cooking gene?

I made chapati's today. There is no better cure for homesickness than making your all time favorite meal growing up. Many people complain that it is a tedious task but for some reason, I think it's a pretty snappy job, once I figured out how to make the perfect dough that is.
Today I had my superhelper aka lil man. He loves to help with the cooking and I love to have him help me-only that the clean-up takes as much time as it does to cook!! Today was no exception and I figured out you are only a kid once so I let him play with the wheat flour, corn flour, pour water here, stir, blow, and touch everything he shouldn't be. So by the end of it, the two of us and everything around us was looking 'heavenly'.
I was explaining to lil man how it's nice that he gets to help me roll the chapatis because he can learn how to cook-letting him know that my brother is a great cook.
Of course he had a smart reply, " I'm already a good cooker", LOL, ok corrected the 'cooker' part then asked him why he thinks he is already good. He proceeded to explain that he is already good because he inherited 'cooking' from my brother, just like he inherited his drawing skills from grandpa.
Ok, my bad, maybe I didn't explain the whole passing down genes very well but I can see he picked up something. I'm just not sure my brother's culinary skills bothered to criss cross all the way down the lineage to my son but only time will tell.

PS. The Chapatis were great even with all the over-rolling and prodding of dough that lil man does, so he may be onto something here.

It did pass

The studying, the papers, the anxiety, the finals. All over-for now until I start over in August-But for now I can take the time to hopefully get some sun. It's Chicago, when the sun comes around, you better get it. I do feel like a huge burden has been lifted. But in many ways it just made space for other things that did not get any attention-summer plans, pending wedding, hunting for a new job...ugh. The never ending cycle of madness in this land of "milk and honey".
My source of renewed hope and energy is to remember that it's not about me, that there is someone greater than I am who is at work in me. I'm so grateful for the gift of salvation, because when I'm at my worst, I can still feel loved and accepted. Thank you Lord for reminding me to stop relying on myself for all the things that stress me. I'm thankful for the promise that he will always be there and I know this is true from experience.
It's Mother's day tomorrow and I'm so grateful for my mother so beautiful in and out. I'm grateful for the chance to be a mom to lil man and I pray for the wisdom and strength to help him be the best he can be. To many more years of being a mom and superwoman!

homesickness

Life is so unpredictable, one minute you are up and soaring and the next minute you are down, lonely and out. It's 1 am on Sunday morning, studying for my exam on Tuesday. It was a good day. It had both ups and downs, tears and laughter all in one day. I love my friends because I can always count on a good laugh when I'm with them. I'm trying to make changes in my life that are painful and emotionally exhausting, and I've been good about being 'strong' but today, I cried some of that pain away.
I miss home, I miss my family on days like this. I feel like the only thing that could make this moment better is if I was surrounded by my family. My lil man is away this weekend and the house is lonely, too lonely. Did I say I miss home?
I don't even feel like going to church today, sometimes, I just want to be in church that feels exactly how it feels at home...many miles away.

the last stretch

I’m exhausted, mentally, emotionally, any kind of way. It’s that last 2-week stretch of the semester. There are soo many tasks to be done-why I’m I in school again? Why I’m I voluntarily torturing myself? I’ve kind of figured out, that even though school is taking a lot out of me, my job/work is the real killer here. I just can’t do it anymore. I officially hate my job. It takes a huge amount of energy to do the most minute task and my productivity is at an all time low. See, my boss is too bossy and I just don’t feel like I can take any more crap from her. Since the office manager passed away, this place is just not the same. This place in the words of Lauryn Hill (and not how they were meant to be used) is ‘killing me softly’, my brain at least. I need more- a challenge, more responsibility, more sense of doing good or accomplishment, and this is not it! This is not where I’m supposed to be but where I’m I supposed to be?

I’ve toyed with the idea of quitting and living on loans to do school full-time for 3 semesters. But I’m a mom and the economy is not so the way it used to be, so that might not be a smart move. Ok, I should be getting married soon so this could potentially work-that’s another post altogether, the whole marriage thing. The most rational thing to do is apply for other more suitable jobs. I know I want more challenge and responsibility but let’s face it, that means working long hours to prove myself on top of school and lil man so do I really want to take the route of a new job, new commute, and new hours? I love my flexible schedule as it is. Yuck, I guess something has to give.
I’m thinking I should trust and believe that God could provide this perfect job where I’m challenged and can strike a balance, but I’m scared. Scared to fully trust in the workings of an almighty God, my father who absolutely cares for me? What I’m I thinking? The God who cares about what birds eat…Why can’t I pray and trust God for this miracle job, doesn’t he have plans to give me a hope and a future? I know I need to surrender, do my best, and believe. Easier said than done, Lord I need strength and wisdom to get through this time.

March oh March

March has come and gone and I’m sure glad it has. A lot of mixed emotions this month, thinking about it, I’m just grateful I came out in one piece. Let me see, it started off with a take-home midterm exam…yes that says it all, it means stress. On the day we received the assignment, I was glad I had sometime to think it over because I didn’t want to have to do all that thinking at once. I sat on it for a couple days thinking I should do it bit by bit. This is all too wishful thinking for me, but I had a plan. I was looking over the syllabus and somehow misread the due dates for the exam, it was three days past and I only had the coming weekend to get it all down before Friday?
I did what I do best, panicked for an entire 3 minutes. 10 page paper due in 4 days on “stuff”. This was going to be my first paper in eh…7 years and I had 4 days!!! Ok, more like I panicked for a whole afternoon. I quickly dialed my emergency babysitter, a.k.a fiancée and let him know that I needed him the following Saturday to work some magic with lil man-all day. Luckily he does not mind.
I had an early Saturday; I convinced myself that driving to the library would be a waste of time so I planned to have a productive day on the dining table. Lil man was off and I was on.

The trouble with being at home is…many things are a distraction. I like to clean (unluckily). So I figured out I could clean the kitchen first and that would make concentrating easier. Ok, an hour later, I was staring at my comp. I had 5 questions out of 6 to answer. If I tackled 3 today (LOL) I would have 2 to do the next day and Monday to look everything over. Two hours later, I had researched the first two questions and had picked my final 5 questions to answer. This definitely was not going as planned. A quick look at the syllabus at the end of the day(being sidetracked) revealed that I had an extra week to submit this exam! What? After all that panicking….ok good ending to that story.
Class number 2 on Tuesday revealed that I had my midterm the day after my take-home was due, I totally don’t know how I overlooked all these dates. Note to self; calendars are a grand thing.

Ok, so beginning of March, I was being mom as usual (and with all its happy and challenging times) and I had two exams but that was not enough, I started feeling sick the weekend before all this. I thought it was a cold but I was so fatigued all I wanted to do was sleep. I managed to turn in my paper at 8 pm on the due date even though the deadline was midnight. Actually I had it done the Sunday night prior, a crisp 10 pages except I realized that I did not double-space!!! S*** what kind of student I’m I? No wonder I kept filling it with ‘fluff’….. So I had to edit it to half of what I had which is not as bad, I just took out the fluff and left the good stuff stay. At this point I didn’t care, I had an exam to study for the next day and I was feeling crappy. That Monday night, I was too congested, had a headache and went to bed early. My exam was at 3 in the afternoon, I just ignored work the next day and studied, I even considered calling the prof to see if I could take it the next day but decided taking cold meds to keep me awake was a better idea.

Fast forward, a few days later I was feeling even worse and realized I had a full blown sinus infection and had to be on antibiotics. Thank God for a boss=doctor. Mid-March is registration time for summer camp. God heard my prayer that day, the lines are usually long but for some reason, I was in and out that day. Life was looking pretty good.

I got to work ready to tackle all those projects I neglected while I studies. As soon as I sat on my desk, our receptionist dialed my extension sounding desperate; apparently my boss needed my help downstairs because our office manager was feeling sick. Now, our office manager needs a post all by herself, but she was prone to getting her blood sugar so low we would have to put an IV while she was in the office, chocolate bar for breakfast will do that to you.

So I quickly ran downstairs and found that Julie was vomiting and going in and out of consciousness with like 10 medical residents/doctors surrounding her… not doing much just staring. I could hear “code blue” on the hospital speaker system which is when I realized she needed to go to the ER ASAP. So I got to Julie who was being helped onto a wheelchair by my boss, grabbed her handbag and work documents and was to meet them back at the ER. That was the last day that I saw Julie as herself. The ever- vivacious, quirky, whacky for a manager-type of lady who never had a bad day. She usually cursed it away. She called me ‘hon’ and treated me more like her child. She had a funny saying for everything and it made me laugh. I mean who says “I gotta pee so bad my back teeth are hanging loose”? LOL. Most of them never made sense but were funny nonetheless. I survived this work place because of her.

Everything else went so fast, ER, CT scan, brain aneurysm, surgery-she showed signs of recovery for just but one day. We even joked about getting blue eye shadow, which was always her line, that if she had a stroke, we would put blue eye shadow on her just to annoy her. Then more surgeries but the bleed in her brain was too much for her, she died with her family surrounding her. On March 28, I was at the funeral of my manager dear friend. I keep re-playing that scene over and over, that trip to the ER, like I could have done something to prevent it. Then I started hating smokers, Julie had been a life-long smoker, a risk factor for her type of aneurysm. But eventually I’ve gone into some place between denial and acceptance-if there is such a place. I’m so glad I got to know Julie, and every time I think of her, I laugh at her funny sayings and stories. Most times it’s hard to believe she is gone. We are all moving on I guess. Life moves on. I’m glad I have the promise of a better life after death, because then I can be confident that even when I pass on, I will be in a better place.

Lil man had spring break vacation the day after the funeral and the dear Lord was kind enough to give us extraordinarily warm temperatures for which we enjoyed every bit of. 80 degrees in April is like Christmas in July, like a drop of water in the dessert….ok you get the picture. Perfect spring break! I even managed to finish undoing the extension braids on my head-a real pain in the neck-literally.
April, please be kind.

kids really do say the darnest things...

School is really kicking me in the behind this semester but I'm sure I will triumph. Too bad I've missed on writing about all the funny comments from lil man...but this one...couldn't let this one go.
Yesterday evening, our trip to Targee turned out to be more than we had bargained for. I had a couple very specific things that I needed to purchase, BUT as it almost always turns out, my hands were full by the time I got to the counter. Get this, I specifically did not get a cart or a basket for this very reason but as we were getting out of the store both lil man's hands and I were sore from lugging all the items we had picked. So my lil helper and I paid, got them in bags and as we were walking from the store, he comments "My arms are so tired, I feel like they are going to fall off!"
"Me too honey, " I replied "but just hang in there the car is not far."

As we walk out the door trying to hurry to the car, lil man asks in a matter-of-fact voice "If my arms fall off, I'm I going to grow some new ones?"
First I did what I always do, laugh out loudly (inwardly of course), looked at him and just smiled because I could see he was serious. I know they have been learning about reptiles and he has a fascination with lizards and what nots..you get my drift.

"No honey, only lizards and other such reptiles grow parts when they loose them."
"Oh yeah, I knew that," came the reply.

I've caught myself laughing so hard the couple times I have thought about this. Kids...my lil man.

big words, lil man

I think every working mom knows that if you get your kid out the door in one piece and one time, it's going to be a good day. So today I was up early, made some cheese eggs, we had some leftover breakfast sausage which I warmed up. My picky eater decided that the eggs did not have enough cheese so he got some toast. My lil man nowadays seems filled with doses of wisdom. I asked him if he wanted jam or butter on his toast. He responded by stating that it is not 'jam', it's 'jelly'. "Jam is extinct, mommy, don't know, we are in the future". LOL. Apparently I'm so old I don't realize that we don't use that word anymore according to a first grader?!
Ok so got the jelly and butter, put the not so cheesy cheese eggs on his toast, he took one bite which he happily ate but as he examined the bread for his next bite, he saw what he says is a nut in the bread. That was the end of the toast and eggs. It's whole wheat bread!! I used the same bread to make a cheese sandwich which he happily ate yesterday but noo...not today. I know my lil man, I could sit there and scream for two hours and he would take the full two hours to finish one bite of that bread.
So onto the sausage. He took one look at it, "hmmm, this looks awfully familiar mommy, did you save the sausage from yesterday?" Seriously! Anyway he ate some of the sausage, some juice and he was full.
He had a presentation on dinosaurs which he worked on over the weekend. Huge poster, would not have been my choice but his dad decided to go all out. Ok, got the poster, we are walking to the car and lil man blurts, "Man, first grade is on another level!" I'm like what did you say "First grade is on another level now mommy, they make us do presentations for 3rd and 5th grade!" LOL. I had even forgotten about the dinosaur project, that must be where he picked up the 'extinct for jam'. I guess if we learn words we gotta use them somehow.
I laughed all of the 6 minute drive to school. We made it to school on time, it's going to be a good day!