languages. I will continue pursuing that mystical unicorn which is a job that I like doing that pays well enough for me to live. I will hope. I will dream. I will not let the world beat the joy out of my soul. I will dance like no one is watching. I will love like I've never been hurt (one of these days). I will completely and unapologetically be myself, because I didn't get the instruction manual for being anyone else. I will mismatch my earrings if I feel like it. (Immorale - J-Ax... yay for Italian rap!) I will continue my evolution from observer to participant. I will wander in my mind and in these blogs wherever my thoughts feel like going. Oh, and at some point this year I'm going to try karaoke in English. I've only done it once before, and it was at a cantabar in Mexico. ;-)
I do not know why, but I can't shake the feeling that 2012 is going to be a pivotal year in my life. The word "crossroads" keeps coming to my mind. In the sense of arriving at a crossroads and having to decide which way to go. I also have the sense that at least one of the roads potentially leads to destruction and ruin. I just hope I know which one it is and have the sense to avoid it. (Falling Away from Me - Korn) Not that I'm psychic or anything. I could totally be wrong, but like I said... I was right about 2011... just not as right as I thought I would be. Maybe I was a year early. (Serenata Rap - Jovanotti)
Well, if you kids will excuse me, I'm off to go do my nightly revision of Craigslist's job postings and snuggle down in my bed where it's warm. Tomorrow morning I'm off once again to teach English and live the dream. At this point I'm still not sure exactly whose dream it is, but I'm working to take ownership, don't worry. But before I go...
Song o' the Day: "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna coil. Their new album, Dark Adrenaline, comes out Jan. 24th. I have it pre-ordered... can't wait! And the video for "Trip the Darkness" is pretty cool, and reminds me of why I've always had a girl-crush on Cristina Scabbia. See/hear it here. Speaking of that, lots of my fave bands are putting out albums this year. Shinedown has one I think releasing in February, and Halestorm's will be out later in the year. Evanescence just put out a really good one a few months ago that I never got around to reviewing on the blog, but I shall have to do so soon. :-) (Vuelve - Shakira)
Anyhoo, I figured I'd do some sort of catchy-uppy-thingie about how things are going since I do not blog nearly as often as I used to. (Cuando tú no estés conmigo - Flans) Something about having a life now, I guess... ha ha ha! I'll go roughly by categories.
WORK LIFE: Well, I'm working full time... 40 hours a week. Sometimes 42, like this week. (Ifa um canto pra subir - Margareth Menezes) I am also actively seeking other work, because I really do not like my job. This year I changed to a new center (same organization) because it was only a mile and a half from my house instead of 35 miles. And it was full time instead of 25 hours a week. I like the short commute and more pay, and I like the people I work with, but I dislike the job itself and I extra dislike the current state of the administration. They have become like a many-handed Hindu goddess and none of the hands have the foggiest clue what the other six or seven are doing. You could throw a query out into the ether of administration and receive back three or four very authoritative and very different replies, all from parties who insist that they are correct and the others have it wrong. (Sálvame - RBD. Why is everything coming up in Spanish or Portuguese tonight?) It was bad enough in September and October that I would have quit had I had anywhere else to go to. Since then it has improved to the point of being tolerable, but it's definitely not enjoyable. And I know people say, "It's not supposed to be fun! That's why it's called work!" To those people, I say, "Perhaps you have accepted that you have to spend the majority of your waking hours doing something you hate, but I refuse to be robbed of my joy unnecessarily." There are lots of other jobs out there, and as soon as I find one that seems like a good fit, I shall be on my way. (Misery Business - Paramore)
FAMILY LIFE: I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but I feel like the Chamaco and I have a closer relationship now than we have had in previous years. I don't know if it's just that he's getting old enough and witty enough to be good conversation or if it's just that my longtime policy of openness and honesty with the child finally seems appealing now that he's getting old enough to ask questions about adult topics. In other news, the Chamaco acquired a little brother in October of 2011 (not through any doing of mine, mind you). A lot of people seem to think I should be upset about that for some reason... one person asked me, "Doesn't that just make you feel..." and then he mimed being stabbed through the heart. Answer: No, it does not. I ceased to care at all where my ex-husband chooses to put his penis several years ago when it became clear that I was not among his top choices. And personally I'm thrilled that the Chamaco finally got a brother and I did absolutely nothing! (How Do You Like Me Now? - Toby Keith) In fact, he and I were just having one of our "grown-up" conversations the other day and he asked me if I would ever have another kid. I said, "Probably not, because even if I were to get pregnant tomorrow you would still be almost 11 by the time the kid was born. That seems like kind of a large gap to me." He agreed that it was. It still boggles his mind that by the time his little brother enters kindergarten, he will be nearly 16. That kinda boggles my mind too, honestly. (So What - Pink) We even had a discussion about how I'm not one of those "career mommies" whose sole mission in life was to have children. I told him I had it figured out that when he's 18 I'll be just barely 37, and I rather liked the idea of being that young and not having young dependent children. He said he thought he understood that notion. He really is surprisingly adult for his age sometimes. (My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson)
HOBBIES: Well, I'm still a language nerd. Some things never change. I spent a large chunk of summer 2011 working on my Italian. I'm not yet fluent, but definitely conversational. My Italian is probably at the same level that my Spanish was when I first arrived in Cuernavaca in 2005. The difference is that I'm not about to go immerse myself in Italy for 6 weeks and have it be like taking both 3rd and 4th year Spanish in a month and a half. I'm giving consideration to picking up either French or Portuguese next, or I might re-learn German. I had two years of German in college and promptly forgot almost all of it. I actually work with someone who speaks German now, and it might stick if I had someone to practice on.
On to the music bit... I'm still trying to self-teach guitar when I find the time. Also I will be fulfilling a longtime dream next week by auditioning to be the vocalist in a rock band. No joke. If I actually get the gig, that would be another longtime dream fulfilled, so fingers crossed all! (When it Rains - Paramore)
While my 2011 weight loss sort of stalled out after June, I managed not to gain much of it back either and I have made sure to keep my activity levels up. I got Just Dance 2 for the Wii, and I can easily spend an hour playing that and not noticing the elapsed time. This past week I started going to Zumba classes at my new gym (the old one went out of business, which was a blessing in disguise I think) and I love it! Dancing has always been one of those things that I really liked but was too self-conscious to do publicly (sort of like being a singer), and I'm secretly glad that I seem to be shedding some insecurities as I get closer to 30. I have no idea what the steps are (I've only been to 2 classes) and I'm sure I look like an idiot, but when I mentioned to one of the other ladies in the class that I was having a hard time figuring out the steps, she said, "It doesn't matter! Just keep flopping around and have fun!" I like this attitude, and I think I'll take her advice until I figure out what's going on. (Sympathy for the Devil - Guns and Roses)
Oh, yeah, and I'm still teaching ESL at the church on Saturday mornings, which I guess counts as a hobby since I certainly don't get paid for it! (Reasons to be Beautiful - Hole) A few months ago I started co-teaching with Kyle, and I sort of like that system in that my primary function seems to be to have ideas bounced off of me and to answer questions asked in Spanish. Oh, and read out loud the Spanish sections of the book we use. Really I don't mind that. Mostly because it gives me a good 2 hours a week in which I can pick on Kyle. ;-)
SOCIAL LIFE: Huh? What's that?
Kidding... sort of. My social life mostly consists of gripe sessions with Adrianne, Teresa and Rachael before and after work and my Friday evening hangouts with Sammich. As I mentioned in the last blog, I went on one date in 2011... a 100% increase over the amount I went on in 2010, and in fact every year previous to that. It was actually the first official date I have ever been on. That is what happens when you marry someone you met before either one of you was old enough to drive. (Monsters - Matchbook Romance) It is also what happens when, after you divorce that person, you have such a dismal opinion on humans in general that you don't even bother looking for a date for close to a decade. Encouraged by my little sister's successes with online dating, I signed up on a site in the later end of last year that resulted in one date. It didn't go horribly or anything... the dude just talked incessantly and reminded me a little too much of someone I divorced in that I couldn't get a word in edgeways. But I got Chinese food out of it and successfully killed a Sunday afternoon. (Stay and Play - Saron Gas) Oh, and then there's the part about how he lives in Montana. At the time he was a long haul truck driver and was coming in to Salem every other weekend, but he has since changed jobs and I doubt he'll be back in the area again. Just as well, I say. Anyway, just in the last couple of weeks I've started conversations with a handful of guys, so we'll see how that turns out. I've already ruled out one of them... another perk of my advancing age is that I don't worry so much about offending someone by saying out loud what will and will not work for me.
That's pretty much the summary of now. As for the future... I know I said this last year and I was kind of right but not as right as I thought I would be, but I really think the calm stability of the last few years is coming to an end. At least if I get my way! This year I actually have goals, which is a nice change. I would like to change careers ASAP, and I want to move by the end of the year (ideally ASAP after changing jobs). Now that the Chamaco is older and more self-sufficient, I think it's time for me to branch out a little bit and try some new stuff... like Zumba and auditioning for bands. And a new profession. And, knowing me, probably several new hair colors. (I'm Sorry - Flyleaf) I do not want to be one of those moms who is without purpose once her kids have moved out. Don't get me wrong, I love my son, but I also think it's natural and healthy to have other interests outside of parenthood. I'm not even sure it's healthy when people say things like, "My kids are my whole world." Because kids aren't permanent, that's why. They grow. And so should you. (Un fantasma tra noi - Lacuna Coil) Being able to do things aside from breeding and raising our offspring is what sets us apart from the animals! Diversify! Specialization is for insects.
So I will sing and dance and embarrass my son in the kitchen. I will continue to play guitar badly. I will learn how to get into trouble in as many languages as possible. I may even learn how to get myself out of trouble in a few more languages. I will continue pursuing that mystical unicorn which is a job that I like doing that pays well enough for me to live. I will hope. I will dream. I will not let the world beat the joy out of my soul. I will dance like no one is watching. I will love like I've never been hurt (one of these days). I will completely and unapologetically be myself, because I didn't get the instruction manual for being anyone else. I will mismatch my earrings if I feel like it. (Immorale - J-Ax... yay for Italian rap!) I will continue my evolution from observer to participant. I will wander in my mind and in these blogs wherever my thoughts feel like going. Oh, and at some point this year I'm going to try karaoke in English. I've only done it once before, and it was at a cantabar in Mexico. ;-)
I do not know why, but I can't shake the feeling that 2012 is going to be a pivotal year in my life. The word "crossroads" keeps coming to my mind. In the sense of arriving at a crossroads and having to decide which way to go. I also have the sense that at least one of the roads potentially leads to destruction and ruin. I just hope I know which one it is and have the sense to avoid it. (Falling Away from Me - Korn) Not that I'm psychic or anything. I could totally be wrong, but like I said... I was right about 2011... just not as right as I thought I would be. Maybe I was a year early. (Serenata Rap - Jovanotti)
Well, if you kids will excuse me, I'm off to go do my nightly revision of Craigslist's job postings and snuggle down in my bed where it's warm. Tomorrow morning I'm off once again to teach English and live the dream. At this point I'm still not sure exactly whose dream it is, but I'm working to take ownership, don't worry. But before I go...
Song o' the Day: "Trip the Darkness" by Lacuna coil. Their new album, Dark Adrenaline, comes out Jan. 24th. I have it pre-ordered... can't wait! And the video for "Trip the Darkness" is pretty cool, and reminds me of why I've always had a girl-crush on Cristina Scabbia. See/hear it here. Speaking of that, lots of my fave bands are putting out albums this year. Shinedown has one I think releasing in February, and Halestorm's will be out later in the year. Evanescence just put out a really good one a few months ago that I never got around to reviewing on the blog, but I shall have to do so soon. :-) (Vuelve - Shakira)
The changes THREE years can bring.... (belated year-in-review for 2011)
So, the last two years in a row I've been doing a sort of year-end contrast thing to see how things change in my life from year to year. There were some major changes in the last few years, but I'm not sure much has changed this year. Then, I haven't really looked at it yet. I copy/pasted last year's blog into this one, and I'll be adding 2011 as I go... we'll discover it together, I guess!
2008: We lived in a falling-apart house with no heat.
2009: We live in a pretty nice apartment with gas heat.
2010: We live in the same apartment as last year. Have somehow managed to keep paying the rent. Praise God!
2011: We still live in the same apartment. I have an eye toward moving before the end of the year, though, because I'm close to being able to afford to at this rate.
2008: I was unemployed. All year.
2009: I sometimes wish I worked less, but I am blessed to have a job surrounded by good, godly poeple who are passionate about what they do and make working with them so much fun.
2010: Same job situation except it has dawned on me that I really don't like teaching. Okay, so I knew that all along, but now I'm really starting to get the urge to move along... still like the people I work with, though!
2011: I now work FULL TIME for the first time since 2001. I adore the people I work with, but I like teaching less and less. Looking to move on (and when I do that apartment change thing will probably shortly follow).
2008: I did nearly all my Christmas shopping at the Dollar Tree, because it was what I could afford.
2009: I did most of my Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart... moving on up!
2010: Primarily Wal-Mart again. No huge change in this department.
2011: Again, no change! What can I say? I like Wal-Mart.
2008: We got food boxes from a couple of different local organizations.
2009: An organization called to offer us a food box and I told them they could probably find someone who needed it worse than we do. After I hung up I realized what I'd just been able to say and I almost cried.
2010: Nobody even offered us a food box this year.
2011: I don't even get food stamps anymore. (Well, $16 a month, but that hardly counts, now does it?)
2008: I carried my son upstairs to his bed when he fell asleep on the couch.
2009: I can barely pick up my son, much less carry him upstairs. This only happened in the last month or two. I realized today that soon I won't be able to pick him up at all... my baby is gone. I almost cried.
2010: I can still pick up my nine-year-old boy for brief periods of time
2011: My kid turned 10 this year. I can still pick him up, but I can't carry him much of anywhere. I realize that the only reason I can pick him up is because I routinely lift up to sixty pounds of child at work. He clocks in at about 74, last I knew.
2008: My son was the sort of co-dependent that being the only child of a single mom will get you.
2009: I have an increasingly independent eight-year-old who more and more often wants to do things by himself. I told him that I was going to get Nancy's recipe for play-doh because the stuff we make at work is better than the store-bought stuff. I said this because I thought it would be something fun we could do together. He asked if he could do it by himself.
2010: My son cooked dinner a few weeks ago. I supervised him, but the only thing I actually did for him was turn the knobs on the stove, because he can't reach them yet. He's older but still short... lol.
2011: My kid can stay home by himself for increasingly long periods of time (I haven't yet pushed it past an hour and a half). He has a cell phone. As long as there is a microwave and a stocked freezer, he can feed himself indefinitely. This works out well for me going to Zumba classes on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
2008: I had a couple of friends, but mostly felt very lonely and isolated.
2009: I have some very good friends, some less-close-but-still-good friends, some casual acquaintances that always make me smile (hello CTG!), a pretty full social calendar, and sometimes wish desperately to just be home by myself for a few hours.
2010: All of the above, plus a couple of new friends... :-)
2011: Loads of new people in my life this year. Some of them are even male... lol.
2008: I was single.
2009: Still single... no change there. : )
2010: Despite some rumors you may have heard, still single. But I guess there were at least rumors this year. Maybe next year there will be something to them! ;-)
2011: Still single! But I did actually go on ONE date in 2011. Which is one more than in the previous eight years combined, so I guess that's progress... ha ha ha!
2008: We lived in a falling-apart house with no heat.
2009: We live in a pretty nice apartment with gas heat.
2010: We live in the same apartment as last year. Have somehow managed to keep paying the rent. Praise God!
2011: We still live in the same apartment. I have an eye toward moving before the end of the year, though, because I'm close to being able to afford to at this rate.
2008: I was unemployed. All year.
2009: I sometimes wish I worked less, but I am blessed to have a job surrounded by good, godly poeple who are passionate about what they do and make working with them so much fun.
2010: Same job situation except it has dawned on me that I really don't like teaching. Okay, so I knew that all along, but now I'm really starting to get the urge to move along... still like the people I work with, though!
2011: I now work FULL TIME for the first time since 2001. I adore the people I work with, but I like teaching less and less. Looking to move on (and when I do that apartment change thing will probably shortly follow).
2008: I did nearly all my Christmas shopping at the Dollar Tree, because it was what I could afford.
2009: I did most of my Christmas shopping at Wal-Mart... moving on up!
2010: Primarily Wal-Mart again. No huge change in this department.
2011: Again, no change! What can I say? I like Wal-Mart.
2008: We got food boxes from a couple of different local organizations.
2009: An organization called to offer us a food box and I told them they could probably find someone who needed it worse than we do. After I hung up I realized what I'd just been able to say and I almost cried.
2010: Nobody even offered us a food box this year.
2011: I don't even get food stamps anymore. (Well, $16 a month, but that hardly counts, now does it?)
2008: I carried my son upstairs to his bed when he fell asleep on the couch.
2009: I can barely pick up my son, much less carry him upstairs. This only happened in the last month or two. I realized today that soon I won't be able to pick him up at all... my baby is gone. I almost cried.
2010: I can still pick up my nine-year-old boy for brief periods of time
2011: My kid turned 10 this year. I can still pick him up, but I can't carry him much of anywhere. I realize that the only reason I can pick him up is because I routinely lift up to sixty pounds of child at work. He clocks in at about 74, last I knew.
2008: My son was the sort of co-dependent that being the only child of a single mom will get you.
2009: I have an increasingly independent eight-year-old who more and more often wants to do things by himself. I told him that I was going to get Nancy's recipe for play-doh because the stuff we make at work is better than the store-bought stuff. I said this because I thought it would be something fun we could do together. He asked if he could do it by himself.
2010: My son cooked dinner a few weeks ago. I supervised him, but the only thing I actually did for him was turn the knobs on the stove, because he can't reach them yet. He's older but still short... lol.
2011: My kid can stay home by himself for increasingly long periods of time (I haven't yet pushed it past an hour and a half). He has a cell phone. As long as there is a microwave and a stocked freezer, he can feed himself indefinitely. This works out well for me going to Zumba classes on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.
2008: I had a couple of friends, but mostly felt very lonely and isolated.
2009: I have some very good friends, some less-close-but-still-good friends, some casual acquaintances that always make me smile (hello CTG!), a pretty full social calendar, and sometimes wish desperately to just be home by myself for a few hours.
2010: All of the above, plus a couple of new friends... :-)
2011: Loads of new people in my life this year. Some of them are even male... lol.
2008: I was single.
2009: Still single... no change there. : )
2010: Despite some rumors you may have heard, still single. But I guess there were at least rumors this year. Maybe next year there will be something to them! ;-)
2011: Still single! But I did actually go on ONE date in 2011. Which is one more than in the previous eight years combined, so I guess that's progress... ha ha ha!
December 9, 2011
Yikes!
An event just sort of snuck up on me. I knew it was coming, and for a long time there I had myself convinced that it wouldn't matter so much, but now it's here and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
The time as I write this is 11:05 p.m., December 8th, 2011. That's more or less exactly the time on this day 10 years ago that we decided to take a little drive over to Willamette Falls Hospital.
Fast-forward to 1:25 a.m. on December 9th, 2001 (yes, a mere 2 hours and 20 minutes later). Look out world... Damian Richard Ford is born!
I've been doing a lot of reflecting over the last few days. Because I cannot believe that ten years went by so quickly. Heck, I'm not even supposed to be old enough to remember ten years ago so clearly, am I? But then I remember that I'm actually 29 (or "almost thirty!" as Damian likes to state it), and that 10 years is actually more like a third of my life than the half that it feels like it ought to be. Where does the time go? Seems like yesterday I was sitting on a hospital bed holding a newborn baby and laughing with Sammich so hard that my sides hurt (I don't remember what was funny, but I remember laughing). I was 19 (barely), had been married not quite six months, and I thought at that point I was a real grown-up. Fast-forward a decade and I'm a full-time working single mom, and I just finished packing my fourth-grader's lunch for tomorrow and cleverly figuring out how to get the birthday card to fit inside his lunchbox without actually folding it in half.
Really, though, my kid is awesome. And just to prove the point, I figured I'd hit a few highlights of his already illustrious career as a human being.
Mere matter of days old: Teaches Mom not to underestimate his capabilities. When placed a good couple of feet from the edge of Grandma and Grandpa's king-sized bed and left unattended for approximately two minutes, manages to pitch self onto floor. No lasting harm done (except to Mom's nerves), and Mom learns the origin of the phrase "bouncing baby boy".
2 weeks old: Sleeps through the night for the first time. Makes Mom very happy.
5 months old: Still thinks sitting upright unassisted is for losers, but dislikes being horizontal for any reason other than sleep.
7 months old: Decides to give sitting up a try and masters it.
8 months old: Decides to give crawling a try and masters it.
10 months old: Has walking while holding onto couches, tables, etc. down to an art form. Mom leaves him at Grandma's while she goes to work one day, and when Mom comes back, Damian is standing holding onto the couch in the living room. Mom says, "Hi Damian!" and walks past him into the kitchen. Damian lets go of couch and follows her in. Walking. Mom says to Grandma, "When did he start doing that?" Grandma replies, "He's been doing it all day. I assumed you knew about it."
Around 2 years old: Begins repeating the word "key" over and over. It takes Mom and Dad a couple of weeks to piece together that he says it when he sees the cat, and he's actually saying "kitty". Regardless, it's his first word. The first of many, because once this child decides to do something, he doesn't go halfway (see sitting up and crawling).
Toward the end of second year: Mom is helping Damian put on his socks. He looks at her and then says, "I have two feet. You have two feet. That's four feet, Mom." At this juncture Mom realizes that he will be better at math that her probably sooner rather than later.
Three years old: We take a trip to Mexico. Damian dislikes Mexican food, we learn. However, he is full of fun in the airports. During an 11-hour layover in San Francisco, Mom takes Damian out to the end of one of the terminals so he can watch the planes taxiing around. A plane passes very near to the window and Damian begins to jump up and down and point excitedly, "Mom! Mom! Look! I can see the piglet!" "The what?" Mom asks. Exasperated, Damian says, "You know, the piglet! The guy who flies the plane!" Several hours later, boarding the plane, we are standing in line in the jetway, just about to step through the door of the plane itself. There is about a three inch gap between the end of the jetway and the door of the plane, and you can see down to the ground, which is quite a ways away. Damian, standing there and looking down, announces in a loud voice, "Man, I bet if we fell down there we'd get DEAD!" much to the amusement of the other passengers standing nearby. On the return trip to the States (another layover in San Fran), immediately after disembarking from the flight from Mexico City to SF, Mom (who has been speaking Spanish for weeks now), tells Damian, "Vamos a buscar un baño." Damian puts his hands on his hips, glares at Mom, and says, "Mom! We're in America! Speak English!" To this day, Mom has no idea how the heck he knew that we were in America, especially given that everyone around us at that particular moment was Asian. But seriously, the kid is THREE. How does he know we're in America, much less what the difference between Mexico and America is or that one should speak English in America and Spanish in Mexico????
Somewhere in the fourth year: Mom and Damian are driving in a car. Car trips tend to inspire Damian to deep thought. Out of the blue, Damian says, "I think I like living with you better than I would like living with my dad." (We separated shortly before Damian's first birthday.) Mom asks, "Oh really? Why's that?" Damian replies, "Because at your house you have rules. Dad doesn't have any rules at his house, and that doesn't seem very safe to me." And again, Mom is blown away by a preschooler's capacity for deep thought.
Kindergarten: Damian brings home a worksheet from school on which he is supposed to find shapes in the picture and color them a certain color (triangles blue, squares yellow, etc.) and then count how many of each shape and write the number on a line. Mom is watching over his shoulder as he colors the squares yellow. The squares happen to be windows on a building in this picture, and there are four rows of four windows. Damian silently taps the first window on each row with his pencil, then writes "16" on the line. Mom goes, "Whoa! Wait! How did you do that?" Seemingly exasperated with Mom's slowness, Damian taps the same four windows again, this time counting out loud, "Four, eight, twelve, sixteen!"
Later that same school year: Mom has a friend over from work. At this point Mom is working at Damian's school with grades K/1, and the coworker is working with grades 4/5. Damian's latest project is writing songs, and he has a spiral notebook full of lyrics he has written. He asks the coworker if she would like to hear his songs and she says, "Sure!" so Damian drags out the notebook, flips it open, and starts singing his lyrics to an improvised tune. Coworker is very impressed and asks Mom, "Do you even realize what he's doing? That's some high-level thought he's got going on there! I wish I could get some of my fifth graders to do that!"
Also that year: In the car, Damian is complaining that all the kids in his class are pairing up and that Yoselin is is best friend AJ's girlfriend, and that they want this other girl to be Damian's girlfriend, and Damian says, "But I really don't like her that much!" Mom says, "Well you know what? You guys are way too young to be worrying about all that boyfriend-girlfriend stuff anyway. You don't have to have a girlfriend if you don't want to. In fact, you can just tell them that your mom said you're not allowed to have a girlfriend until you're sixteen." Damian brightens noticeably. "Really?! What a relief!!"
First grade: Teacher complains to Mom that Damian is talking in class to much, but admits, "I think it's because he's done with the work. The problem is that everyone else isn't done, and he keeps them from getting done." This seems like a no-brainer to Mom, who says, "So... do you not have some extra worksheets you can give him? Because he'll do anything you put in front of him. Give him as much work as he can handle! I don't care!" Same teacher complains that, while Damian's reading skills are excellent, his comprehension skills are practically non-existent. Mom laughs this off because she knows that he's reading and applying information gleaned from Pokemon Strategy Guides at home, and he just doesn't give a crap about penguins or whatever the teacher was making him read.
Second grade: As early as the second week of second grade, Damian refers to first grade as "a massive waste of my time." He likes second grade much better, however, and by Open House in late September his second grade teacher (who clearly catches on quickly) has made available to Damian a box of things he can work on when he's done with whatever was assigned in class. Later on in second grade, Damian conducts his first and only test of mom's "two-for-one" rule (Mom told him the first day of Kindergarten that she had a two-for-one deal with his teacher - "you get in trouble at school, you get in trouble at home!"). He puts this rule to the test by getting in a fight with another kid on the playground "because Jeremiah said something I didn't like." He will not say what Jeremiah said, and thus Mom is not convinced that it was worth getting into a fight over (Mom concedes that some things might be worth fighting for, but something Jeremiah said probably isn't one of those things) and suspends all "electronic entertainment privileges" (computer/TV/DS, and pretty much anything else with a screen) for a week. Damian has yet to test this rule again.
Third grade: School work is finally catching up with Damian's ability level, thank goodness. One day in the car, Damian says, "Mom, I have to tell you a secret... there are, like, six girls in my grade who find me attractive!" Mom sighs... it has begun. But Mom can't complain too much, because she had her first completely fake boyfriend when she was Damian's age.
Fourth grade: So far, so good. Damian has a male teacher this year for the first time, and it seems to be working out really well for him. He's in an extremely challenging reading/spelling group... some of the words that show up on his spelling list, Mom has to look up to know how to pronounce properly. After a somewhat rocky start during the first trimester, Damian finally got it together on the spelling and has done very well on the last few spelling tests, including a 100% on the first spelling test of the second trimester, which was also his first letter-graded assignment ever. So far that's a 4.0 GPA, right? ;-) His primary interest at the moment is designing his own card games, which involves hundreds of index cards all over my front steps most of the time.
Despite the fact that he has grown up with me, my son is an intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive and caring individual... all while retaining his boyish fondness for fart jokes. He's undeniably the ringleader of the kids he hangs out with in our apartment complex (ranging in age from 4 to 12), but not because he's bossy... it's because he's just that charismatic and he has the most fun ideas. Neighbors have remarked to me on how well he plays with younger children. Said one, "I was watching Damian sword-fight with one of the younger kids and I could tell that Damian could have just totally beaten the snot out of him, but he didn't... he was letting the little kid do well and was giving him pointers." (My son has an extensive collection of fake weaponry... he's all boy.) His closest friends, however, tend to be several grades older (middle schoolers that he meets at his after-school program). He has intelligence, depth of thought, and vocabulary beyond his very-soon-to-be-ten years and the sort of creativity and desire to learn and grow that television has mostly killed off in his generation. In other words, my kid is epic. My kid is small for his age, has no siblings to fight with, and probably can't beat up your kid, but my kid will probably never need to beat up your kid because he gets along with everybody.
Damian Ford: Bringing more awesome to the world every day since December 9, 2001.
The time as I write this is 11:05 p.m., December 8th, 2011. That's more or less exactly the time on this day 10 years ago that we decided to take a little drive over to Willamette Falls Hospital.
Fast-forward to 1:25 a.m. on December 9th, 2001 (yes, a mere 2 hours and 20 minutes later). Look out world... Damian Richard Ford is born!
I've been doing a lot of reflecting over the last few days. Because I cannot believe that ten years went by so quickly. Heck, I'm not even supposed to be old enough to remember ten years ago so clearly, am I? But then I remember that I'm actually 29 (or "almost thirty!" as Damian likes to state it), and that 10 years is actually more like a third of my life than the half that it feels like it ought to be. Where does the time go? Seems like yesterday I was sitting on a hospital bed holding a newborn baby and laughing with Sammich so hard that my sides hurt (I don't remember what was funny, but I remember laughing). I was 19 (barely), had been married not quite six months, and I thought at that point I was a real grown-up. Fast-forward a decade and I'm a full-time working single mom, and I just finished packing my fourth-grader's lunch for tomorrow and cleverly figuring out how to get the birthday card to fit inside his lunchbox without actually folding it in half.
Really, though, my kid is awesome. And just to prove the point, I figured I'd hit a few highlights of his already illustrious career as a human being.
Mere matter of days old: Teaches Mom not to underestimate his capabilities. When placed a good couple of feet from the edge of Grandma and Grandpa's king-sized bed and left unattended for approximately two minutes, manages to pitch self onto floor. No lasting harm done (except to Mom's nerves), and Mom learns the origin of the phrase "bouncing baby boy".
2 weeks old: Sleeps through the night for the first time. Makes Mom very happy.
5 months old: Still thinks sitting upright unassisted is for losers, but dislikes being horizontal for any reason other than sleep.
7 months old: Decides to give sitting up a try and masters it.
8 months old: Decides to give crawling a try and masters it.
10 months old: Has walking while holding onto couches, tables, etc. down to an art form. Mom leaves him at Grandma's while she goes to work one day, and when Mom comes back, Damian is standing holding onto the couch in the living room. Mom says, "Hi Damian!" and walks past him into the kitchen. Damian lets go of couch and follows her in. Walking. Mom says to Grandma, "When did he start doing that?" Grandma replies, "He's been doing it all day. I assumed you knew about it."
Around 2 years old: Begins repeating the word "key" over and over. It takes Mom and Dad a couple of weeks to piece together that he says it when he sees the cat, and he's actually saying "kitty". Regardless, it's his first word. The first of many, because once this child decides to do something, he doesn't go halfway (see sitting up and crawling).
Toward the end of second year: Mom is helping Damian put on his socks. He looks at her and then says, "I have two feet. You have two feet. That's four feet, Mom." At this juncture Mom realizes that he will be better at math that her probably sooner rather than later.
Three years old: We take a trip to Mexico. Damian dislikes Mexican food, we learn. However, he is full of fun in the airports. During an 11-hour layover in San Francisco, Mom takes Damian out to the end of one of the terminals so he can watch the planes taxiing around. A plane passes very near to the window and Damian begins to jump up and down and point excitedly, "Mom! Mom! Look! I can see the piglet!" "The what?" Mom asks. Exasperated, Damian says, "You know, the piglet! The guy who flies the plane!" Several hours later, boarding the plane, we are standing in line in the jetway, just about to step through the door of the plane itself. There is about a three inch gap between the end of the jetway and the door of the plane, and you can see down to the ground, which is quite a ways away. Damian, standing there and looking down, announces in a loud voice, "Man, I bet if we fell down there we'd get DEAD!" much to the amusement of the other passengers standing nearby. On the return trip to the States (another layover in San Fran), immediately after disembarking from the flight from Mexico City to SF, Mom (who has been speaking Spanish for weeks now), tells Damian, "Vamos a buscar un baño." Damian puts his hands on his hips, glares at Mom, and says, "Mom! We're in America! Speak English!" To this day, Mom has no idea how the heck he knew that we were in America, especially given that everyone around us at that particular moment was Asian. But seriously, the kid is THREE. How does he know we're in America, much less what the difference between Mexico and America is or that one should speak English in America and Spanish in Mexico????
Somewhere in the fourth year: Mom and Damian are driving in a car. Car trips tend to inspire Damian to deep thought. Out of the blue, Damian says, "I think I like living with you better than I would like living with my dad." (We separated shortly before Damian's first birthday.) Mom asks, "Oh really? Why's that?" Damian replies, "Because at your house you have rules. Dad doesn't have any rules at his house, and that doesn't seem very safe to me." And again, Mom is blown away by a preschooler's capacity for deep thought.
Kindergarten: Damian brings home a worksheet from school on which he is supposed to find shapes in the picture and color them a certain color (triangles blue, squares yellow, etc.) and then count how many of each shape and write the number on a line. Mom is watching over his shoulder as he colors the squares yellow. The squares happen to be windows on a building in this picture, and there are four rows of four windows. Damian silently taps the first window on each row with his pencil, then writes "16" on the line. Mom goes, "Whoa! Wait! How did you do that?" Seemingly exasperated with Mom's slowness, Damian taps the same four windows again, this time counting out loud, "Four, eight, twelve, sixteen!"
Later that same school year: Mom has a friend over from work. At this point Mom is working at Damian's school with grades K/1, and the coworker is working with grades 4/5. Damian's latest project is writing songs, and he has a spiral notebook full of lyrics he has written. He asks the coworker if she would like to hear his songs and she says, "Sure!" so Damian drags out the notebook, flips it open, and starts singing his lyrics to an improvised tune. Coworker is very impressed and asks Mom, "Do you even realize what he's doing? That's some high-level thought he's got going on there! I wish I could get some of my fifth graders to do that!"
Also that year: In the car, Damian is complaining that all the kids in his class are pairing up and that Yoselin is is best friend AJ's girlfriend, and that they want this other girl to be Damian's girlfriend, and Damian says, "But I really don't like her that much!" Mom says, "Well you know what? You guys are way too young to be worrying about all that boyfriend-girlfriend stuff anyway. You don't have to have a girlfriend if you don't want to. In fact, you can just tell them that your mom said you're not allowed to have a girlfriend until you're sixteen." Damian brightens noticeably. "Really?! What a relief!!"
First grade: Teacher complains to Mom that Damian is talking in class to much, but admits, "I think it's because he's done with the work. The problem is that everyone else isn't done, and he keeps them from getting done." This seems like a no-brainer to Mom, who says, "So... do you not have some extra worksheets you can give him? Because he'll do anything you put in front of him. Give him as much work as he can handle! I don't care!" Same teacher complains that, while Damian's reading skills are excellent, his comprehension skills are practically non-existent. Mom laughs this off because she knows that he's reading and applying information gleaned from Pokemon Strategy Guides at home, and he just doesn't give a crap about penguins or whatever the teacher was making him read.
Second grade: As early as the second week of second grade, Damian refers to first grade as "a massive waste of my time." He likes second grade much better, however, and by Open House in late September his second grade teacher (who clearly catches on quickly) has made available to Damian a box of things he can work on when he's done with whatever was assigned in class. Later on in second grade, Damian conducts his first and only test of mom's "two-for-one" rule (Mom told him the first day of Kindergarten that she had a two-for-one deal with his teacher - "you get in trouble at school, you get in trouble at home!"). He puts this rule to the test by getting in a fight with another kid on the playground "because Jeremiah said something I didn't like." He will not say what Jeremiah said, and thus Mom is not convinced that it was worth getting into a fight over (Mom concedes that some things might be worth fighting for, but something Jeremiah said probably isn't one of those things) and suspends all "electronic entertainment privileges" (computer/TV/DS, and pretty much anything else with a screen) for a week. Damian has yet to test this rule again.
Third grade: School work is finally catching up with Damian's ability level, thank goodness. One day in the car, Damian says, "Mom, I have to tell you a secret... there are, like, six girls in my grade who find me attractive!" Mom sighs... it has begun. But Mom can't complain too much, because she had her first completely fake boyfriend when she was Damian's age.
Fourth grade: So far, so good. Damian has a male teacher this year for the first time, and it seems to be working out really well for him. He's in an extremely challenging reading/spelling group... some of the words that show up on his spelling list, Mom has to look up to know how to pronounce properly. After a somewhat rocky start during the first trimester, Damian finally got it together on the spelling and has done very well on the last few spelling tests, including a 100% on the first spelling test of the second trimester, which was also his first letter-graded assignment ever. So far that's a 4.0 GPA, right? ;-) His primary interest at the moment is designing his own card games, which involves hundreds of index cards all over my front steps most of the time.
Despite the fact that he has grown up with me, my son is an intelligent, thoughtful, sensitive and caring individual... all while retaining his boyish fondness for fart jokes. He's undeniably the ringleader of the kids he hangs out with in our apartment complex (ranging in age from 4 to 12), but not because he's bossy... it's because he's just that charismatic and he has the most fun ideas. Neighbors have remarked to me on how well he plays with younger children. Said one, "I was watching Damian sword-fight with one of the younger kids and I could tell that Damian could have just totally beaten the snot out of him, but he didn't... he was letting the little kid do well and was giving him pointers." (My son has an extensive collection of fake weaponry... he's all boy.) His closest friends, however, tend to be several grades older (middle schoolers that he meets at his after-school program). He has intelligence, depth of thought, and vocabulary beyond his very-soon-to-be-ten years and the sort of creativity and desire to learn and grow that television has mostly killed off in his generation. In other words, my kid is epic. My kid is small for his age, has no siblings to fight with, and probably can't beat up your kid, but my kid will probably never need to beat up your kid because he gets along with everybody.
Damian Ford: Bringing more awesome to the world every day since December 9, 2001.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
