Portrait of the Artist as a Teenager

The adapter thingo that hooks the camera to the computer to download pics off my camera has walked off. Which is too bad becasue I have the coolest thing to show you that I made for my Design class.
So instead of showing you something new, I'll show you something old. About 20 years old. Here is a portrait of me as a teenager. When I spent hours alone in my room, lovingly replicating the covers of my favorite tapes in prismacolor. I found them last fall, and felt inspired to document them. The scale is about 1 1/2x the size of an actual tape cover. I used them to decorate my room. You know, back in that time when what was up on the walls of your room was who you were, and music and art were my life. From Pink Floyd to PIL to Cats. Yes, Cats (the British, not the American version.) I can admit it!

Maxine's Acrostic Poem

M agic is here.
A frica is nice.
X -rays can be dangerous.
I gloos could be fun.
N ectarines are yummy.
E lizabeth is Gwyn's friend.

Happy Birthday Jason

Jason, you're 38. Your family adores you. Your friends and aquaintences admire you. And everyone else hopes you stay on the opposite side of the street from them. Congradulations!
We love you!


*Note, Jason is not actually naked in these photos. He is in his underwear, so I thoughtfully cropped them for this blog.

Nesting

Here's a warning about orange walls: they will eventually make you crazy. Everyone that comes over will love them, but they are not the ones living with them. So after 3 years of orange, we needed white.


As you can see, Xiney had ten tons of fun helping, and we are both very proud of our efforts.


It's actually not true white, if you look closely it's grayish with a touch of lavender. I found it down in the basement, along with all the supplies I needed, so we very spontaneously spent our Sunday painting. We love it! We did keep one wall orange, though, partly because my nesting energy wore off, partly b/c I'm not sure if we have enough paint left. And we might miss the orange if it was gone completely.

Grad Mama?

So, I am contemplating grad school, and I'm soliciting opinions from parents, students, student parents, and anyone who has known student parents (especially mamas.)
I found a new program to get certified as a teacher, and this one is graduate level, which has me a little freaked out. basically for the same amount of time spent and just a little more money, I could go ahead and get an MAT instead of just a certificate.
On one hand, its a great opportunity and I think the time could be right. But I say this as a pregnant mom of a six-year-old. Lets face it, life has been pretty easy with my two 100-level courses, and no employment. I have time to take walks, see friends, read for pleasure, and watch movies with Jason. I've been a chaperone on almost every school field trip Maxine has taken this year. I cook our meals from scratch and bake bread every week.
Now lets think about the newborn baby factor. I could, without repaying the loans we've taken already, put off school until Spring 2009, and start taking 6 credit hours a semester at that point. (Baby 6 months old.) Will it be too much, or is that totally doable? How much of our current crunchy lifestyle will we have to kiss goodbye? Jason can cook beans and rice, and that's it. I'm trying to get a visual picture, nursing baby boy while typing a paper and eating beans and rice for the hundreth day in a row. (Or, living on overpriced Trader Joe's frozen meals.) Hmmm, I guess that's not horrible or anything.
When I try to make decisions, sometimes I get lost in details like these. Or trying to plan out a childcare schedule for when my son is 2 1/2, as if I could accurately do that at this point.
I don't know. My first year with Maxine was the most blissful of my life thus far. Yeah, that one where I drained my savings account to be in mama-land full time as a single mother. I still think it was worth it.
But then, when depression set in around 2 1/2 years later, that was pretty bad, and I think one aspect of that was having no interesting future for myself, and not feeling meaningful and productive. (What is it about hanging out with a little monkey who communicates in demanding monsyllables all day would do that, I wonder?) And after last year, I never want to work a dead end restaurant job again. And my anger over how that whole thing went down is another motivating factor for school.
Then again, maybe I'm worrying too much, maybe 6 credit hours + 2 children is busy but manageable. There it is, its thinking about two unknowns at once, 2 children + grad school.
Oh, another factor, we only have one car. Only other one-car families understand how much more complicated this one thing makes your lives.
This has turned into a kind of "emptying out my head" post. There might be more to come.