Friday, October 24, 2014

Surrealism with Sarita--dedicado a Pedro!

Cada vez que me siento en una junta con Sarita la unica cosa que puedo pensar es que estoy trapped en una pelicula.
La pelicula se llama BOco. y es una produccion de Pedro Almodovar (not really of course).
Soy la interpreter, la amiga, la terapista.
Estamos en Eastern N.C. y la mama es de dondesea Mexico.
La primera vez que yo la vi estabamos en la traila de evaluaciones.  Yo estaba evaluandose a su hijo, el cual no hablaba, sino tiraba sillas y grito para comunicarse.
Ella llego con su {esposo}, el ninyo, y una bebe en carriola...o y la otra en su matriz!
Yo le dije, sin ni pensar en lo correcto, "y cuanto mas vas a tener, senyora?"  Me miraba con la cara de la gente lastimada..tirada, batallada...cansada.
Hicimos la evaluacion.
Le visitaria a ella muchas veces mas...en shelters, en su "traila" --na mas una camper.
Lloraba por ella y su bebe.
Celebre por ella cuando me dijo --"tengo un IUD, Susana"
Ahora tiene recorte de pelo de una rockstar.
Esta en la vivienda de "low income"
Maneja su "minivan."
Y algun abogado de algun lado le ayuda.
....gracias a dios!
Oh!  y...tiene a su novio...
El esposo se fue a la carcel.  Yo le dije que..ya no iba a ir a su casa, me dio un peligro a la vida mia...si su esposo se salio de la carcel.
Una vez cuando nadie tuvo ni un trozo de papel para apuntar un notita en una de nuestras juntas...
ella tiene su smart phone que puede usar.
No worries. :)
See the crazy?

Insomnia

Every now and then I wake up at some crazy hour and I just worry and over think every thing that is going on around me at the speed of {life}.
This day I was worrying about red ribbon week at V-man's school.  There was an event every day and Victor did none of them b/c it was my job to get all the stuff together and organize it all.
Silly sock day.  Favorite sports jersey day.  Book character day...
I.  Did.  Nothing.
What a terrible mother!
So what do I do when this happens???--I wake Andy up too.  Then I tell him all that worries me.
Then he says something funny and we both end up laughing very loud.
Then, the kids wake up and come in here b/c we are loud--4:00AM by this time.
When Victor came into my room I asked him all about Red Ribbon Week and if he is upset b/c we did not get all of that together etc.
and he said....
"Mama, that's next week!" 
LOL!
And...for all you blog followers out there...here is a silly picture for you:
A trailer with an airplane sticking out of the top.  It has been there since last May when the tornado hit.  
Have a great weekend!

Sunday, October 12, 2014

What are all your doll babies doing Eva?

....Playing school.... :)
I love to watch her play.
This child really knows how to do it.
She gets lost in her room (or any other one she picks) for hours, and she plays!!
Sometimes she is cutting hair (including her own).
Sometimes she is caring for her animals and babies in the {vet} clinic.
...the list goes on and it is precious to me!
If one has a child who is more literal minded one can see the contrast.
Some children do not spend this kind of time at imaginary play b/c they just come out of the womb 
with a very literal mind.
Imagination comes in very short supply for some.
For others, it oozes out and cannot be contained!
For the imagination ones school can be torture.  
We have started calling school the "learning factory".
That is what our school is like these days.
Come in, crank out some worksheets from 8-3.
You get a 20 minute breather outside.
You get a 25 minute eating session (talking among friends is discouraged).
....You get it?

The Realtor

Suzanne decided that selling the house in Saltineville was a must-do.  As quickly as possible, b/c she knew they needed to get all of the money out of the house that they could, and the days of flipping houses...well, those days were over b/c all of the people were beginning to realize that they were, in fact, not rich--(even if the bank wanted them to think so). ;).
Suzanne was gonna do it herself--but that was for the birds.
Real estate broker became a job for a reason.
After having shown her house to at least five strangers and talking to one crazy guy who {almost convinced Suzanne that he was the guy who was gonna buy the house), Suzanne called the realtor.  The person came out to the house, told Suzanne all that was wrong, and sold the house--no money lost!
"Whew,"  Suzanne thought, "we got outta that one like a cat out the screen door!"
In all honesty, the house in Saltineville was one of the best Suzanne could have picked.  It was a cute, brick ranch house with all hardwood floors, a beautiful kitchen, a large backyard, a car port, two man cave sheds, in a neighborhood, two bathrooms...just perfect.
BUT--this wonderful house was not in Wishington, which was precisely where Suzanne had determined, in the blink of a moment, that she and her family needed to be.
So, it was goodbye perfect house, hello {home}.
Just a sidenote, the perfect house also had a gigantic interstate that ran not even a mile away down some hills, and when the leaves fell off the trees...the interstate literally roared!  (Wishington did not even have an interstate within an hour's drive).
Interestingly enough...during those moments, any little tid bit of bad that could have crept up as a cautionary tell to Suzanne hid itself in all the {goodness} that Wishington had to offer.
...grandparents, diamonds on the river, no interstate, gente conocida, a {bestie} who lived right there in Wishington...the list goes on.
Stay tuned--Suzanne is gonna get to Wishington soon....

Thursday, October 2, 2014

buckshot

does anyone remember these kinds of posts?
These are posts in which one might fire off about anything that comes to mind.
Here are mine:
* The name Brooks, for a boy, is one of my least favorite.  Brooke, for a girl, fine.  Brook, for a girl, not as good a spelling, but whatevs...
Brook with an /s/?  omm..for a boy?  bad idea.  dumb. hate it.
**does anyone remember learning to multiply double digit numbers?  I do.  I was always deemed "careless!"  LOL--I got it, but I hated it.  Igual for Elena.  Thank god for Andy.
*Bourdain, or Zimmern.  Well, although I relate, in my attitude to Bourdain more, --Zimmern for me!  I love a big fat nerdy guy who is so excited about everything he sees, and he does not try to make it so existentialist all the time, he is not a ner do well, nor does he even try to be one.  He is damn happy to be finding bizarre foods.
**wanna make a smoothie?  go get a stick blender, put in a frozen brown banana (don't throw it out), some other frozen fruit (whatever you pick is cheap in the comida kitty frozen foods section), some yogurt, some water, and some chia seeds...blendy blend--I do it every morning.
*Jobs:  I am getting a little worn down by mine.  I love helping children. 
*Spain:  going there is looking more and more like a longshot every day.  Today I priced a trip and it would cost clost to ten grand to get us all there...
sad. face.
**Spain:  is the place I love the most...and my dream is to go there with my children and live at Matalascanyas for a month in the summer and take trips around with them to see my favorite stuff...carmona, segovia, gibraltar, sevilla {nervion}.  Ojala!
* Fright.  my colleagues and I were discussing fears the other day.  The baptist among us talked about her preacher's current topic:  revelation
all of the rest of us asked her questiosns and we talked about Ebola, extremist religious tendencies, ebola, wars (specifically --the Ukraine, Afganistan, Iraq, Israel, Hong Kong...go on and on))
**Babies, now that mine is five, and is too heavy to just pick right up etc., I really want two more, no lies...with more sanity, a part time consulting job, a trust fund, --I would have two more, b/c five is a good even number.


afterschool

October 2, 2014
Victor:  2nd grade
Eva:  Kindergarten
Both worn {slam out}, as my Mama would always say.
Come on Mama!  Stop talking and take us home!
"My brain hurts!"  ~Eva Louise Hill

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

so there she sat

On the very hot back stoop of her house in Saltineville, the hot sun was beating down on her, as the afternoon sulked along.  She was waitng for her husband to get home.  As she sat she thought, and as she thought, she began to plan.  This kind of planning happened to Suzanne often.  This was the kind of planning that got ahead of itself.  The kind that led to finding a new job in one day, the kind that led to moving.
Moving back to Wishington only became an appealing option once Suzanne and her husband had TWO children.  One of them did not like riding in the car.  It became difficult to visit the grandparents for the weekend.
Only after Suzanne was able to see Wishington through the eyes of a visitor was she able to even fathom that it was, indeed, a beautiful place.  Her husband agreed.  They would talk about the beauty as they cruised down East Main St. headed toward River Road to go to the Grands' houses.  There, in one spot, all of a sudden the beautiful river spread out before the visitor! Gorgeous, with diamond sparkles on all the teeny ripples.
Also, only after Suzanne had been to visit a very cool house that was in the same neighborhood as her in laws and was just asking to be {fixed up}.  Now Suzanne and her family never moved into this house, but just checking it out planted the seed....
The seed of {you CAN go home again}.
On the back stoop of her house, that very afternoon Suzanne planned exactly how that would happen!
She called her mother in law and arranged a rental agreement.
She started looking for jobs for herself, and for her husband.  It would be an industrious pursuit, but it would happen!
None of anything even the slightest bit antagonistic presented itself to Suzanne as she began to think about moving {home}.
Cue the Simon and Garfunk£l song, folks...
And, stay tuned!  There is more of this to come, b/c chronicaling this is just too much fun. 

Spot on!

Spot is our family's chihuahua.  He is what we call, "an evil dictator/stuffed animal come to life".  Sometimes, after he has ...