I’m thinking of defecting to livejournal. I’ll let you know if I get the energy to pack up and move.

thought you ought to know

Otherwise things are going along as usual – school, kids, disaster of a house, school, insane dog, family, school, lack of sleep – accompanied by all the regular avoiding behaviors.

The result?

I don’t seem to be able to write myself out of a paper bag. Sorry!

*grins anxiously*

(see why I belong on livejournal?)

My extended absence from the blogosphere has apparently necessitated my removal from Adam’s links to Friday fivers, a tradition that started just over a year ago with Melissa, William, Adam, and I.

(See, I’m doing that lj thing again. I fear I have crossed over to the dark side permanently.)

It’s sad when your friends outgrow you.

Anyway, I’m taking a big test tomorrow and then I’m going to get smashed in celebration and then I’m going to clean my house, and then I’m going to see if I still recognize my kids, and then I am going to not do the annoying antisocial Harry Potter reading at Adam and Melissa’s 4th of July party (Where is book 6? Write, woman, write!)and then I am going to move to livejournal. Maybe.

“Be seein’ ya.” (Self-indulgent British tv reference for my husband, who undoubtedly has also stopped dropping by my blog.)

*struggles not to put in lj “feelings” codes and loses*

So we have been home for a week and a half now and things are both starting to settle and beginning to get really busy. We saw some beautiful country in Wales and England (4 national parks including the breacon Beacons which we stayed in and Dartmoor which was the setting for The Hound of the Baskervilles) as well as castles, ruins, and coastlines. The kids were pretty good. I can’t wait until they are old enough to be force-marched across Ireland. But Merlin wants to go to Paris, so I guess France will be the next trip (in 2yrs – once we pay off this one!)

So, my world traveler advice for traveling with children?

1) Don’t attempt things in other countries with your kids that you would not do at home. If you don’t take them to fancy restaurants at home, don’t experiment with it when you get to another country.

2) Keep in mind that everything you love as well as everything that annoys you about your family will be seriously magnified by your complete inability to escape each other when you travel together. Adjust your attitude/reaction time accordingly.

That’s all I can think of really. We took rain boots for the kids which turned out to be a brilliant idea, and I bought a high quality travel thermos that probably saved my sanity (it carried the caffeine, after all.)

We missed Scotland (again!), but my pet theory that the Scots are the nicest people in the world was upheld by a Scotswoman who ran a B&B that we stayed in at Tintagel.

I am still on my post-travel euphoria about Austin. I want to do every touristy and interesting thing there is to do here. I am loving the mild, wet, warm weather and the wildflowers everywhere, and I have made a cd compilation of songs by Texas people. I had to leave a lot of favorites out, and it is decidedly “cowboy poet” in its content, but it is a pretty good CD (actually 2 cds.) If you want one, let me know and I’ll mail out some copies.

We are in Wales.

Every week Melissa and I meet at the Upper Crust Bakery. Call it my last ditch effort to maintain my sanity. Anyway, this week brought on a direct address of an issue that I had wondered about breifly on our other visits, namely: how must we look to the people around us. We are loud, animated, intimate, wearing comfortable shoes and no makeup, and taking turns cooing over a beatific infant. We hug and kiss when we leave, though sometimes the other patrons of the Crust wouldn’t witness that as I often shoulder the diaper bag and escort Melissa as she carries Alec out to the car.

Yesterday, a nice, middle-class, exuberant sort of a lady came up to me and Alec just after Melissa left to go to the bathroom. She oohed and aahed over the baby for a bit and teased about carrying him off and then said, oh, your mommy will be back soon. Then she turned to me and said, “Is he yours?”

Hmmm.

I honestly wasn’t sure how to answer for just a second. She had seen Melissa nursing him. She had mentioned that his mommy would come back. Surely it was obvious…Oh. Of course. I had wondered before whether we might appear as if we were a lesbian couple, but no one had asked us. I decided to answer simply, “No” although I admit that it felt a little wrong to say it. He is mine…sort of. He just smiled and giggled, not feeling rejected at all, thank goodness. But the next time someone asks me, I wonder if I will answer, “Does it matter?”

I arrived at class early yesterday (which is unusual because I am typically running kids around right before) and had a chance to talk to a few of the kids undergraduate students before the professor arrived. I was seeking clarification on when a paper was due, when a young man tilted his head quizzically and said, “You’re not a TA?” No. Indeed, I am not. I am merely the unofficial wrangler of a professor with an outrageous accent, you silly English k-nigt.

Seriously, apart from the fact that I am Older, I can’t think why he thought I was a TA (and there are a few Older students in class with me.) My first thought was that if I were a TA, I would have been more help to the students. Isn’t that what TAs do?

Also, walking out of class yesterday, someone with a sense of humor was playing “Get along little dogies” on the Tower chimes.

Grad school is a weird place.

A real TA for my research class told me that I should be a doctoral student, which I have been waiting to hear from an impartial observer. It was pretty cool to finally hear it, but I’m still unsure. I’m encouraged that he based his recommendation on listening to forty minutes of me jumping from topic to topic in a confusion of ideas that I would think would discourage anyone from imagining I had the focus to do productive research. If my confusion inspired the observation, then I have some hope. I changed my proposal topic, though, to something more Manageable and less Exciting, so I guess we’ll see if that alters his high opinion.

Also, this week is amnesty week for returning borrowed books. I am ransacking the house, people. Mail me if you think I have something of yours, and I will endeavor to return it while it would be bad form for you to curse me for my (belated) pains.

OK. So I had the weirdest conversation of my entire life (so far) a couple of weeks ago. (And that includes the time I sat next to the guy who was stabbed seven times at a local 7-11 and lived to tell me the tale as we rode the #1 bus downtown together.)

I am sitting, minding my own business, surfing the internet. A young man who is covering for a friend at this Cafe that I frequent sits down at my table. I look up, somewhat annoyed at the disturbance, but attempting to seem friendly. Don’t ask me why. He says, “So are you not a grad student?” Without judgement on this inane comment, I reply, “Yes, I am, but I am done with class for today.” He asks about my course of study and tells me some about his and then he says, “So did you have a good Valentine’s Day? Did you have a valentine?” At which point I (very maturely, I think) control the laughter bubbling up and respond that I have a husband, so I had a de facto Valentine, although he was working so we didn’t do anything to celebrate. He deflates a little and steers this (now pointless for both of us) conversation back to grad school and what comes after. When I mention that I taught 7th and 8th grade English, he becomes very still, and in a slightly shaky (and is that a higher register?) voice, he asks, “Um, here in Austin?”

Friends, I am ashamed to say that I could not resist maintaining the silence while I gave him a level stare and then laughing out loud for just the briefest moment before I released him from the uncomfortable notion that he had just made a pass at one of his former teachers.

He visibly relaxed and reported that he did once have a class with a former teacher, but she did not recognize him. A few more minutes of hearing about his miserable Jr. High life and then finally a customer came, and he walked back to the counter.

I was worn out by the twist and turn of it, though I had hardly contributed to the conversation at all.