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it’s almost over and i go back to work on monday morning. jordan’s school won’t start for another week, so he’ll be going to his grandma’s house for all of next week.

(*sigh*)

i want to get sad about it but i won’t. this year is going to bring wonderful things, right? new school, new bosses, new classroom challenges. and i’ll only be away from baby boy for a week, right? no bitchassness (had to copy from diddy for a minute there). straight face. hardhardhard.

(*laughs*)

i’ve enjoyed my summer though. waking up when the kid wakes up, reading with jordan and going to the park, walking around barefoot on a monday morning and looking out my window at people rushing to their cars in a hurry to get to the office (*snicker*), swim time with my son, all of it…is the Life. having the summer free to NOT work and do what the hell i want to do with my son is 75% of why i chose to teach in the first place. plus i’ve seen the obvious benefit of it: growing up my mom was a teacher and me and my sisters stayed at home summers with her when we were younger. i fondly remember those times as being some of the best in my life. playdates, library trips, vacations, the works. we did not always stay summers with her, as we got to be 11 or 12 or some preteenish age we would usually ship off to a summer program or volunteer somewhere and in the summers my mom took classes to work toward her masters degree, then eventually her doctorate. middle class priviledge or whatever you want to call it or not, this is the way it was. and i was happy.

i love being a working mom but the 3 months off to spend time and stay home with your child is the next thing to bliss, heaven, nirvana, even? i can’t count the number of times i’ve pulled up next to stay at home moms on my lunch breaks with their strollers, eddie bauer SUVs, and jcrew sweaters and secretly thought: hell yeah, i want that.

i’m not romanticizing the idea of staying at home too much, because it’s obviously impractical to me as a single mom. at this time in my life i could not afford it financially. but if i were married and my husband had a decent job and i could, i WOULD stay home with jordan and see a happy existence. i really would. i realize that admitting this in public is to piss in the great chlorine pool of feminist thought, but hey. what is wrong with taking time to raise kids, with domesticity? i had one teacher tell me before we left for break that to spend a summer or any extended time at home with her 4-year-old son “would drive her to drink.” WTF? i don’t understand this attitude. how could you feel this way about your own kids? spending time with jordan, even though he can be stressful, has NEVER bothered, annoyed, or caused me to feel like i need to drink (i can do that on my own anyway, kthx). and if being with her son “annoys” her that much, one can only wonder how his teacher feels 10 months out of the year…

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today finds me bored and trying to soak up the last little bit of summer, and trying to get all of jordan’s paperwork together to go to montessori school the week of the 25th. i’m so excited about him going to a regular school, but soooo nervous at the same time. he’ll go to a new before-and-after school program too, so this year is a totally new deal for him. it’s a special magnet program he’s going to, pre-k for 4 year olds isn’t required in this school system and under normal circumstances he wouldn’t enter a classroom until he’s kindergarten age, which is 5. the benefits of this school is quite nice though: there’s art, music, dance, foreign language, and story circles, something that his normal daycare wasn’t doing consistently. not that jordan is Einstein reincarnated but my son is highly intelligent and curious, so much so that i think he would benefit greatly from being around other like-minded students. all kids i really do believe are born naturally “smart”, the question is how it is being cultivated and nourished. even kids who are autistic have special abilities, they just have to have people patient enough to find out what those abilities are. if i were president i’d start a policy at the hospital of home education for every newborn, with regular follow ups until the child graduates high school. some of the questions would be: do you read to your child? do you spell out words/repeat sounds that you encounter? do you limit tv consumption to less than 2 hours a day? do you count numbers consistently? bad/failed answers would meet with penalties and fines. everyone who’s thinking of procreating should ask themselves if they’re willing to do what it takes to educate their child to the best of their potential. if not, what’s the point?

regardless of what i know to be good about the program every day i go asking myself the million “mommy” questions: will he make friends? will be be able to find the bathroom without assistance? is his lunchtime meal adequate? i can worry myself for hours, then quietly reassure myself and resume normal thoughts. i’ll probably be a nervous wreck until the week of the 25th has came and went.

i’m about to fix jordan’s dinner and watch project runway. lata.

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i bought a new mascara the other day. i know, i know…i have way too many already. but it was on sale w/ coupons for $4.99 and i couldn’t resist a good mascara deal, right? i typically don’t use l’oreal mascaras because they tend to make my eyes burn, but i used it yesterday. my likes? the brush is like, super super soft. it’s a non plastic, super-fine bristled mascara brush. i love the brush, the brush is sex. the mascara though? average. it doesn’t appear to lengthen or add volume, and it certainly doesn’t make the lashes shiny or soft (like the packaging claims). and what’s with the cheap ass tiger print? i like cutesy mascaras just as much as the next girl but this one has the tiger print on the inside, covered by a plastic outer shell. OK. but looks kind of cheesy. yawn.

so it’s back to maybelline, i guess. again.

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tired. i think i’m still feeling a little nauseous from saturday night. 3 white whines, 4 apple martinis, and 2 shots of vodka (both of those were for bernie mac, r.i.p) and you start to get the picture of the revelry that was saturday evening. two of my friends and i went to a get-together over another friends house. she had the best bar-be-que…and the best drinks. i had a lot of fun though. i think it’s good to get out and get sloppy drunk every now and then. it helps you not to take yourself so seriously. either way all i could stomach this morning was bread and water. and i barely held that down. now my eye is burning (perhaps my contact has ripped, i gotta check) and my head is starting to spin again. if i go to bed right now then i’ll wake up at about 6:00 am tomorrow for no reason whatsoever and be completely unable to go back to sleep…

i have about $300 to my name right now. i don’t get my first paycheck of the school year until aug 31st. i’ve already handled rent, water, power, and the pertinent stuff but i’m beginning to realize that some of my bills will just have to be postponed until then. mostly un-pertinent shit: cell phone, student loans. when i called direct loans (the official name of the u.s. department of education) they said that it was ok, that they usually don’t report deliquent accounts until 60 days past due anyways. i’ve NEVER paid an account that late, but knowing my circumstances, that’s really really really good news.

i think i’ll go to bed early tonight. night dahlings.

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lol so asher roth throws his hat into the ring of the 20 or so other people who have already freestyled over weezy’s “a milli”. i swear i’ve heard about 14 mixtape remixes so far this summer. the beat is hot but dannnng…i’m starting to have visions that my grandchildren will be rhyming over this beat in 2045…

today is friday but it’s already been kinda crazy. this morning my son spilled his cereal on the floor, then about 2 hours later he’s watching sesame street and he spills his water on the floor. i didn’t lose my cool or anything but when each event happened i swear i found myself counting silently to 10 in my head, trying like hell to figure out what to say next. of course i don’t think he did it on purpose (he can be a bit uncoordinated) but it’s something about spilled items on the carpet (i’m renting this place out, btw…a fcked up carpet means no deposit return) that has the potential to send me through the roof. my son does get spankings but i and his dad use them sparingly. i really try not to discipline him in anger, if i feel myself getting angry i walk away to another room to try to calm myself first. through walking away jordan will usually understand the issue that got me upset in the first place and later approaches me and we’ll talk about it and he’ll tell me that he’s sorry. through it all though i must admit: parenting is rough, man. i think it’s the hardest job i’ve ever done. it’s not an exact science and there’s no real book, advice, or tv show (other than your instincts) to tell you HOW to do it, you know? my job is to mold, guide, love, teach, and nurture and make him hopefully into a kind, compassionate, and productive member of society.

sometimes i watch prison stories on tv and listen to them talk about their childhood. most of them are in jail for horrible, horrible things like murder and rape and it’s strange…most of the time they talk of a broken home life but other times they talk of a very good one. of parents who did absolutely nothing and gave no supervision whatsoever (the child pretty much raised themselves), or parents who did absolutely everything (sheltering and stifling, almost to a point of suffocation). the key is finding that balance, i guess. the middle point.

i need to find the “middle point” of some breakfast right now. i’m hungry!

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Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. it’s a lovely latin quote i found one day under a painting at an art museum. it translates into “perhaps one day we will all look back upon this and laugh.” i’m thinking about fashioning this into some kind of tattoo because it characterizes my existence thus far, life is a constant state of change and the things that piss me off one day don’t phase me the next and vice versa. either way i always tend to look back upon the moment and laugh. as we all do, right?

that being said i decided to stop bitchin’ and put this thing up again. as much as i love vox, i don’t want to use it as a security blanket. it’s nothing like your own site that you pay for and can truly call your own. i thought about a new name but i’m honestly dead on ideas for now. so i’ll just keep it all here for the time being. as far as my need for online privacy i’ll go back to vox every now and then for private posts, or just password protect it here.

anyway, this time of year finds me highly anticipating the new school year. i’ve transferred to a new school for this year, and i’m really looking forward to starting with a new boss, new teachers, and new kids in a different location. as much as i loved my old school it was ghetto as hell and wasn’t really allowing me to grow as a professional. so many times i’ve had lesson plans, kids, and crazy ass situations thrust upon me and told to “deal with it.” then the administrators feign surprise when the kids fight and throw desks at each other and their scores are the worse in the city. i just had to escape the madness, and in my school system you have to wait at least 2 years for a transfer. i applied in my 2nd year but was unsuccessful, tried again last year when this particular school asked me out of the blue (without an interview even!) to join their faculty. i know i’m walking in the path of destiny, that everything happens for a reason. for once i’m actually happy at this time of year, right before school is scheduled to start. last year about this time i was smoking bidis and trying to find the location of the nearest bridge. lol.

i’m watching maury right now and laughing my ass off, these people on here are scared of chickens and frogs and cotton balls and shit. what’s so funny is the absolute spazz they throw when they hear a frog, for instance–screaming, crying, jumping around the stage–the works. it looks stupid as hell. even funnier is the way they’re supposedly “healed” at the end of the show. they touch the chicken or the frog or a jar of cotton balls. these people have got to be actors. lol.

i’m about to fix a sandwich and get ready for my water aerobics class. lata.

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