Les Miserables Manipulation

Music has always been a huge part of my life. My older cousins inspired me to request piano lessons as a first grader. They could play elaborate songs, teach themselves tunes from the radio, and make the entire family light up when they were given the chance to sing along.

When you play the piano (or any instrument for that matter), it is easy to learn to play other instruments. By the time I reached sixth grade, I picked up the violin and the saxophone.

By the time I reached junior high, I wanted nothing more to do with lessons.

The same thing happened when I was a freshman in college. I took a drawing class and loved it so much I imagined a life from then on with a career in fine arts. Imagining and creating came easily to me and awakened parts of my mind that playing instruments did for me as a child.

Again, it happened.

By the time I reached the end of the term, I wanted nothing more to do with art classes.

Looking back I am not sure why I quit all of those times. Maybe the word “quit” is wrong. Maybe I loved these things so much that I wanted them to remain mine and mine alone. Or maybe I didn’t love them enough to pursue them as more than just hobbies. As time passes, I feel more strongly about the latter but I do know that I feel more complete, more like myself when I am surrounded by music and opportunities to be creative.

So I have rekindled my love for the fine arts with the help of this guy, Ramin Karimloo,

(Source)

this guy, Hadley Fraser,(who was also on the Fresh Beat Band too! All of you stay-at-home parents know who I’m talking about!)

(Source)

and of course, this one, Alfie Boe, who’s voice is so amazing that I wish I had a hundred bucks to see him in concert at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco next month!

(Source)

But alas, I will keep watching YouTube, I will play the 25th Anniversary DVDs of The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables (both of which I highly recommend if you can’t get yourself to London or NYC or any Broadway-loving city to watch these awesome musicals in person), and I will giggle at fine videos such as this one:

The Field Trip Fluctuation

For some reason last night I could not go to sleep. Or rather, I did not want to go to sleep.

And I don’t know why.

Yes, Sudoku on my generic phone-without-internet-access is fun. And I did reread about a third of Mockingjay.

But I didn’t want to go to sleep.

My mind is racing again. Yes, I have a new generic Keurig coffee maker but that isn’t why.

The runner’s high is gone. Ah, yes. That’s it.

I was running several times a week at the crack of dawn, the only time the weather allowed it. Now with the weather in triple digits and a hip injury last week, the high is gone.

The kids have been in school for the past month (our school follows a year-round schedule) and will be ending this session tomorrow. With the weather so warm, we will probably hit the gym pool a few times. We will probably schedule playdates which we all know is code for “bring your kids over, we won’t hear from them until they get hungry, and let’s have a cup of coffee and/or a glass of moscato until then”.

This slump of mine isn’t normal and this is what I mean about keeping depression at bay. I have been eating pretty well and chocolate consumption is down to an all time low. (You can’t believe it either, right?) But without those endorphins from exercise, I feel it.

Luckily I have come to know myself and my body. I am not suicidal nor homocidal, something I have said to my doctor before. I just know what I need and won’t stop until I get there.

I need my husband. It’s been three months since he left and yep, that seems about right. Before surgeons decide on whether or not he needs to get his vertebrae fused together, they would like to see if steroid shots will work first. Then and only then can they get the move on.

I suppose his recovery is like a giant flowchart. If Scenario A happens, then we can get to Scenario B but only if Scenario C happens. Now I don’t know what is going on out there but I do know that doctors have not been calling them when they said they would and I understand that R is not the only Wounded Warrior out there. The world does not revolve around us.

I get that.

But dammit, he is broken so effing fix him already.

Ah, it feels so much better to see that last sentence in print.

No matter though. Today I embark on a great trip; that is, I will chaperone fifty first graders on a walking trip to the local library. It will probably be almost three miles round trip in this hot weather but nothing like hanging with the youth to lift your spirits, eh?

The Khaki Ball Conclusion

I passed my CSET tests for General Science! After I finish this online course through UCLA in a couple of weeks, I will be able to add a general science authorization to my teaching credential. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’ll be cleared to teach general science at the junior and high school levels. Once I finish my final I will start studying for the biology and chemistry CSETs to pursue additional authorizations in those areas. That test is next month!

There is a five miler coming up on Saturday but I am not sure if I’ll be able to do it. I injured my hip a couple of weeks ago to what I attribute to stretching, or lack of. Also, it’s been over a hundred degrees for the past couple of weeks with no signs of cooling down in sight. Because I have been less active, I’ve been trying to really be mindful of my calorie intake which isn’t too hard since hot weather is a good appetite suppressant.

I got an invite from my husband’s command in Virginia for the annual Khaki Ball. I have never been to one and really really want to go but eh, cannot go for a zillion reasons. Two of the biggest reasons being money and kids. Ah, story of my life…

While I may not be able to do anything about the money sitch, there is a lot of entertainment value in these kids, particularly when it comes to their artistic ability.

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This one I found on the kitchen table when L, the kindergartener, decided to make something for her brother and sister. I cannot believe the detail in her drawing!

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According to M, a cyclops is throwing all of those guys down a ditch. Yes, those guys are in line. I like how some of the figures have found creative ways of getting sacrificed. One has a parachute, a few are holding hands, another is surfing on top of yet another guy. There is one guy though who is on the side of the cliff who’s smiling and trying to climb out.

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The following is a story called “The Boy Who Didn’t Enjoy Slightly Overcooked Popcorn, Book 1 of the Manslotter Series”.

I have typed the manuscript in the original form, in case the print is too small in the picture:

Chapter #1 A Villan is Born

Once a pon a time there was a boy named Max. It was Friday. He was having movie night. If there was one thing Max loved it was popcorn. Unfortunatly when Max ate his popcorn it was slightly overcooked. Max was angry. Max came up to his parents and said, “You creeps. Why did you give me slightly overcooked popcorn?”

Max pulled out a gun and shot his parents. “I’m runing away. I’m going to become a VILLAN,” Max shouted. Max’s parents allways told him don’t be a villan. Now that he killed his parrents he was destined to be a villan.

Pretty awesome, right? Don’t worry. Remember I already checked with a psychologist about this sort of doodling?

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I can’t remember if the big guy is throwing up or is breathing fire. If it were fire, he probably would have added flames. Anyway there is a joker who carved out the belly of the big guy and stuck a bomb in there. Also, the circle inset in the upper right hand corner is a picture of what is happening inside of the big guy’s belly button. Seriously. Oh look, there’s a guy with a bomb for a head, someone going to sleep, a birthday cake, and a guy with a wheelbarrow full of belly button lint.

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“Big mutant cyborg head”: So the mad scientist at the bottom, who is apparently only two feet tall, made Mario into a giant, rocket-propelled head. The head itself is a whopping eight feet tall.

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Now this drawing is confusing. I can’t remember what M said about this but I think people are fed into the Baby Xtream and are made into grenades. But what does this have to do with the giant monster called the Babie Creator at the top where one dude is chipping away at its flesh and feeding its blood and/or guts to the guy down below? Wait, is that a flame thrower? Are those babies lifting a flame thrower? Somehow I think this was drawn after I had the talk with the boy about the birds and the bees…

The Allons-y Instability (Or How Being a Military Wife FUCKING SUCKS ASS)

Ladies and gentleman,

I am in A MOOD.

Kindly refrain from talking to me in real life because I might bite off your head for no reason at all other than the fact that I am so fucking tired of where I am right now.

A couple of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. Okay, maybe four.

Financial restraints as in this budget of ours is making me say no to EVERYTHING right now.

A fucking unfulfilling phone conversation with my husband. Goddammit, when is he coming home already? I would like for him to be home just once when I absolutely fucking need him. Just once.

I’d like to catch a movie by myself without relying on someone else other than who I married. I’d like to hang out with my friends without feeling like I am dragging the kids with me. I’d like to have a fucking week all by myself.

Is that too much to ask?

Unless you’ve been one, it’s hard to understand how being a military spouse does a fucking goddamn number on your head. You have to find the right goddamn balance sometimes when you don’t even know that you’re balancing in the first place.

You have to be independent enough to pursue your goals, especially when it comes to your damn career, but eh, you can’t do anything about them because you’re going to move whenever the Navy gods deem necessary. Or, better yet, you’ve been out of the workforce too long so good luck finding a goddamn job.

You have to be strict enough with your kids so they don’t take advantage of your single-parent guilt but easy going enough because dammit, they miss him too.

You have to be strong enough not to let stupid insecurities or petty differences start a one-way fight in your head but know that fuck, there is only so much I can take in my head right now.

I want to binge on Cadbury but I’m a dumbass and knew that I would one day feel so angry, so frustrated, so exhausted — why, yes, like today — that I would inhale the milk chocolate without tasting it. I knew that at the grocery store I didn’t need it then.

But I so need it now.

I actually feel like throwing up now.

I think I will go to bed, have a good cry, and maybe it’ll be better in the morning. Maybe I’ll dream of the Doctor dropping by in his TARDIS, whisking me away to a year from now. Maybe he will dry my tears and say, “Now, love, see? It was all worth it, wasn’t it?”

Wasn’t it?

The First Day Fluctuation

The kids went back to school already. This includes the baby, who at 5 years old and in kindergarten, is anything but.

People ask me what I’ve been doing with all of my free time in the morning and I honestly couldn’t tell you. I probably look a little lost, going to the gym or getting groceries.

I have been taking an online class to try and get a credential in secondary schools so I’ve been doing homework, participating in forums and trying not to be a smartass and/or a goofball. I have also started studying for taking more tests to get authorizations in higher sciences. Even if I don’t pass the preliminary tests, the study guides overlap so I’m not wasting any time. Also, who wouldn’t want to know more about chemical reactions honestly?

I can’t go to the mall. Don’t want to spend any money. Best to just not tempt me, that’s what I say.

Can’t hang out at the bookstore because the nearest one is thirty minutes away! Save gas, save money.

May as well just stay home and do a severe edit on the kids’ bedrooms. I can always tell when they’ve got too much stuff when they think it’s too difficult to keep their rooms clean.

But first, I think I am going to read a little…

The Sprained Malfunction

I came sad conclusion that I may have to cut down my Zumba hours per week. I do higher impact versions of her goddess Vanessa’s choreography that I cannot do both and maintain a running schedule of four days a week.

You read that right. Four days a week.

I am surprised that my bank hasn’t called me to verify superfluous spending in the form of race entry fees. I am quite excited actually.

I have a 5K and a 10K in September, a 5K in October, and a 5K in December. I am still hoping that I will hit a weekly ten mile run by Christmas.

I was in my doctor’s office last week for my annual and well, I thought I had skin cancer on my forehead. Yes, my husband thinks I am a hypochrondriac too. I would take a pic of this questionable lesion but I don’t want to scare you away from this silly little blog.

The doctor took one look at it and said, “Um… it’s a wart.” So she tried to burn the sucker off with liquid nitrogen. It was gross and cool all at the same time.

She asked me how I felt about my weight, a touchy subject for any doctor to bring up I’m sure. I said I think I’m fine even though BMI charts list me as obese. I told her that I had been on a running schedule for the last two months, haven’t lost a single pound, and that my clothes fit better despite the scale not budging. I have been eating better (even though my kids eat way better than me; after all, they don’t have a secret stash of chocolate hidden somewhere), especially taking up running again.

Do you know how people always say, “There’s always room for dessert”? Well, for me, there is always energy for Zumba. I could be dead tired or just eaten a giant California burrito and a large diet soda but I could always dance. With running, it’s very different.

I HAVE to eat right for fuel otherwise I come to a dead stop.

I HAVE to avoid heavy foods or my running pace becomes a walking pace.

I AM VERY MINDFUL of my diet when I run regularly.

And do you know what my doctor said?

She said to ignore the charts and go by how I feel. My numbers looked fine. She said that if I continue this routine that the fat will just continue to melt away.

It also did not hurt that she is a runner herself!

Such a change from my last doctor who saw my weight and hinted that I was too heavy.

So now I need to be not only mindful of what I eat, I have to pay very close attention to my workouts. I think I am just so motivated and happy that I am motivated that I don’t want to lose this momentum by taking a chance on a losing a less-than-perfect workout.

But my ankles and knees have to recover. I need to cross-train on days I’m not running but not to the point where I am just begging for an injury. I need to listen to my body.

Because that’s what runners do.

I saw green smoothies on Pinterest and decided to give them a whirl…

… um, spinach…

I walked around the kids’ school with this thing and a grandmother asked me what I put in my smoothie. I even told her, “I really don’t like this but I am going to drink it because I made a whole blender’s worth!” Actually when I got home, I reblended it with frozen blueberries and it was MUCH better.

Lesson learned. Mango smoothie? Delicious. Mango and spinach smoothie? Um, no. Adding blueberries to make everything better? Priceless.

An Open Letter to Me-This-Morning

Dear Me-This-Morning,

Somewhere deep down inside, deeper than the sexy six pack hidden under the souvenirs from birthing three children, you had a goal.

You knew that if your husband could recover from being unable to walk for two months and run a 5K less than a year after a terrible car wreck, then surely you could find the strength to set this goal.

You saw active duty and veterans fighting for their recovery despite amputations, deep wounds, traumatic brain injury. You still see them fighting with every fiber of their being. You see all of this with your own eyes; surely you could find bravery within you to attempt this goal.

You knew you have a family and a husband to stay healthy for, a chance to keep breast cancer and heart disease away with exercise and a healthier diet, and most of all, you have yourself.

You awesome bad-ass diva. You effing rock.

Keep doing happy dances after every mile. Keep high-fiving the lamp posts when you run by them. After all, that’s why they’re there.

Above all, keep running.

Sincerely,
Me-Who-Just-Ran-10K-Without-Stopping

Who ARE You and What Have You Done With My Son?

My ten year old has been over his cousins’ house since Sunday and finally came back today.

I missed him like crazy.

His sisters? Not so much.

When we went to pick him up this morning, the middle one A whispered to me, “Can we leave him here again?”

I can’t say I blame her. They’ve been clashing a lot the past year ever since he became a TWEEN. While he’s been gone the last forty-eight hours, she’s had it pretty good. I let her spend money she got from Grandma and Grandpa on the game Jenga. I brought her and her sister to the park and out to eat.

Girl time.

Perhaps the most important part though was that she was no longer in the middle. She was only the big sister. I imagine it must have felt pretty good.

When M came back, he told me that Chuck Norris once ate a 12 oz steak in under a minute and 59 seconds of that was spent having sex with the waitress.

What?!

I am pretty sure he and his older cousins (M will be in fifth grade, his older cousins will be in sixth grade and eighth grade) Google’d more Chuck Norris jokes. I am pretty sure they were able to talk about things he couldn’t talk about with me or his sisters for that matter. I am not worried about what they talked about. His cousins are good kids and their parents (their mother is my first cousin) are doing a great job.

I am worried about him.

Okay, that’s coming out wrong.

I am worried about me. He’s growing up so fast that I can’t breathe! I don’t have my husband here to tell me to exhale. Ugh. Not until next year! Next year cannot come soon enough!

So I tucked him into bed tonight. I said, “Good night! I love you!” like I have for the past ten and a half years. And for the past ten and a half years, he’s called out several times until I leave his room, “I love you! Good night!” and we’d go back and forth a couple times until I retreated back downstairs.

Tonight he said nothing.

Nothing.

Hear that? That’s the sound of my heart breaking.

Moments of Clarity

If you have been following this silly little blog for a while, you know that we are Catholic and while my husband was not raised Catholic, we have agreed to raise our children this way.

I would like to humbly point out that I am not here to convert you or anything of the sort. Lord knows we’ve seen that for thousands of years, eh? I just love sharing moments of when our kids are happy though “happy” is not the word I would use to describe them on Monday afternoon. On Monday they started a week-long Vacation Bible School.

The oldest was concerned. Was this a sleepaway camp? He surely wasn’t ready for that yet. Good grief, I am not ready for that yet.

The youngest didn’t mind. Her church-going experience doesn’t really involve going to church. L attends Kinderchurch, probably the equivalent to other churches’ Sunday School sessions.

The middle one, however, had issues. Vocal issues. This is coming from the girl who brought her journal to mass and proceeded to draw and write for the entire mass. I allowed her to because she hadn’t attended a full mass since she was a baby and wasn’t quite used to sitting still for that duration of time.

After a mass last year, Sister C asked A what she learned in church today. A showed her the picture she drew during mass. The picture was a drawing of a vampire.

I had never gone to Vacation Bible School and neither had the kids. And although this VBS came highly recommended, I didn’t feel comfortable dropping off the kids in a place I didn’t know (VBS was held at a neighboring Catholic parish) with people I had never met so what did I do?

Yep, I volunteered to be a Group Leader! I was M’s group leader too!

I was very impressed by the number of teenagers who volunteered the entire week. What great role models! They ran stations, performed skits, and taught so many different things from art to dance, from Bible games to Bible verses. Kids who were attending VBS for the last time as “campers” would return as “camp counselors” next year.

It was really touching actually to see this many people across generations in a community come together to guide our youth, to have fun, and to promote acts of charity. Families donated over six hundred cans this week to the local food bank!

The kids did art,

reflected on lessons of the day in journals,

listened to older kids perform skits (me included! yikes!),

and had snacks too. What? Is that a smile on the middle one’s face?

Can’t forget about these pics. I am not kidding you. All three were mortified that I took this picture! Ha! If they only knew the embarassment to come…

Just when I think that I am pretty satisfied with the volunteer work I have done, when I think “Maybe I won’t volunteer next year”, I happened to peek into the middle’s dance session.

I stood by the door so she wouldn’t see me and stop dancing. I looked at this seven year old trying to stay in time with the music, trying to clap when the teacher clapped, trying to sway when the others swayed.

I looked at this girl who’s personality is so similar to mine that I forget that is the reason why we clash more often than the other two. The look on her face was pure joy. The same as mine as when I saw her face for the very first time that spring day in Texas so many years ago.

In that moment I felt her presence, her energy, this personality sometimes so overbearing but the carbon copy of mine and the carbon copy of my grandmother who died three days before the middle was born. All of this hit me so hard all at once in a split second during her class that I felt so overwhelmed with emotion. I had to lean against the wall next to me and hold back tears. Which emotion or emotions? Even now I think about that moment and my eyes fill up with tears. Elation, joy, grace, contentedness…

Moments like these are not wont for description; they are meant to be experienced, cherished, remembered. Is it a coincidence that I would have this moment at VBS with this particular child? Was I meant to feel this way wherever I was at that moment of time? My mother, as deeply religious and oddly deeply superstitious to boot, would tell you that this was a message from my grandmother, her mother.

But I would tell you that these answers do not matter to me, only that these questions exist.

No Pressure Or Anything

It’s the morning of the test!

Nightmares about forgetting number two pencils? Check.

Healthy breakfast? Check.

My body shut down on me on Tuesday with a sprained ankle. I had a lot of anxiety about the test that I wanted to run out and was so disappointed because I was looking forward to upping my mileage. On Tuesday I realized I was a runner.

My mind shut down on me two days later. I didn’t have the patience or energy to study vectors or igneous rocks or tRNA for that matter. Yesterday I slept the entire day!

With the kids sleeping over at their cousins’ house, I could fall asleep and wake up when I wanted to. Not that I don’t when they’re home because they know, in the words of the Disney movie Aladdin, do not disturb Mommy’s slumber! I could do all this without worrying about them.

I called R before I left for the test site. He said, “Maybe it’s a good thing all of this happened. Now you’re well-rested.”

He’s right. I probably would have taken both exercise and studying to an obsessively unhealthy extreme. He suggested to go to Starbucks before the test to relax and to not freak out before the test.

Phone call to loving and supportive husband? Check.