Well, now I don’t know what to think.

Forgive me a rare political post. I was completely thrown by the choice of Sarah Palin (ie: who is that?).

My immediate reaction was a cynical one: that they were trying to appeal to the people out there who given the choice between McCain and Obama, would choose Obama because of the “history making” aspect.

I’m not very political, mostly because I feel like I’m not very well educated about politics in general. I am far more liberal than my very conservative dh, he accuses me of being a tree hugger, but I’m not a Democrat, either. I like McCain quite a bit, precisely for all the reasons that conservative Republicans don’t.

As far the issues go, Palin appears staunchly Republican, which means to me that I agree with her on some things, but strongly disagree on others. Her being chosen doesn’t mean that I’m going to go out and vote for Obama, but I certainly don’t feel great about her being second in line for the job. She gets a few points because she’s a woman and a mother, but what does she know about being a commander-in-chief? And how the conflicts we are involved with impact the world stage?

I don’t know, do you vote (or not vote) for someone on the basis that the vice presidential choice might become president?

All in all, a good day.

I woke up this morning to chunks of wet sheetrock falling from my upstairs ceiling onto the floor.

I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep because the dutchkid has been sick and kept waking up and needing tylenol and comforting. She was complaining her ear hurt. I braved the clinic today and it is indeed infected.

My dh discovered that my older lab has fleas and I feel really bad that I didn’t notice before and in the past few days he has managed to scratch and bite himself raw.

I figure that’s my three bad things for this week, so I should be good from here on out. The sun came out for awhile today, which was nice considering all of that dreary rainy weather the hurricane sent us.  The dutchkid and I took a nice stroll to the post office and on the way home we stopped in this grassy area to watch the clouds racing by. She picked the flowering clover and I sat in the shade, and it felt like a good day. So I guess it was.

The best-laid plans…

Why is it that some people can actually plan out their life and watch it unfold exactly as they wanted?

I don’t understand this. My life very rarely turns out according to plan.

Nothing irritates me more than when I hear people talk in such certain terms about their future and then lo and behold, it happens. In particular this pisses me off when talking about having children. I’m bitter, ok, I’m aware of this.

I found out today that a sister-in-law of mine, who irritates me as a general rule anyway, is pregnant again. I’m mad because she’s always been so obnoxiously smug in saying how many kids they’re going to have, and when, and what their names will be and la-de-dah. And it’s not fair that I can’t have that too. I was expecting her pregnancy, I daresay waiting for it, even. So I should be thankful it didn’t have that element of surprise that catches me off guard, but I’m not.

Does it just look like life for those people is going according to plan? That would make me feel better, because I’m all caught up in wanting to make sure that the crap gets evenly dealt around here. Tonight I certainly feel like I’ve gotten my fair share.

I will feel better tomorrow, when I’ve had time to process this and can think about it rationally. I know I will.

(And for those of you who read this who probably will tell me someday soon that you’re pregnant, please know that this wasn’t about you at all, and I will be happy for you, as I am for almost everybody….except those with the perfectly laid plans).

My brain is too old for this

I started my Spanish classes a few weeks ago and they’re going well.  At first I was by myself with the instructor, but I switched to an earlier time so now I have 3 other students with me.  Having one on one instruction was good I suppose, but the class is very conversation focused, so it’s nice to have other people to talk with.  I have been pleasantly surprised by some of my vocabulary coming back from what I learned in college. 

My brain is still having trouble with the speaking part, though.  The problem is not my pronounciation, for example if you ask me to read something, I don’t really sound like a gringo.  This mystified my instructor until she found out my Dad’s first language is Spanish.  However, I have a lot of difficulty putting those words together and getting them out on the fly.  I have a lot of sympathy for stroke victims because that’s exactly what it must be like.  My brain is going a mile a minute in English but it won’t put those words in Spanish.  Well, not quickly anyway. 

My dh asked me this morning if I could please type something out for him in Spanish.  I’m normally a very quick typist, so I didn’t think much of it.  You can set Word these days so it will even add in accentos for you and everything.  Easy peasy.  Right up until I started typing and suddently realized that when I type I read the words.  And instead of my brain telling my fingers which letters to push by what’s on the page, it works by the sounds the letters would make.  That might not make sense to you, and maybe it’s just my freaky brain, but here’s why I think so:  When I read the word in spanish for foot, “pie”, which sounds like “pee-ay”, my brain tries to tell me to type in “P-E-A-Y”  or some such nonsense. 

My brain is so confused, no wonder it takes bilingual kids longer to learn to talk.  At this rate it’s going to take me 30 more years to learn to speak Spanish.  I wish I had a Spanish/English switch.

Too much of a good thing

too much Ikea

I’ve read before that Ikea is the Wal-Mart of Europe. Which could quite possibly be true, but given my Dutch propensity for a deal, of course I love to shop there (Ikea, that is. I’m much more of a Meijer’s Thrifty Acres girl than a Wal-Mart one).

We have an Ikea a few hours away and made the trip up recently. It’s a good thing we were just driving our Civic or I would have filled it to the brim with Scandinavian modern goodness. We even ate dinner there, and the meatballs with that lingonberry jam are strange, but tasty. I have to hand it to them for designing a store that you really could never leave. Obviously the dutchkid doesn’t share that sentiment.

Summer

8.14.08 Day 227

Lots of blogs on my google reader have been doing photos about summer. I love how photos can really evoke those feelings of how summer felt as a kid. I was looking back on my ongoing self portrait project and realized how few photos I had that met that criteria, but I just took this one recently and I thought I’d share.

The dutchkid started 2 year old “preschool” today and so it feels like now our summer is officially over. But we live in the South, and sometimes it feels like summer weather here never ends. While my family in the frozen north finds that appealing sometimes, I really do miss the seasons, particularly fall. I don’t miss shoveling snow, though, or driving in it. I’m obviously due for a trip home again in the dead of winter to make me appreciate that.

Unexpected

While I was pregnant with the dutchkid, one of my unrealistic “what it will be like having a child” fantasies was how much she would love music. I played the piano a lot and at that time was still singing with a symphony chorus. I thought all of the exposure to music she would have in utero would give me a little one who would love music from birth. I envisioned myself playing for her to stop her from crying (I’d read that before that classical music often soothes colicky babies).

Enter reality. She was colicky, but music didn’t soothe her. She began crying when I tried to sing or play for her. Sometimes I could get away with humming, but all those lullabies I’d practiced? Evidently I was torturing her in utero. I thought it was just me, but she cried when my mom sang, too. As she got a little older, I began teaching piano lessons and I soon realized that she equated the sound of the piano with separation from me. While I taught, the mothers of my students watched her for me while their children had their lesson. Eventually they had to take her outside of the house, because the moment she heard the piano it was all over. When she started to talk, she began to shush my dh and I when we would try to sing songs in the car: “STOP singing”.

One day after we moved here, we were in the car listening to the classical music station. Suddenly she declared: “Mama, listen to that pretty music! It’s like Barbie and the Dancing Princesses!” (don’t even start with the judgments about letting my child watch that movie, how Barbie is bad for little girls’ self image…it’s all my dh’s fault. He downloaded it). She didn’t want to get out of the car. Seizing the moment, I assured her, that *I* could play pretty music, too.

That was several weeks ago, and the piano has gotten a lot of use along with her “princess” shoes for dancing. She prefers sonatinas it seems and can ask for several pieces she likes by the composer: Clementi and Beethoven. Unfortunately, she is quite the critic and I have a very limited repertoire that meets her approval. If she does not like what I’m playing she will declare authoritatively, ‘No, Mama, play the pretty music”. I’ve tried to tell her that it’s ALL pretty music, but I’ll take what I can get.

I can’t tell you how much it makes my heart sing to have her ask me to play the piano. And to think I owe it all to Barbie and the Dancing Princesses. Behold the power of the cartoon.

Randomness

I just realized today that it’s been a week since I’ve written anything, and sadly I have nothing profound to write about but I’ll tell you about how my week was.  

1) My mom went home from the hospital this past week (hurray!) and is still fairly weak, but much more like her old self.  However, my joy was somewhat dampened today when I realized that I still have not sent her flowers.  And even though I wrote a touching blog that made her cry (my step-dad said so) that still puts me lower in the devoted children standings. 

2) We went to a reception at the CG’s (commanding general) house last week, which was surprisingly fun, even though I had to scramble to find a babysitter.  He lives in a grand old plantation house and you should know by now how much of a dork I am about that kind of historical stuff.  I have also met several other wives whose Spanish is worse than mine.  Nothing like meeting someone who has it worse to make you feel better.  My comprehension has greatly improved since being here, even if I can’t express myself.  My classes start this week.

3) My dh came home from borrowing the proverbial cup of sugar from the neighbors (it was raisins, actually) and promptly declared how everyone else’s house is so much neater and more organized than ours, which looks like a bomb went off.   He’s still living, and has all of his appendages which should tell you something about how forgiving I am.  He doesn’t have class all this week, so guess what he’ll be doing besides making it up to me. 

4) I learned how to make corn tortillas, from scratch.  The sweetest lady from Honduras was patient enough to try to teach me.  They aren’t pretty, but they are tasty. 

Hopefully my writer’s block will improve this week.  Either that or I’m going to start making stuff up.

Turning the corner

My mom has been seriously ill and hospitalized since last week. I can’t think of any other time that she’s been so sick… and she hasn’t ever been in the hospital that I can remember, other than my baby sis being born 21 or so years ago. She’s relatively young, and quite the health freak. She eats way healthier than I do, that’s for sure. When we are together I routinely get comments about how young she looks, how there is no way she can be my mother, and are we sisters? I did not see this one coming in any way, shape or form. My dad is the one whose health I worry about, not hers.

So for this last week, while I fought the impulse to pay the money I don’t have to get on a plane and fly home, I came face to face with the reality of aging parents. (She wouldn’t like it at all that I’m calling her an “aging parent” but she IS getting older). And also dealing with the impotence of being the sibling so far from home. Being the oldest of my clan, I did do what I could to sound the alarm and rally the troops, but there is only so much I can do from afar. I am also an RN, and my nurse brain would.not.shut.off. I wanted to be there with every fiber of my being. I wandered around last week like a zombie, with my body here but my brain elsewhere. My dh did not get my overwhelming desire to be there. He wanted to know what exactly I was going to do, since one of my brothers, my sister and my step-dad were already there. I don’t know if that’s because he’s a) a man or b) heartless.

For the first time as a military spouse, I looked into the future with dread. It’s not that I see the future with my rose colored glasses on. It doesn’t always look rosy, I mean who looks forward to deployments? Even moving sometimes can be painful. While I certainly don’t look forward to those things, I haven’t ever thought about the life of an Army family with the sense that I couldn’t handle it. Well, I have met something that I can’t handle. My mom finally began improving by the start of the weekend. If she had not, I was hanging it up and going home. Money and irritated dh’s be damned.

We have about 7 years until my dh can retire. I have never thought in terms of him getting out so we can “go home”. We’ve never even seriously considered retiring in Michigan. But now I can’t help but think that something like this is bound to happen again. What if next time it’s worse? I don’t even want to imagine. For now I guess I’ll focus on the positive. She’s getting better. Crisis averted.