Maybe if I write about the things going through my brain I will be able to actually go to sleep again. I’ve been awake for over an hour thinking and it’s driving me nuts. [ETA: I was awake in bed for an hour. Then I got up and spent an hour and a half writing this. What an awesome way to start my week.]

Thanks to help from Noah, enough cleaning was done this week that I can probably coast this week on cleaning. This means that I have no excuse: I have to read. Here is my public confession of how much I suck: I haven’t read more than 200 pages towards my MA comp exams since I posted last. {whine}I don’t like these books.{/whine} Once I actually get up for the day today (ha) I am not going to open the computer in the morning, I am going to pick up a book. Other than playing with/changing Shanna and preparing food–I’m going to read. When I buckle down and just freakin do it already I can read 50-70 pages/hour depending on how many words are on a page. I can finish Wuthering Heights and Lolita today/tomorrow at that speed. Get it done. I need to be reading a book a day right now. Ouch. Luckily a lot of the “books” are actually plays or poetry and that’s not nearly so scary as it sounds. I think I only have ~15 novels to go. The other 14ish are plays or poetry. See, the problem is that I need to spend October reviewing stuff and making sure I know the criticism. I am about out of sit-around-and-read time. Oops.

I also realized sometime in the last week that I will make myself anxious enough that there is a very very very low probability of me studying enough on my own to pass the language exam. That means I have to take classes. At this point the only option available to me is driving to De Anza for M/W classes from 6-8:15. Not ideal, but manageable. I’ll uhhh have to tell Noah about this when he wakes up. It’s for twelve weeks, which isn’t too terrible. God Bless the quarter system. Classes start in seven days. Oy. On the up side, it will only cost ~$130.

What is driving me nuts is thinking about all the stuff I want to start doing that I can’t start until after I finish this fucking MA. I have a sewing machine gathering dust in the garage. I have fabric. I have projects started. I have a long list of other projects I want to learn how to do. Can’t do it till I finish the MA.

I want to learn more about gardening and start working on our yards. They look like shit. Can’t do it till I finish the MA. The gardening is leading me to think about what I will do with the yard and I’m thinking more and more about growing food. I have space and time and energy and some weird flipping urge to become ever increasingly crunchy. I’m also really psychotically motivated (I say it that way because it is something I feel Way Too Strongly about) towards finding native low care plants that look good for the front yard. For no good reason I am totally up on a soap box about lawns. They are terrible for the environment! They are an incredible waste of resources. That’s all I’m going to say about that. *cough* But that leaves me a lot of room in the backyard for growing food plants. I’m going back and forth in my head about whether I should start in the winter trying to improve the soil (cause our dirt is pretty crappy) before planting in the spring (isn’t that how you do this sort of thing? yeah… I need to do more research…) or if I should spend the winter making big planter boxes because it is a waste of time trying to make this soil good enough for plants. Uhm–advice? [See people, there are times when I want advice. :D]

This leads to the next piece of crunchiness that I can’t fucking believe I’m interested in. Uhm, canning. Yeah. I want to figure out how to can mainly because I am using an increasing amount of tomatoes in cooking and buying them from the store canned is way more expensive than it should be. I can’t believe I’m this big of a dork. I also have some weird motivation towards learning how to make jelly and canning it.

Another thing I’m obsessed with thinking about right now is baking. I grew up with a mom who baked. A lot. And she’s good at it. It is one of the things about my childhood that I remember most fondly actually. I remember it so fondly (and I appreciated it at the time) that I would really like to start baking before my kids can remember so that I don’t suck by the time they do remember. 😀 See, I don’t handle failure very well. If I do something very badly I get really upset and angry. I have trouble remaining calm. If I spend hours on something and manage to totally fuck it up then I sorta throw a little temper tantrum. Yeah. I feel really badly about this. So I practice things in secret before anyone else gets to see me do it. I feel like this about cooking and baking stuff. I want to practice before anyone sees me. I make a lot of mistakes because in the main I am learning this stuff by copying foggy memories and looking at the internet/books for inspiration. I don’t have anyone to learn from/with so it all seems much harder. I’m thrilled that the MA exam happens the second weekend of November because that gives me plenty of time to start practicing before…

Christmas. I’ve been thinking a lot about Christmas. Both this upcoming Christmas and Christmas in general and as a concept. I’ve been thinking about what sorts of values I want to install in my kids and how this holiday will play into that. I grew up in a family that thinks that giving things = showing love. I have this absorbed this value to some degree, but not completely and totally. See, this value is actively warring with my gradually intensifying values towards not creating more waste. In order to give lots of “things” you have to buy cheap things. Cheap things are promoting a very disposable attitude in our culture that kind of offends me. The main “thing” I buy unhesitatingly is books. I love them and use them over and over for years though so I justify to myself that I’m doing something not too-terrible based on my value system. 🙂 {mini-rant}To the people who keep asking me why I don’t upgrade my phone to something ‘cooler’ like an iphone or whatever: because my phone works just fine! Why in the world do I need a freakin gadget that will allow me to be more connected to the internet so that I can ignore the people I am with? I use my phone as needed (which isn’t much frankly) as a phone only. I waste enough time on the internet at home and I don’t need instant access the rest of the time. Oy.{/mini-rant} So I am thinking ahead to what sort of gift giving as showing love I want to model or not to my kids. I don’t want to encourage a materialistic attitude towards disposable crap but I do really love giving and getting presents. So I’ve been thinking about food. When I was a kid my mom used to give people baked goods for Christmas. I would really love to start doing this.

Then I get to the next part of the Christmas baking dilemma: I don’t want to make it so that my kids are over-freaking-loaded on sugar all December as we bake cookies. This means I need to start thinking about awesome baked goods that are not just sugar frenzies waiting to happen. And I feel like it is only polite to think about baked goods options that are: vegan, gluten free, diabetic friendly, and potentially low-carb. I kind of want to bash my head against a wall just making that list. I don’t think I will come up with anything that fulfills all of those options at once unless you count baking a piece of lettuce 🙂 but it would be really awesome to have stuff that falls into one or two of each of the categories so that I can give people food that isn’t terrible for them. Recipe suggestions are very welcome.

On the same anti-consumerist kick I’m trying to figure out how to politely communicate to people that I don’t want my kids to have a lot of toys. Yes, yes, I want them to have toys. But I would rather have a small-ish number of toys that are of good quality and likely to last for years than a bunch of plastic crap. So I’m thinking about making a website that I can point family members to. This involves learning how to make a website. Insert panic over finally having a reason to develop a skill I have been avoiding like the plague for nearly a decade. Noooooooooooooooooooo don’t wanna learn anything programmerish. Before anyone rushes to give me advice on things that exist where I can cheat and use a formatting tool I am not asking for advice on this topic. See further up in the entry where I am asking for advice as a contrast for how you can tell that I want advice on a given topic. 🙂

Digression aside, I want to make a website for kidlets so that I can have a central place for listing things like: what kids books we own so people can check before buying us books (if they want, I’m fine with returning books if necessary or even passing them on), links to various places I am storing pictures (I suspect I am going to wander between photo hosting sites as I try to figure out which I like the best and why) and videos, as well as letting people who do not/are not welcome to read my blog know more about what the kids are doing, and finally as a way of talking about what kinds of toys we have and what sorts of toys we want or don’t want. I’m sure this will change around as the kids get older.

Have I mentioned that Debbie inspired me and I’m getting really interested in starting a worm farm? Damn her!

And I haven’t gotten into the fact that I am starting to be more focused on diet/exercise as something I need to work harder on in my life. For the record: diet does not mean meal plan to cut calories as I am using it. I am trying to figure out how I can manage to find foods that satisfy my insane sugar cravings right now that are healthier for me long term. I’m trying to get to a place where I am eating very little fast food or pre-packaged foods. Not as a weight thing (although I confess that the weight part is relevant) but more as a way of feeling healthier. My body doesn’t feel how I want it to feel and part of it is that I’m still not eating as well as I could. I am light years better than I used to be, but I’m still not where I want to be. This is something that I’m thinking about a lot because as I’m starting to get older I’m noticing that I don’t feel so good when I eat the crap. I feel better when my diet is better. (Again: diet does not mean restricting my calories. Holy crudmonkeys Batman do I need calories right now.) See, I don’t really want to restrict calories for a variety of reasons (I become psycho and potential milk production issues when I’m going to be nursing for years are the two biggest ones) but I do want to change the shape of my body which means I have to… exercise. *sigh* I uhhh feel compelled to point out that after one yoga class my back felt better. DAMNIT! Don’t want to admit that exercise is good for me!!! NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! *cry* Fine. Bastards. So if I am going to go so far as to learn how to cook in a way that promotes my body feeling better it seems a bit dumb to not also take other steps towards my body feeling better–namely significantly increasing my exercising. Bloody hell. There are a few things I’m thinking about on this topic.

Yoga. I went to a Mommy/Baby yoga class last week and it was fun and made me feel better. I’m going to continue this. There is a boot camp sort of thing near our house for moms. It’s uhm, intimidating to me. They have some flexibility in how you do it so I’m thinking about trying it once before making any decisions and possibly only going once a week. On Sundays. When I can make Noah go with me. 😀 I have sucked about getting out and walking lately. I bought a stroller that is suitable to higher speeds of walking/running. I have noticed that it is hard for me to produce anything resembling speed while wearing Shanna. It makes my back hurt like an SOB. So we’ll see if I manage to get off my ass and go do exercise with her. Part of the reason for purchasing said stroller is that the gym won’t let me bring her to their baby-sitting service till she is six months old and continuing to sit on my ass for more than two months seems uhm problematic. Though I am actually making it to the gym now sporadically and she stays with Noah. 🙂 It would be good for him to start going to the gym again too though and he is, much to my surprise cause I didn’t know it was possible, even less enthusiastic about going to the gym alone than I am. So we are looking forward to when she is six months old. In the meantime: maybe we will get out with the stroller together and pick up some speed. 🙂

And after writing this thing (holy shit. It’s five pages long.) I realize that all of these things take time. Now I’m obsessing about scheduling. I am pretty sure that according to this massively long post I am only adding a couple of things that are on set days/times so far. Mommy/Baby yoga is on Mondays from 2:15-3:30 until Shanna can crawl then I have to switch class time to 4-5:15. Spanish classes are Mondays/Wednesdays from 6-8:10. Oof. I wonder how long it will take her to start crawling. Twelve weeks will take us till she is 6 1/2 months old. I’ll burn that bridge when I get there. Sunday mornings is the baby boot camp. I think those are the only specifically scheduled things. Then there is the massive reading binge I will have to do for the next few weeks along with studying for the comp exam in seven weeks. Holy shit. It’s actually slightly less than seven weeks. Feck!

And then there is the fact that with all of this I’m now obsessing in general over house cleaning. And time spent with Noah. Noah and I need to start spending more time together not just focused on the baby. Does anyone want to babysit?

Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking about. No wonder I’m not sleeping.