I have a lot of things floating around my skull and none of them are related. Despite the fact that I seriously wonder if I have ADD/ADHD I just want to get them out, once and for all.

This morning at 7:30 a.m. I will be getting numbed up to have my wisdom tooth pulled. I have requested that they knock me the f*ck out for this procedure as my last wisdom tooth extraction (for non-impacted wisdom teeth) was *shudder* horrific. And that is only considering the delightful sounds of the tooth being yanked, forget about the pain that followed.

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Alex is working on being potty trained. Thus far he has not had an accident during the day since last week but still potties in a diaper at night. I’ll take it.

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Should I have coffee before my dental appointment? Mmmmm. Cofee.

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People who refer to a gaggle of kids as, “The Children” kind of freak me out a little. Only because I envision a Mother Dearest Episode of a non-sane woman clutching a wire hanger above her head with a crazed look in her eye as she screams the aforementioned saying.

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I wish my husband’s leg would heal the hell on up. I am sure he does, too. But sometimes I can be a prick and only think of myself in such situations. Mostly because I get to do more work while he sits around and plays videos games. It’s making me a little crazy.

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The economy makes me a little nervous. I hope my job is stable but if it is not my backup plan in to move around smallville with my family in some cheap apartment with  my books and all my craft crap. I have enough books to keep me occupied for at least a year if it were necessary. Money goes a lot farther there.

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But, I’m not saying I want to do it.

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I’m loving hot yoga these days. I’m wondering if I can go to my class tomorrow or if my mouth situation will hinder my ability to complete the class without being in a lot of pain.

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I really need to get back to cooking and posting recipes on Atabela. *sigh*

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I am making a scarf for my niece (who lives in Arizona, this is probably a bad idea) but the edges are kind of screwed up because I think I end rows incorrectly. Damn.

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Battery is just about dead. Gotta run!

I remember as a kid I used to hate Sundays. It was the dreaded day before the school week began, there was nothing on television and the day just seemed to move at a snail’s pace. I can’t help but smirk at that memory and how dumb one can be as a kid and now relish what one once hated.

On this Sunday morning I have some homemade ketchup brewing on the stove top which smells incredible, I am drinking some Kona Coffee while enjoying the sun streaming through the windows and debating on working on a crochet project for my niece or to continue a book I just started to read.

Prior to which I thought I would post a short note about Alex with a photo.

In just the course of three more days Alex will be 3-years and 5-months and it is amazing how much he has grown and changed just in the last year. He is talking like a little kid and not just using hand gestures and grunting. He is almost potty trained (just wearing a diaper at night thus far) with not a single accident over the last few days (even #2…THANK GOODNESS). He is a puzzle wonder and has worked his way up to 100-piece puzzles and in general is sweet yet still a little mischievous trouble maker.

A few days ago Richard bought him his fist scooter and Alex was in love! I wish I had taken the photo below with flash…but live and learn:

I’ve not updated my blog much because I’ve just been ENJOYING life to the max (and addicted to Facebook). Seriously. It has taken me a much longer time than I anticipated to get acclimated to Dallas life but wow-I could not be more pleased.

I was so used to the adrenaline-pumping lifestyle of a crazy work schedule and constant GO, GO, GO that I felt so odd for the first few months. Yes, months. Now I’ve eased into my new work style, I’ve learned how to just relax and not use fire fighting as my motivator to get things done, re-learned how to just go with the flow and not be so addicted to anxiety. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Some things I’ve changed:

1. Exercising a LOT more often and regularly. I’ve started yoga with Amy (there was a pause due to bad weather followed by crappy illness but we are back on the saddle again).

2. I’ve learned how to crochet…FINALLY!

3. I’m using my spare time (I have so much more of it now) to just enjoy. I’ve gone out with friends for various activities, met up with folks for baby showers and birthdays…it’s been great!

4. Since I’m working at a place that has a very strict brand my visual creativity isn’t as widely used so I’ve started getting into making my own creative projects at home. It’s more than just crochet but also sewing and getting back into embroidery.

5. Oddly enough I’m not into cooking as much. It could be a phase. I’m not so focused on food but just make quick, healthy meals. Maybe I’m just more relaxed and don’t use it as an anxiety relief?

6. I’m head-long into my resolution of reading more and getting out more. I’ve joined Meetup.com and have joined a book club as well as knitters/crochet/needlework/etc. group and have signed up to go meet with folks! I’m excited!

7. Alex has started “school” and he LOVES it. Some were surprised that I threw him in full-time right away but he is so HAPPY. Every morning he gets up and gets dressed with gusto at the prospect of another school day to play with other kids and just be more sociable. He’s such a social butterfly that I knew this would be an excellent opportunity for him.

8. Richard loves Dallas and is thrilled that we’ve moved here. He had his first experience of possible-tornado-weather last night so he’s a bit more initiated but thus far he has no complaints and wishes we would have moved a lot sooner.

9. I love my job. I work with a fantastic group and folks while I don’t have an as-cool workspace and I certainly don’t get the leeway in terms of letting my personality just free-flow I can’t complain.

Today Amy and I are going to Dallas Art Museum for the King Tut Exhibit and I’m just going to have a great time.

I hope everyone has a wonderful 2009! I always like to start my new year rested and relaxed and today was a FANTASTIC DAY. If today sets the tone for the rest of the year I’ll be one crazy-happy woman who manages to get in a little bit of everything: reading, cooking, video gaming, projects with the boy and hanging out with the husband.

Resolutions

Last year was my first year for making resolutions and I actually accomplished them both!

Resolution No. 1-Stop Smoking

SUCCESS! I’ve been smoke-free for 10 months (plus a bit)

Resolution No. 2 - Read More

I read about 42 books last year. A lot of them were not deep reads but I read them none-the-less. Despite a crazy work schedule, returning to school, Richard’s appointments and obligations, moving and a lot of freelance work I took the time to get a decent amount of reading in. Yeah, me.

Resolutions 2009

Resolution No. 1 - Books

Due to my success for last year’s resolution I’ve created one more resolution soley for books. I want to read 5 Pulitzer Winning books, 5 Man Booker prize winners and 5 Nobel Laureates in Literature as well as finish up a few of the over 50 books I have in my personal library that I have yet to read - luckily a few of these already fit into the aforementioned categories.

Resolution No. 2 - A little less hermit and a little less cranky.

My goal this year is to also be a little more social and outgoing. Get out and see the world (with a book, haha). Take more relaxing trips out in the country where the air is fresh, the sky is clean and you can hear the wild life at night.

Be more patient with my son and help him develop his creativity.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and successful 2009!

It is 11:40pm and I am actually awake. Internet, this is something that NEVER happens. Someone must have slipped something in my water. Due to the significant nature of the day I will first wish anyone who reads this drivel a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Now, on to the festivities:

I was sitting here, just a moment ago and thinking of my son. That boy, I couldn’t love a person more. He’s funny, he’s bright and the personality….geez, the kid has loads of it. But, I have to tell ya, sometimes he gives me serious pause. Hopefully that pause keeps happening because THE PAUSE stops me from punching myself IN THE FACE.

Is this normal? The desire to punch oneself in the face or do I just need a hefty dose of Prozac (Heh, between the brain injured husband and the son, Prozac is the most likely answer). But, lets move past that little riddle and carry on.

So my son, the mighty brain melter as I like to call him, he means well. He is just all smiles and charm but I’m starting to think that is his disguise. Kind of like how my ex-husband used tell me my face was like an angel and when we were divorcing he said I was the devil in disguise. Did my son inherit this trait?

He looks innocent enough.

Sometimes I’m asked by folks, “So, only one, eh? Do you plan on having another?”

Do you know how tempting it is to say, “Are you shitting me? Do you hate me or something? Are you trying to guilt me into that suicide mission?”

If he is driving me this crazy at three (crazy in love and just plan f’n nuts) I don’t even want to think about the status of my neurosis when he hits puberty.

His favorite trick, “But, Mommy, I just need a kiss!” He says this while using what I refer to as the MASK OF SADNESS as illustrated below:

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, YOU GOT ME AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmph, I have no idea what you are talking about.

Now, my husband….this is the story of my life…in one short movie clip (I’m NOT the female).

*All Photos taken with the camera of Amy Herrera. Some I took, some she took. I’m not which is which, just assume the better ones were by her artistic hand.

**All complaints are stated with a smirk and a smile. No worried about the status of anyone’s face in the Hermit household.

Typically I am not a fan of the thought process that a man must ask permission when it comes to home decor. Quite frankly, I’m not all that domestic other than a love of cooking and hatred of filthy living. You won’t find my home to be one of stylish decor choices nor do I have seasonal or holiday decor stashed away in the closets.

But.

Lets be frank and admit that the line has to be drawn at some point.

Enter exhibit A.

A tire clock. SERIOUSLY

This lovely piece of art was hanging in the kitchen when I came home one afternoon and it lights up like a disco ball around the rim.

I told him that he could put it on his side of the bed, hoping he would hang it more eye-level (as in when he is sleeping eye-level). No such luck. Last night we slept to the soothing sites of multi-colored lights blinking. I almost felt like I’d fallen asleep at the bar.

Up next? The sibling of the larger clock:

Then yesterday he comes home with a black and white of the Rat Pack. Now if we had a game room or media room similar to the one at the old house - fine. But in the living room?

It went right back to the store.

Just for good measure I will throw in a photo of my boy. On Christmas Eve we went to my friend Ning’s house for hot pot where she had placed a bowl of hummus out on the table. My son loves hummus and as demonstrated-eats it by the spoonful. Who needs pita bread?

***TRANSCRIPT***

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics, and this isn’t really just about Prop-8. And I don’t have a personal investment in this: I’m not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn’t about yelling, and this isn’t about politics.

This is about the… human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not… understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them — no. You can’t have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give them all the same legal rights — even as you’re taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?

I keep hearing this term “re-defining” marriage.

If this country hadn’t re-defined marriage, black people still couldn’t marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal… in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn’t have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it’s worse than that. If this country had not “re-defined” marriage, some black people still couldn’t marry…black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not “Until Death, Do You Part,” but “Until Death or Distance, Do You Part.” Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are… gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing — centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children… All because we said a man couldn’t marry another man, or a woman couldn’t marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the “sanctity” of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace… that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate… this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness — this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness — share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

—

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of…love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate. You don’t have to help it, you don’t have it applaud it, you don’t have to fight for it. Just don’t put it out. Just don’t extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don’t know and you don’t understand and maybe you don’t even want to know…It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow **person…

Just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

“I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam,” he told the judge.

“It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all:

“So I be written in the Book of Love;

“I do not care about that Book above.

“Erase my name, or write it as you will,

“So I be written in the Book of Love.”

—

Good night, and good luck.

To those who have emailed or messaged me: I have limited access to the internet at this time. I will not have internet in my home for a few weeks (thanks crappy DSL installation waiting) and using the internet at work can be a risky proposition. So, I’ve not moved to Dallas and become a snot!

See everyone soon(ish).

My cousin, Colleen and Alex

My cousin Colleen is so incredible with children and Alex latched on her very quickly. They spent a lot of time just hanging out.

Over to Illinois

My Mom and I visited Rockcliffe Mansion. It was purchased by someone who no longer allows photos inside of the great, old mansion (boo!!) but I did snap some photos from atop the hill which overlooks the Mississippi River over into Illinois.

License Plates as Art

Next time we come up to Missouri I am going to make more effort to take better photos of the surrounding area. This is a few blocks from my parents’ home (if you cut through a few yards on your way).

One of Alex’s favorite activities is jumping. He’s not too picky on the surface: stacked boxes, my workout step, the ottoman, the sofa arm or even the stairs. In this 2 minute video he is jumping from the stairs and after a try or two he wants me to flip the viewer on the camera so he can see himself in action. This video is almost a month old and the quality is lacking due to the lack of light but the overall understanding of what is going on is there.

Here is Alex in the Japanese pajama outfit that Miko brought him from her trip to Japan. Doesn’t he look adorable!