School Daze September 19, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom, Parenting 101, Ghost in the (sewing)Machine , add a commentTomorrow is our first "Back to School" night for public schools. This is the first of MANY.
We will meet our over caffeinated principal, Mrs. Brown (I kid you NOT, this woman is way way too perky. Makes me want to give her some Quaalude) and then talk with Soleil’s teacher. Last night, Soleil recited two stories from school. The first involved shapes. We drew out the shapes and talked about them. We discussed the Trapezoid and how you can make one, and the rectangle and the square. We discussed how a square is a rectangle and a rectangle is a trapezoid. Then Jay pointed out that she’ll have to get pretty far into geometry before she can stump him on that. (true…so true). We drew hexagons, pentagons, octagons and then decided that a rectangle should be a quadragon. Luna got bored with this, but Soleil was fascinated.
Monday night, my back gave a loud relaxing crack in the middle of the night. Last night helped too, so I can now move. This is a bonus.I tried to sew the Chilly Willy jammie top, but only got far enough to do some work on the neck line and pin the pieces together. My back was hurting too much to continue. Sigh. Plus, I think I need to do one more piece of cutting. You see, I am matching the jammie top to the one that the blogger sent me. This is different from my pattern. The neck line is the big difference. So I might need to have a special collar in the back for this.Sigh… I need to look carefully at her shirt tonight before I go too far.
Luna has adjusted well to the changes in our lives. She loves walking to the bus stop every morning with Soleil and I. She likes to wave goodbye and ask when she can ride the bus. Then she goes on to discuss how she want to go to Kindergarten. She also loves having Jay and I both drop her off at daycare.
We are finding that we have entered the "transitional years". We have 2 of them. Luna will be at daycare for 2 more years. Soleil is in school. We have two places, about 10 miles and 30 minutes of driving, apart. Once Luna is in Kindergarten, we’re going to have to redo the whole plan. How to have one of us at home in the afternoons to get the girls. How to be able to be there while getting work done. How to travel between work and home with just one car? (why double pollute?) Sigh….
Vacation, Space Style! August 17, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Weblogs, Spacemom, Travel , 2 commentsToday, we drove down to Olympia, and the D family (from No More Work than One) drove up from their home in the PNW, and we met for lunch and play. Things went well! D was not an axe murderer, nor was K2. S2 and H2 are adorable, but mostly played together, which was fine, as the place we went to was mobbed with kids. D and Jay spent time talking about Moore’s law and other geeky stuff. K2 and I spoke of simpler stuff like zipper workshops for sewing.
Soleil and Luna had fun, but they both fell down at different points and I had to break out the princess bandaids. S2 and H2 have not yet met the princesses. Good for them. Because once they do, it’s all downhill from there!
We had a lot of fun and D and I made fun of Jay because we could spot the Starbucks a block away and he couldn’t (he’s caffeine deprived, what can I do?)
Then we got back and had dinner with family and watched movies. I checked my work email to discover another code had broken and man, is that frustrating. At least I could diagnose the issue with out even looking at the code. Stupid databases.
So, we are getting close to the actual reason for this vacation, a Bar Mitzvah. I hope we survive the stress of a family gathering!
Titleless August 3, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , 2 commentsYeah, can’t come up with a good title. Oh well.
I’ve been allowing myself to be sick. For the past 4-8 weeks, I have been fighting it. Saying "Why am I so exhausted?" And blaming myself for a series of things. No more. Now I am allowing myself to just be ill. And I feel it. I am going to bed about 1 hour before my normal bedtime. I’ve been resting in the afternoons. Tired, but letting things be.
It’s hard for me to do this. I am the type of person who can’t sit still. I must be moving, doing, something! And I find myself having trouble sitting back and resting.
I’ve been reorganizing our web pages for work. They needed it and it is a mindless task. I think that’s the best thing for now.
I have many things I wish to write about, but I am too tired to do so…
So, here’s to just being sick. And letting it be. So I can get better again….
Passworded Posts May 22, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , add a commentPlease check here for a Password post. If you don’t have the password, please email me.
I will not just give out the password to anyone. Please give me a reason as to why you would like to see the password protected posts….And a link to your blog, if you have one.
Thanks
Julie- Next time, don’t use my real email account May 9, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , 8 commentsJulie V-
When you wrote this to me earlier…
You’re not only a hypocrite, but an arrogant hypocrite. You go on endlessly
aboout how awful your kids are, how you can’t make them behave. You’ve stated
that you don’t like the people they are becoming. What on God’s earth would
make you think that YOU could handle a Down’s child? You need medication to get
through your day and half the time that doesn’t even work.You live in a BIG GLASS HOUSE, so put down your stones…
You forgot to send it to thespacemom. You sent it to my real account. It was all nice that you were kind enough to use an anonymous account, but Dude, I know it is you….Why are you still reading? If you hate me, then just stop reading! I am getting tired of the bullshit.
An hour of bliss April 28, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , 5 commentsI spent my birthday gift today. An hour massage. Bliss.
After wrenching my shoulder yesterday, I decided to call in the heavy guns, my masseuse. Now, this is not a regular occurrence. Maybe once every 3 months or so, but it is so worth it.
I was asked to come in a half hour early. The girls were being, well, insane, and so I jumped at the chance.
When I first came for massages, I was embaressed to get undressed. I still keep my panties on, but I remove everything else. It really helps. Now I just go right in, get down to the skinny and get on the table.
She came in shortly after I was resting on the table, face up as she had requested.
I asked for music and she put on my favorite, the CD where I can either be in Hawaii, Japan or a North American conifer forest. The birds are making wonderful chirps, water is flowing and a gentle wind instrument plays. I got lost in the moment as she worked my shoulder, my neck, my arms
I get little electric shocks when she does my fingers. I never know why except it always happens. She moved to my legs and feet. This is amazing. I can almost see the trees above my head as I lay in the grass by a Buddhist temple. There is a specific temple in Hawaii that this CD reminds me of.
After I turn over, she works my back. Oh I can feel the tension dissolving. I am floating. She works the backs of my legs, my calves and hamstrings. Oh this is so good.
My neck and head get attention again. I know my hair will be a greaseball when I leave from all of her oil, but man does this feel like heaven. My sore shoulder is doing better, but then she works it hard again. I can feel the lactic acid breaking up.
Finally, sadly, my hour is up. I take my time getting dressed, getting ready for the real world.
When I return home, the girls jump at me and then immediately start fighting (they were playing chess when I walked in and fighting over trading bishops). The tension is returning already. Sigh…
But at least I had one hour of bliss…
100 things, stolen! April 27, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , 2 commentsThis is stolen from American Family and Chicago Mom!
100 things about Spacemom
- I really like Buffalo New York
- I am starting to really enjoy Boston Massachusetts
- I am the second child of a two child family
- My sister is 5 years older than me
- My mom had 5 pregnancies
- Mom fell down a flight of stairs when she was 3 months pregnant with me and broke the amniotic sac
- The doctor told her to rest and then told Dad outside of the room that she would lose this pregnancy
- She didn’t
- I was a loner in elementary school
- I only had 2 close friends
- In Middle school, the circle grew to include 2 more
- I still talk to 2 of these women on a semi-regular basis
- Crazy H is one of these friends
- She lives 20 minutes from me now
- We met when I was 4
- My best friend now lives in the same small town we grew up in
- She has 2 kids
- And she is a widow
- Her husband died in the Army
- I will never forget that day, January 6, 2000
- He was 22 days shy of 30 years old
- I have always loved astronomy
- Since I was 5, I would watch satellites when we went camping
- I hated camping
- And spiders. I hate spiders
- I once could name all 88 constellations
- I can still identify most of the Northern ones within a few minutes in a dark site
- My first telescope was a cheap one.
- It took me almost 30 minutes to get the moon in view
- I was scared to look in the telescope because I might see something scary
- I worked at 3 different places during high school and college
- The first was the museum of science in Buffalo.
- The first signs of overt racism came in when people asked me if I was scared to drive there
- I wasn’t scared and only once people mentioned it did I notice the area was predominately African-American
- The second was an amusement park that is now owned by Six Flags.
- I worked in the commissary
- I loved making popcorn
- It would take 1 hour to make 10 garbage bags full of popcorn
- I loved mixing the sugar and cotton candy flavor
- I would sneeze pink or blue after mixing it up for hours
- When an apple fell in the candy mix one day, I got a 3rd degree burn on my finger.
- The park wanted me to just work through it
- I insisted on going to a doctor.
- I got fired the day I refused to sell beer because it would have left two 14 year olds in the commissary to do all of the work.
- In New York state, 14 years olds can not touch knifes in the work place
- We had peppers and onions to prepare that day
- I was disgusted by the quest for profit over safety
- I worked nights at a local department store
- I was the only woman on a stocking crew
- We would race around the store at night in shopping carts
- My team often won!
- When I was 10, a family member tried to commit suicide
- It didn’t work, but it set up family counseling
- I was the one person who never talked in the sessions
- Nobody cared that I didn’t talk
- I started to withdraw
- I fell in love with a kid at school
- Everyone knew I had a crush on him
- He was scared of me
- I was obsessive
- I still wonder where he is
- I decided to apply to schools in New York only because Dad had lost his job
- In the end, I only applied to one school, University of Stony Brook
- I got in
- I loved it
- Long Island hair scared me and I never understood how people did that
- My first roommate was from Staten Island and incredibly racist
- College was the first time I met a Jewish person, an Indian person and an African-American
- One of my best friends was Indian
- Her family was very strict with her
- She tried to commit suicide in sophomore year
- Her family took her out of school and made her get married in an arranged marriage that she didn’t want
- I went to her wedding, but have not heard from her again
- After she left, I would go up to the chemistry building and stare out the plate glass windows at night
- I often considered running down the hallway and not stopping at the glass
- I never did it
- I went through a very depressive stage during college
- I discovered that going to the Long Island Sound or the ocean calmed me.
- I discovered that rough seas made me feel better
- That discovery disturbed me
- My first boyfriend dumped me when I started going to the mental health clinic
- I was devastated
- I threw myself into thermal dynamics and raised my C average to an A- for the year
- I started working as a resident assistant to start things over
- The woman that I took over for had woken up in her bed with a strange man next to her watching her.
- I got her room
- It scared the shit out of me
- I started a job in the astronomy program
- There was a grad student working on observations, I signed up one night a week
- It was Jay
- We worked together for almost a year before he asked me out
- I said no
- After I broke up with another guy, we started dating
- I was still working for him
- I applied to grad schools, but decided to stay with Jay
- I was the first planned Master’s degree in the astro program at SB
- Jay got offers for jobs in Germany, they would have taken me in the PhD program
- Instead, he took his current job
- I was officially hired here before he was
- One hundred things is not as many as I thought
Where Imus went wrong April 13, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , 1 comment so farI have been listening to the Don Imus affair and waiting. I knew he would get fired. It was just a matter of time.
Why? Because of his terrible racial and sexist words?(and believe me, I was pissed when I heard what he said)
Not really, I knew it would happen because he attacked people not in the public domain.
When you run for office, you automatically put yourself out for attack. When you are an actor or any type of public figure, you put yourself out for attack. Professional athlete? Yessiree, you are a target.
But collegiate women in an amateur sport? NO. That is not fair game. These women have not become public domain simply by playing a sport for their college. You can claim "first amendment" for Imus all you want, but there is a level of acceptability and you do not slander private citizens.
On a personal level, it is never acceptable to attack people with racial and sexist comments. But I do understand that certain people open themselves up for it by going into the public eye.
BTW- a word to the wise, I can sew a straight seam while watching a hockey game, but I got very excited when my team scored a goal and I hit the pedal a little too fast and skipped a few stitches! Oops! 
Fortunately, this was on the first turn of the edges and tonight I will finish the blanket with a hockey game that doesn’t involve my team (we won, 4-1 !)
Jimmy and Me! March 20, 2007
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom, Ghost in the (sewing)Machine , 4 comments- My officemate if off to get married (the poor boy, I don’t think he knows what he is getting into), so I have the office to myself. I loaded "life from Fenway" onto my MP3 player last night. Just me and Jimmy Buffett jamming with the steel drums in my office.
- I used my kitty machine to make a cloth napkin. It didn’t completely suck. It pretty much sucked. But I did it! I made something with my sewing machine! Now, let’s see if I can do this with out missing the hem and maybe cutting the fabric in the shape of a square?
- I was going through a toy store a week ago with Crazy H. We found this amazing playmobil toy.Yes, that is a PORTAPOTTY! For the Playmobil toys! And there is a roll of paper in there too! Dudes, do we really need this level of reality in our toy stuff? sigh…
Where oh where is Spacemom? November 14, 2006
Posted by spacemom in : Spacemom , add a commentHa! As if anyone cares!
Okay- got home Friday morning, spent Friday being attacked by two small children. Spent Saturday helping a friend blow $500 at Ann Taylor, a birthday gift from her husband, Spent Sunday, ducking the rain and trying to keep the kids happy! Spent Yesterday dealing with a major issue at work.
They moved our computer systems across Cambridge Mass over the weekend. We lost a disk in the move. We are screwed. Majorly… I will be spending this week fixing things so we can work okay….
I will post when I can, because I have some very interesting thoughts in my head…
