The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

Where the deer and the antelope play

Originally uploaded by ivymae

All things considered, it’s been an easier day than I expected. The train was on time, the girls slept for a good chunk of the night, and we’ve been able to keep them busy and fed. I didn’t sleep last night (it’s a crowded train, and I just couldn’t relax) but we’re only about 3 hours from being unpacked at the hotel, and I think I’ve earned a nap. Twittering and loading more photos on flickr to stay awake!

(Excuse the flash, it’s dark and they wouldn’t sit still long enough for a nonfuzzy picture)

I have all kinds of nervous energy right now, so i decided at 11pm last night (with both girls still awake. Big holiday get-togethers always screw up their schedule) that I wanted to make some pajamas. I’ve never used thermal fabric before, but decided to just start hacking into this fabric i found on sale the other day. And tada, two sets of jammies for $7. There are many many little flaws, but all on the whole, I am kind of impressed with myself. Woo me.

We’re leaving the house at midnight, and while I know I will forget something important, at least the girls will be warm.

Tom’s grandparents were married September 25th, 1948. Sixty years.

Today I am so thankful to wake up next to my husband. I plan to for at least another 56 years.

(Rare photo of us pre-kids, although technically Ella is a zygote.)

Right now the plan is to get on the train tomorrow night, and get to his grandparents 13 hours later. We bought seats, but his sister has a sleeper car (since she is in a wheelchair and can not fit her chair down the aisles) where we can take the kids to play when they get restless. We’re trying to travel light, but when you have to haul two huge carseats along, it’s hard to travel ‘light’. Add to that a diaperbag, knitting, DVD player, bag of toddler toys, a food bag, clothes bag, and you can see why my shoulders already hurt from carrying it all. Thank god I have the backpack for Alice, because I have a feeling it will be a huge lifesaver this weekend.

Also, thankful for emergency credit cards with decent interest rates.

Also also, thankful for my phone, where I will be able to twitter my little heart out, and send photos from the road. I can also watch youtube on my phone, so I have a feeling we’ll be pulling out the cat dance video more than once.

We got the call that Tom’s grandpa passed away last night, and we are hustling to find a way to get to eastern Montana by the 1st. It’s going to be another whirlwind train trip, and we’re taking the girls, but it’s the least we can do for his grandmother. We are so glad we were able to go spend time with them this summer, but it doesn’t make it easier to lose one of the kindest, most giving people in your life.

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Oh no, 5 minutes to go! I’ll make this one quick.

Do you play any instruments? – Billie

No!

I do own a guitar, but instead of learning to play it after my mom gave it to me, I painted it, and let my artist friend draw on the back Picture tomorrow!

Radomly, a few of my favorite non-personal blogs:

Drawn

Design Sponge

Taste Spotting

Whip Up

And another question:

Since December is right around the corner, a favorite Christmas/holiday (don’t want to offend anyone) memory? – Jodie

I can’t remember one year in particular, but every year before I was 11 and moved in with my dad has that glittery holiday glow in my memory. My dad’s idea of the perfect gift is cash and a ride to the store, so you can see why the holidays with him were always a bit of a letdown. I can think of a few years that he put in a bit more effort, but he is who he is, and he is not a Christmas guy.

My mom though, she put so much work into making the holidays a big deal in our house. She kept all of our school crafts, and would pull out all the lopsided construction paper reindeer, and paper plate Santa faces, the Christmas cards from 10 years ago, the doll sized sleigh, the stockings my grandma made us… She made most of our presents (new doll clothes, pillowcases with our names embroidered on them, quilts and jewelry), and helped us make presents for each other and our dad. We made cookies, and sang along with every Christmas song on the radio. I don’t know if she really loved Christmas, or if she just wanted us to have these memories, but either way, it worked.

I can not wait until Dec 10th, when we can decorate the house for Christmas (we wait until after the girl’s birthdays) and Ella is going to have such a great time the year.

You were an English major, right? What was your original “plan” going to school? Did others in your family go to college? What did you think you were going to do when you first started? In a nutshell, tell me your higher education story. – LaLibertad

I started to write out the long story, but it ended up being the story of my liiiiiffeeee and had to ‘save draft’ and back away from the computer.

The short version is this: I am the very first person in my family to receive a degree, and I would not have went to college without a last minute scholarship from the Gates Foundation. My first quarter of school, I dropped out to take care of my mom. After she died, I went back and kicked ass in the Communication Disorders program, but two quarters away from finishing my course work, they changed the laws for practice in my state and the extra three years of school scared me off. I had been taking English classes as my electives over the years (because Chaucer was totally my leisure reading, y’all) so I decided to go ahead and feed my fantasy and get a Creative Writing degree (to go along with my other fantasy fulfilling classes in Women’s Studies and Theatre). This would have been a lot more straight forward had I not met Tom during my first quarter in the program, gotten pregnant a few months later, and taken time off/went part time for over a year. Tom and I finally graduated on June 16th, 2007, the day before our wedding, when I was 16 weeks pregnant with Alice. It was a chaotic weekend.

And now I use my fancy degree that Bill Gates paid for by writing in my blog and wiping butts all day. Money well spent.

I do dream about going back for a Masters degree sometimes, but then I have to make a pot of coffee, because even the idea of it makes me so so so very tired.

And that is the short version. The long version included why I wanted to be a speech pathologist (woe, I could not speak!), why I was homeless my senior year of high school, and my thoughts on getting a degree that has the monetary worth of a book of matches.

What song evokes ‘emotion’ in you, or touches you the most? – Kelly

You Are My Sunshine. My mom sang every day on my childhood, and this was ‘my’ song. Each of us kids had one, and now I can’t get through the chorus without my throat catching. My mom always sang the whole song though, in her throaty bluesy way, so when I hear it sang in the cheesy Disney fashion, it doesn’t register as ‘my’ song. The version here is beautiful.

Around Ella’s second birthday, she had a huge language explosion. She went from having only a handful of grunty words, to using two and three word sentences, almost overnight. I’m guessing there is a similar language explosion around the third birthday, since lately Ella can not get enough of letters. She’s known the alphabet for a while, but in a passive ‘sing the alphabet while we brush our teeth’ kind of way. But in the last few weeks she has started asking how things are spelled, sounding out words, and today yelled “Hey mom, how do I spell my name?” and then did it. Twice.

Ella writes her name from Ivy mae on Vimeo.

Huh.

I’m working on the questions (keep ‘em coming!) but wanted to share this site with you in the mean time.

Exactitudes

I remember finding this site six or so years ago, when D and I were still dating. I was impressed by it, and he was annoyed by my chatter about it. The idea that we are all trying to express our individuality by adopting a group identity is kind of amazing though, isn’t it? It solidifies the idea that we can not identify ourselves by what we present to the world, because no matter how unique we are trying to be, our outside appearance can never reflect just how different we each are. I found this site again today, and it was a keen reminder that clothes and hair do not make a person – words and actions do.