Real life, with a dash of Doctor Who

I've been hesitant to post about this stuff, so here it is all at once.

I'm nervous about Dominic's school. I set my alarm for midnight so I could be among the first to submit an application for open enrollment at the school my sitter's kids go to. The application wasn't open by 12:30, so I went back to bed. It was up at 5, so I submitted it then. Dominic is in the last group of kids that will be considered because he is a non-resident of that particular city and he has no siblings in higher grades. I'm terrified he won't be accepted, because neither Justin nor I will be able to pick him up from school in the afternoons. We really need our sitter to do it, and she can't do it if he doesn't go to the same school as her kids. I'm sure there's some kind of a solution if open enrollment doesn't work, but I'm afraid it would mean finding a new sitter. And I don't know when they intend to notify which kids were accepted.

I'm nervous about fall semester. I'm worried I'm taking on too much at once.

I'm scared about my upcoming trip. I'm terrified I'm going to die in a fiery plane crash. This is normal for me, so I won't focus too much on it.

Lastly, I need to finally admit that I don't care for this incarnation of Doctor Who. I don't think I'm at the I-refuse-to-watch-this-season-anymore point (and because of the midseason break, it doesn't actually matter), but I feel like the people who are completely enamored of this season are trying to push me, and people like me, that direction and it makes me feel angry. Like I'm not the fan they want me to be, so I'm not worth anything and need to stfu. Which is why I've stopped posting about it. I don't want to be all Negative Nelly about it constantly. I want to concentrate on the things I have enjoyed (and there have been things!), but I feel like the things I don't care for have been outweighing the things I've liked.

I've been comparing it to fanfic a lot lately. I think that it's an apt comparison because the writers are fans telling new stories using someone else's characters. Season 5 and what I've seen of season 6 feel like fanfic from a very popular author whose characterization I don't buy, whose OCs I don't understand, and whose themes I don't enjoy. I'm not saying that Moffat's Who is bad. I'm saying it's not for me.

Soon I'll be watching more of the Classic Series and I'm sure there will be eras that I don't care for for similar reasons, but I'll still watch them, because (as gement so eloquently put it) I still love the shape of the show. I'll continue watching Season 6 and even though this era isn't my cup of tea, chances are good that future eras will be.

Fall semester began yesterday. I had my History of Civilization II class last night and I think I'm going to like the instructor quite a bit. She's very clear about her teaching style and what she expects from us. We're also about the same age (as far as I can tell) with a lot of the same interests.

The classroom was boiling hot (at least 95 degrees), so we were let out about 45 minutes early. I had to pick up Dominic from my sitter's gymnastics place. I got there far earlier than they expected me to and I managed to sneak up behind Dominic. He was playing with a Leap Frog game system and I bent down and whispered in his ear, "What are you doing?"

His reaction was very comforting to me. He's always been a very friendly child. He's not shy and he loves getting attention from anyone. But when I whispered in his ear, he very slowly turned and gave me a look that said, "Who in the hell do you think you are and what the hell do you think you're doing?" It took him about 2 seconds to register it was me and then his face lit up and he gave me a hug.

A woman sitting next to him burst out laughing and shouted, "That was priceless!"

It was really nice to know that Dominic doesn't just trust random strangers. I was proud of him!

Explaining commercials to a 4-year-old is a difficult and surreal experience. You end up in conversations like this:

Child: Why is that penguin following that guy?
Parent: Because he wants to buy auto insurance.

That conversation doesn't make sense, but it totally does.

As I was putting Dominic to bed tonight, I thought it would be a good time to start instilling an anti-drug message into him. I gave him hugs and kisses and tucked him in. I told him I loved him and asked him not to do drugs. He smiled sweetly and said, "Ok, mommy. I promise to do drugs."

"No, promise *not* to do drugs."

"I'll do drugs."

"No!"

"DRUGS!"

He just kept yelling "drugs!" at me, so I told him goodnight, flipped his light off, and went back to my History homework.

My kid is weird.

First things first:

Today is Dominic's fourth birthday!!! Having a baby of my own has altered the way I look at birthdays. First and foremost, I celebrate the life of my son. But there's also a tiny part of me that celebrates the accomplishment of delivering him. Four years ago today, this very hour, I was laboring to bring him into the world. It's made me appreciate my mother in a new way. On my birthday I want to talk to her and thank her. She was and continues to be an amazing mother. I feel like my own birthday is less about me and more about us.

---

My Music as a World Phenomenon class started last Thursday. I still can't shake the feeling that I don't belong in this class. The first two classes have focused heavily on vocabulary and cultural expectations of music. I think that I'll start feeling better about the class when we get out of things I'm already well-versed on and get into studying music from parts of the world I'm ignorant about. Yesterday the teacher was trying to get us to let go of our pre-conceived notions about music. He went to the piano and plunked out "Pomp and Circumstance" and asked us "What is this?"

Nobody answered so I quietly said, "Pomp and Circumstance." He stood up straight and said, "Well, yes, specifically it's 'Pomp and Circumstnace,' but what do we use it for?"

"Graduation," I said.

"Yes!" He turned his back to us and continued, "But it isn't 'the graduation song!' It's..." and he got more quiet when he finished the sentence, "called... 'Pomp and Circumstance.' We just happen to use it for graduation."

I feel like I took the wind out of his sails and hampered the point he was trying to make.

He's an interesting teacher, though, and he makes the 3 hour class go by fairly quickly. Though, to be honest, I'm ready to check out by 9:00 and the class goes until 9:45.

I got a survey in my KSU email yesterday. They were trying to figure out why incoming Freshman decide to enroll or not enroll in the music ensembles. I would *love* to be in some ensembles, but they don't fit my schedule. KSU's school of music isn't designed to allow non-traditional students to participate. I offered to take part in an interview and hopefully I can help them change things so that people like me can participate.

Dominic's babysitter requested some time off last week, so I took some vacation days and spent time with Dominic. We had a great week!

We weren't able to do anything on Tuesday because Dominion threatened to shut off my gas if I wasn't home to let them in to take a meter reading. They gave me an 11 hour window appointment time. They finally got to my house around 4:30 in the afternoon. The meter reader was nice. He brought a remote meter with him and said that the woman who made my appointment should have made the appointment not for a meter reading, but for installation of a remote meter. He took the final reading, wrote it in permanent marker on the new meter and installed the new remote meter. Now they'll be able to read the meter every month from outside the house, though they'll still want to take a physical reading at least once every 3 years. So I've got 3 years to let the junk pile up around the gas meter in my basement! Yay!

On Wednesday Dominic slept in until 9:00 am. This was exciting for me because it meant that he wouldn't need an afternoon nap and I could take him somewhere fun all day. I decided to take him to the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland. I paid for entrance into the science center, the special Darwin exhibit, and one OmniMax film. We played around with the general exhibits for about an hour until our movie started. Then we got our seats high up in the OmniMax theatre. Those movies always make me dizzy. Ours was a movie about the Grand Canyon. Dominic was awed. During the third whitewater rafting scene (about 45 minutes into the 1 hour-long movie), Dominic announced he had to pee. I was grateful to leave. I just don't think I'm cut out to enjoy OmniMax. I got him some pizza at the center's cafe and then took him to play at the Polymer Playground until 4:30. I tried to get out of Cleveland before rush hour and mostly succeeded.

On Thursday I decided to take Dominic to the Harry London Chocolate Factory. He fell asleep in the car on the way down to Canton. I pulled into the lot and went to get him out of his car seat. I whispered, "We're here," and his eyes popped open and he practically bolted out of his seat. He was remarkably well-behaved during the tour. He kept shushing me and telling me to follow the tour guide (these were unnecessary instructions, btw. I was also well behaved). They always end the tour in their retail store and Dominic kept asking me to buy him stuff. He finally decided he wanted a small packet of chocolate cars. I picked out some chocolate covered cherries for Justin and got a bag of their "Old School" chocolates for myself.

Friday was my "Destination Kent" event. I hit campus at 8:00 in the morning and made my way to the Kent Student Center. They had several tables lined up for registration. I found my table, gave them my name and they gave me a packet of paper, a name tag, and a schedule. I went into the ballroom, got a cup of water and started reviewing the schedule. I noticed it was very different from the one they mailed to me. It started a whole hour later than I was expecting. I decided to use that time to take care of getting my student ID card and on my way downstairs noticed another table, set apart from the others and facing away from the door I had entered through. It was labelled "Adult Student Registration". I walked up to the table, said I'd registered "over there" and asked if I also needed to register with him. He smiled, said yes, gave me another packet, and said I had a class on the third floor just starting. So I hightailed it upstairs, found the class, and got settled. There were maybe 20 other people in this class and they were not a talkative bunch.

After an awkward q&a session, we went to the KIVA to watch a presentation on financial aid. The other adult students and I were scheduled to take our placement tests at 10:30 a.m. and the financial aid presentation went long. Many of us left the presentation early in order to arrive for the test on time, but we were stopped just outside the auditorium. A Kent State student guide said to us, "They know we're running late. Just wait here and I'll escort you to the Bowman Building when everyone is ready."

The Bowman Building is right next to the KIVA, so it was just a short walk. We went upstairs to a computer lab and two students set us up on computers to begin our tests. The English portion of the test was an absolute breeze. It was the sort of thing I used to do here at work until Mike hired an executive secretary to do all the proofreading. I moved on to the math portion, which was more like a foreign language to me. I was able to work the word problems and most of the algebra looked familiar (although I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do with it) and some of it was like a foreign language. There were symbols I'd never seen before. But after an hour and a half, I had completed all of it and walked back to the student center to get my ID before lunch. Getting the ID was painless. Somehow they managed to make me look like a deer in headlights. It's funny...I've tried to get my IDs to look like that on purpose in the past, but this time they managed it with no special effort.

I was studying a map of the campus when I saw some of the people in my group walking towards the dorms where we were to have lunch. I caught up with them and began chatting with the director of the student center. I ended up eating lunch with a girl in my group and a friend of hers who is set to graduate in the spring. The friend drove a bus for the school and was talking about how rude most of the student body is. She said nobody ever says hi. When it was time to meet with my advisor, I told her it was nice to meet her and that if I saw her around campus I'd be sure to say hi.

I walked back to the Bowman Building (which is the main building for the college of arts and sciences where I've been accepted) with another man from my group. He just got out of the Marines and since he signed up post 9/11, he gets a full ride.

I met with my advisor who was extremely enthusiastic about my placement test scores. I tested in the 99th percentile for english. I'm pretty proud of that considering I haven't taken an English course since 1996. She mentioned in a warning kind of voice that I would be required to take a foreign language. I said, "Well, actually, that's the course I'm most excited to take." She got really excited then, and even more excited yet when I mentioned that I'd like to take Russian. Overall, she was just about beside herself with enthusiasm for me to the point where I expected her to start jumping up and down and cheering. It was entertaining! She tried then to get me enrolled in beginners Russian. Unfortunately the lab necessary for that class was closed. So I ended up in Recent American History and Music as a World Phenomenon. I also have to take an Adult Student Orientation course once a week for the whole first semester.

Now I'm just trying to get childcare for Dominic worked out. I'm asking all my friends and also my neighbor. I'll have class 4 nights per week.

Other things I still need to get worked out include parking (they expect freshmen to park by the stadium and take a bus onto campus, but I just don't have time for that), and making sure I have enough money to cover my education. I've been approved for more money than necessary to finish my first semester, but I'm not sure if the federal money covers just my freshman year (33 or so credits) or if it covers a single academic year. In the first scenario, I'm kind of screwed as I'll need to come up with $10k all on my own. In the second scenario, I'm sittin' so pretty it ain't funny. I'm hoping for the second.

Dominic has been enjoying Doctor Who lately. He especially likes the Cybermen (he calls them "cybermans"). I took him shoe shopping on Saturday and tried to talk him into a pair of hightop chucks. He really liked them... until he saw the Skecher Hot Lights that look like police cars. Suddenly, he didn't like the "Doctor shoes" any more and just wanted the "Hot lights! Light up the night!" Two steps forward, one step back...

This was the sort of weekend I really enjoy. Busy and fun.

Saturday morning I took Dominic to the mall to redeem my "Real Women Dollars" from Lane Bryant. Soon I will not fit in their clothes and that will be both triumphant and a little sad. When I was thin I wanted to shop there so bad and now that I'm fat I can't shop anywhere else (or I could, but I don't want to). In any case, Dominic was well behaved so afterwards I took him to Inflatable Insanity and let him jump around for an hour. By the time our hour was up it was 12:30, so I took him to Sbarro for pizza and then got him some popcorn from a mall kiosk. He crashed in the car. Unfortunately he didn't sleep very long. I had logged into FFXI and was waiting for Besieged to start. The troll merceneries had just started advancing when Dominic started crying. So much for leveling my magic skills.

That evening I went to Pat's house for a Twilight viewing party. The movie wasn't good, but the company was and I think we should do it again. Maybe "Idiocracy" at my house?

On Sunday Justin and I had planned to go to the International Gem Show at the IX Center in Cleveland. We left a little early to have breakfast at Wally Waffle then headed up. Neither the IX Center website nor the Gem Show website mentioned that parking cost $8. Luckily Justin and I together scraped up enough cash to pay for parking then headed inside. I knew the Indoor Amusement Park was going on at the same time, but I had assumed that it would be completely divided from the gem show. It wasn't. We walked in the West entrance and the whole area was covered in balloons. Beyond the low divider there were flashing lights advertising rides and carnival food. Dominic's eyes were huge like platters. We walked away from the indoor amusement park toward the gem show box office. Dominic was confused. We tried to buy tickets to the gem show, but they didn't take credit cards (another tidbit left off the website). We tried to find an ATM, but had no luck and the IX staff we asked didn't know where to find one. So we went to the amusement park box office (where they *did* take credit cards) and went to the IX Indoor Amusement Park instead.

The carnival had tons of fun rides for small kids and we spent several hours riding each one. They also had a trained dog show (which we left because Dominic just didn't care) and also a "Backyard Circus." He was so into this circus. They said that they would ask for volunteers from the audience, so Dominic and I sat down front with the other kids and their parents. Then when he asked for volunteers to be lions and tigers Dominic raised his hand. The ringleader looked at me and said, "A little young, mom" and moved on to some kids who were about the same age as Dominic and one who looked to be about 8. Dominic understood and was devastated. As soon as the ringleader passed him over, he just dissolved into tears. He refused to look at what any of the other kids were doing until the lions and tigers came on. The 3 little boys and one older boy were wearing t-shirts labelled "Lions" or "tigers". They had them lay down on their bellies and roll over, then put their legs and arms in the air. Dominic, in an act of defiance I swear I had nothing to do with, decided to show the ring leader he wasn't a baby and followed all of the instructions he was giving the other boys. Then he sat back in my lap and watched the rest of the show.



The gem show may not have mentioned that parking costs $8 and they don't take credit cards at the box office, but they made absolutely certain that we knew that no cameras or strollers were allowed. So I had neither. I did have my Treo, so I was able to get this one blurry picture.

When Dominic started wearing down to the point where we knew he'd have to go home soon, Justin and I decided to hit the gem show after all. We'd found an ATM, so we bought our tickets and headed inside. We walked around with Dominic on our shoulders for most of the time. I fell in love with 3 pieces. One was a necklace of red cubic zirconia hearts. It was stunning, but a little too fancy to wear very often. The second was a necklace of creamy cultured pearls with the occasional red spikey cultured pearl here and there. The third was also a strand of cultured pearls, but in cranberry and cream with bits of unfaceted semi-precious stones (they look like pink and green tourmalines, but I could be mistaken). Dominic was getting close to meltdown, so I left him and Justin so I could go back and forth and decide on one. I eventually decided on the pearl and tourmaline, but when I decided to buy it I couldn't find Justin and Dominic. So I stood near the vendor (who eventually asked me what I was doing and kept an eye out for me when I explained I was looking for my husband and son) until Justin showed up again. Justin gave me the cash to buy the necklace and then explained that he had gone to a different vendor where we had seen a bronze copy of my second all-time favorite statue...



...and talked the vendor down to a price within our budget. So Justin and I are now looking for the perfect spot to display Shiva as Nataraja.

Necklace:


(Lousy pic because the sun isn't shining today.)

So, yeah. Good weekend!

I haven't actually slept since last Friday so forming coherent thoughts is not coming easily to me right now. On the other hand, details from my trip are becoming fuzzy and indistinct so I'd like to get as many down now as possible. So here's a daily overview of my trip last week.

( Very long post that includes pictures! )
He seems to be feeling better now. He's still coughing, but I think he's on the mend. We had a great time meeting up with everyone. I hope we can do it again soon and see everyone we missed this time.

I recently fell in love with arugula. I discovered it back on Valentine's Day when I made that fancy arugula salad for Justin. Now, maybe you've known about arugula for weeks, months, maybe even your whole life, but this was my first experience with it outside nasty bagged salads (on a side note, the nasty bagged salad madness must end). So every week I've been buying myself a big ol' box of arugula and mixing up variations on that Valentine's Day salad. My favorite was last week's salad with started with that bed of arugula and continued on with grapefruit segments, feta, and walnut pieces and finished off with a lemon vinaigrette that also contained mustard and parmesan cheese. I've got leftovers of last night's at home (similar to the above except with a ginger dressing and pecan pieces) and I'm dying to go eat it. Yum.

On Friday, Dominic and I are flying out to Seattle. We're going to spend the night with Seth and Anna outside Issaquah and then continue on early the next morning to Spokane where we will celebrate my mother's 60th birthday. Sunday - Tuesday I will be hanging out with the fam and will almost certainly make a trip to the LC Valley. If you're in the LC Valley and want to meet up, this is the place to speak up.

On Wednesday I will be taking off to gement's house to spend some time with her and hopefully arjache as well. Ril, are you still up for a lapineken hunt?

Saturday the 14th will be the big get-together and will likely take place at Hi-Life restaurant in Seattle (time tba).

Dom and I are flying out early morning on the 15th, likely tired and cranky, but happy to have seen you all.