cutting teeth

the babies are teething. we give them teething biscuits now - organic, wheat and soy-free, of course. today i found some molasses ones on the counter and gave each baby half while i got their pureed meals together. when i came back, they had somehow made these rock-hard biscuits into a reddish-brown paste which they smeared all over their hands, arms and faces. they looked like poo-eaters.

baby T used to rub his toothless gums along my jaw line when he was about four months old. now he tries to chew on my jaw, my chin, my nose, and those jagged new teeth hurt.

two weeks until finals. three papers, a map, six labs, a midterm and a final to finish before then.

highway robbery

an update on the dad "boone speed:" totally amazing. in the past year that i've worked for the nanny agency, this is only the second home where i've seen excessive amounts of money used in good taste. these are creative people with a good eye for color and an interest in shiny furniture (i like shiny furniture). the living room is painted floor-to-ceiling with black chalkboard paint and the residue of blue and pink scribbles are smeared across the wall in huge strokes. there is a sculpture of a cowboy taming a bronco; i made the mistake of asking if it was a sculpture of the image on the wyoming license plate.

there are two animal rugs on the floor... i think they're buffalo. or extremely large dogs.

nic and i went to the zoo today. just so everyone knows, the zoo is damn expensive. $10 for me to get in, $6.50 for the kid, and a dollar for parking. the best part if it all is that we spent three-quarters of the time playing on the animal statues and having cartwheel vs. somersault contests in the grass, which all could have been done for free at any of the million parks in portland. though, i did see an elephant walk backwards, and i'd pay just about anything to see that.

a day of cartwheels at the zoo and pancakes for dinner. i think i'm in love.

it's sunny outside

anyone for a cartwheel contest?

babies. we'll call you.

it had been a full five days since i'd last seen the babies. they had missed me. i could tell.

baby A has this new trick where she holds each of index fingers in her hands, pulls herself to standing, and then charges forward, expecting that i will chase after her and keep her upright. she ran and ran around the basement, giggling and gasping, for a full fifteen minutes. glorious.

both had been given haircuts over the weekend. baby T looks like joan of arc when she cut all of her hair off to look like a man... i think maybe in the messenger, starring milla. so, french and slightly feminine, which is okay since he's still a baby.

on friday i'll be working for a new family from 8am to midnight, and then from 9am to 3 on saturday. the dad's name is boone speed. this will be awesome!

shamed

at the coffee shop this morning, the radio was playing as we drank our coffee and read the newspaper. i was terribly embarrassed to realize that i knew most of the songs - no doubt, switchfoot, dido, the killers, and green day, to name a few. how could this have happened to me? who am i?

not at all average

i had a "reproductive dream" the other night. more on that later.

this morning i met with an advisor at school and found out that i only need 18 more credits to graduate. that means that i could be done with PCC by summer! that means i could be teaching within three years! that means i have two years of a foreign language ahead of me!

impossible

one of the art history professors is leading a trip to turkey this june for 9 days, and it sounds amazing. she is excited about it and wrote me this long email about how she studied for her master's thesis there, about how much she loves the turkish people. she said, "by the way, you don't need a carpet, do you?" no, i don't think i do, but you never know.

the only problem: $3000. and i think the five credit tuition is in addition to that large sum of money. $300 is due up front as a deposit, the other $2700 a month before the group leaves. that much money for nine days? even if we said the airfare was a third of that, the cost of the trip would be almost $200 a day. that's way too much to spend traveling as a broke-ass college student. when manda and i spent two months in western europe we only spent about thirty bucks a day, that including our hostel. all of that to say, i probably won't be studying great works of art in turkey this june.

sugar day

The "babies" gave me a little box of overpriced chocolates before I left work today. It was very... "sweet!"

Andrea was saying this evening that someday when she's an adult, she'll remember what it was like to be a poor college student and give them money and looove. My families are like Andrea of the Future - remembering who they were and seeing it in me. And helping me out in all the right ways. I never thought that I would love my employers, my job, the situation that I've found myself in.

in my old age...

today i watched a handful of kids, aged two to five. it was chaos - glue sticks smashed into the carpet, chalk on hands/faces/clothes, body-slamming and leaping from plastic slides. towards the end of the (affair?) morning, little zion asked, "do you know who bono is?" and when i said for him to tell me, he said, "he's a really cool guy!"

kids these days.

a tragic villain

the nice thing about my job is that i can live vicariously through the richer-than-me people that i work for. they just bought a house for nearly half a million dollars, which is far more than i ever hope to earn. and far more financial responsibility than i'd want to take upon myself. so they'll have the expensive house and i'll spend thirty hours a week in it and pretend that it's mine.

occasionally at school a coversation like this will take place:

group: blah-blah-blah [talking about Richard III]
guy 1: well, that's my opinion. not that i really know anything, i only got a B on the test.
me (trying to be encouraging): a B is good - really!
guy 1: yeah... since i didn't read the play, i guess i actually got a pretty good grade.

the guy didn't freaking read the blasted play! i spent close to ten hours reading and re-reading the text, taking notes, making notes of my notes, compiling outlines, and having my dreams violated by shakespearean drama.

i'll console myself with the knowledge that i'll finish this class with a much better understanding of shakespeare and these plays. ...or something like that.

to hell with the devil

the first time i saw menomena perform, i wanted to marry their keyboard player (keyboardist?). after reading this, i want to marry someone from a christian metal band.

post the first

previously, on diaryland.

i am a nanny, but not curvey and british like on tv.
i am also a student, but now make enough money
to eat more than ramen and potatoes.

the babies of my life are twins, a boy and a girl.
thiel (like neal with a "th") and abigail.
blond-haired and blue-eyed, they are often assumed to be my own.

community college will be completed at the end of the summer.
for now, geography of oregon.