how you like dem eyes?

josh calls those the crazy eyes. they must be hereditary cause finnie gots em too. 

merry christ mass!

adrienne sez~"we all love eachother. so, stop all the nut-hitting"

confession #73

sometimes josh and i use empty baby food jars to shoot tequila.

think what you will.

dainty (but tough) feets

fears

last week i was starting to feel a little discouraged about the teaching profession. i tell myself things like i'm not professional enough to get up and be ready and presentable every monday-friday. or that i don't have the right clothes or the right social skills or enough organizational talents.

but then i found this guy's blog called 'teaching the outsiders' which gives me lots of hope. he has been teaching seventh grade since 1988 in california and has countless good tips, stories, entertaining anecdotes, etc. that got me back on my motivation horse.

one thing that had knocked me off was a frustration with the alternative teaching program i'm in to get my certificate. the expectation is that after the classes and tests on the website are finished, the student should then be able to go out and get a job. which i don't have enough teaching experience for. so i'm teaching English at El Buen Samaritano and i might start tutoring a couple of afternoons next semester but mostly i have to substitute to get into and learn about the schools.

and i'm not sure why in a school people are unwilling to help you learn about procedure but you really have to pull it out of them. there is an expectation that you should already know how everything works the moment you walk in and if not you get a funny look and a 'just go do it' attitude. is that irony?

so to put it bluntly i'm scared. i feel like i need more prep, more instruction, more experience. i don't want someone holding my hand but i'd like to know a little about the water before i jump in.
are there sharks? a little algae? just some slimy stuff or like storms and tsunamis?

i'm trying to look at this as a challenge. i really like the idea of overcoming my fears, so i'm working out ways of gaining the skills that make me feel comfortable. i think i'm going to call AISD like i did del valle and just tell them "let me observe some of your classes". which worked out well and i've done some teaching assistant subbing since then. but i want to know how difficult it is to handle a class. how much is your day planned out and what happens if the teacher doesn't leave lesson plans?

really, i think that i'm just going to have to jump in. and mr. coward's website (teaching the outsiders) i think is helping me feel more confident. at the very least it's nice to know there are teachers out there who enjoy their jobs. and have made school simple and enjoyable for the students.

teaching involves so many skill sets like entertaining, knowledge in the subject area, people management, etc...i want to know if all the things i'm badass at can help me and if i have the gumption and intelligence to employ them all at once. i also need a hug. hugs are good.

ye ol gridiron

in the past, i've had several conversations with my brother which basically consisted of me berating him for liking football. i would tell him that he was secretly gay and liked all the ass slapping and that he must like war if he liked football since it's players are simulating battle and similar horse-poo.
but josh's company took us to a texan's game this weekend. we tailgated before the game and sat in the director's club at the stadium (complete with free food, full bar, cookies and a great view of the field). there were nearly 71,000 people there and the game was very close the whole time. i have a new appreciation for the athletes who seem to have gadget arms to make the catches that they do, but mostly for the fans. yes, they're loud and the ones sitting next to us were drunk and obnoxious but i really liked how everyone screamed "FIRST DOWN!' when the announcer would blare 'AND THAT MAKES A TEXANS...' or when we will rock you came on everyone stomped their feet hard enough to make the entire stadium shake. or how when the texans scored four runners from each corner would run down field carrying gigantic flags, cross eachother, stop on their respective thirty five and wave their flag. then run off the field. those guys probably don't get paid anything to run with flags. they probably just like to.
so the texans beat tennessee 12-13 and i think i finally understand why my brother likes football. it's kind of fun.
i'm debating on whether to have a conversation with him about how he was right.

ay ay ay

going to sub in del valle today. i have no idea where i'm going to be except it's a junior high teaching assistant.

special ed? p.e.? math?

all scary.

what i'm doing

mostly i've been writing about finnie but wow! i've had a lot to do these past few days and weeks. it all seems a little weird since four months ago i was working in a cubicle for a corporation entering data about meat purchases.

today i'm going to school to tell my professor a fairy tale in spanish. i had to prepare three different stories: La Caperucita Roja, La Cenicienta Y Blacanieves y los siete Enanitos. So that's Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. One of these three will also be a written assignment that we complete in class without books or aids. we also have to write and film another fairy tale of our choosing which ended up being Goldilocks and the three bears. so i currently have about seventeen spanish fairy tale creatures swimming around in my head. i feel like telemundo on saturday morning.

but that is excellent because next semester i'm going to be teaching an introductory English class at El Buen Samaritano which is an episcopal mission dedicated to helping immigrating families. they have a food bank and free clinic and english classes with childcare etc... mostly they serve the hispanic population here but there are vietnamese and korean and russian students also. it's on a volunteer basis but the experience is invaluable.

and that's why friday i'm going to the orientation to become an Austin ISD substitute. this will hopefully lead to gainful employment somewhere in the district. because i needs the money! finnie needs the money!

which reminds me of when we went to marfa a couple of weeks ago a man working at the grocery store told us finnie looked like he ate alot. i thought that was a funny thing to say to a group of complete strangers with a baby but the more i think about it, the more i think it was an astute observation. those healthy pink cheeks must come from all that oatmeal and chicken an breastmilks we be feedin' him.

two punkins

i can finally get him to hold still for a second to take a picture. sometimes. when i have chocolate in my hands.

along with this talking thing

all of the baby books and the internet and friends with babies and grandmothers at the supermarket tell you to talk back to your baby and answer his questions with real responses that stimulate conversation. so that you have conversations that go something like this:


baby-fantashatagwonteeennsgattt?

parent-yes, i think you're right, finnegan.

baby-awwwmpa danntteee wodagbbbdddpt!

parent-oh, really? well, i think that's a good idea.


but, what if we're agreeing to things that we really shouldn't be agreeing to? what if in the previous conversation we've just promised to buy fifty cats and name them all peanut butter?

word explosion!

finnie says baby, bubble, juice, hi, bye and his sign language/half english words include up, more, bath, ball, done, down, shoe, shhh! help and and tteeeeeeeeeethhhfmmmeeelllpttttt. lots of that.

and here's a little video of him giving his first public address. so smart!

my sweetie kins

josh and i have a raccoon living with us. today i found my toothbrush holder, a toothbrush, two tupperware containers, their respective lids, a hair clip, a bottle of baby shampoo, a drinking straw and a half eaten cookie in the laundry bin.

and i know you might say "i told you, chelsea! having wild animals as pets is not common practice. they can never be domesticated and will always give you trouble."

but i can't give up on my precious pet. he's just too lovable. look at him interacting with the resident children:

that one sure is funny

looking like josh

some poopy firsts

today i played on a playground at a restaurant, a chick-fil-a, and not only did i play on that play ground i did so with finnie, a three year old girl named nora and a two year old kid who didn't know his name but had an extremely pungent diaper. he was there with his grandma so i suspect she hadn't checked but his mother had a super surprise when she got that one open. not sure what they were feeding the kid but i'd like to know so that i can steer finnie clear of it. no no you can't have any puppy chow this afternoon, we don't want you to offend, child.

finnie was doing so well with his lemonade that i decided to give it to him in his car seat when we left the chik'n hut. clearly decisions aren't my strong suit because i heard what sounded like a waterfall as i was pulling out onto the freeway access road and adjusted the rear view to see finnie dumping icey lemonade into his lap. and when i took it away he started crying.

crying?

maybe, hopefully, for future's sake he was crying because he was wet and cold and sticky and not because i ruined his fun. yet i feel, because i know him well, that he probably loved it and i ruined his fun. like i do everyday with my 'get out of the toilet' and the ever present 'don't pick up that muddy yogurt lid that's been in the street for two weeks! no! don't put that in your mouth!'

how dare i.

what was best about today tho was after the lemonade and after changing clothes we walked around the block and pointed out all the stop signs and then it was bath time. and, here's the best part, he pooped in the bath. got the towel all poopy and everything. there's truly nothing like a mother's love. not only will she not tell another mother that her kid is poooooopy...she'll dig her own kids poo out of the bathtub with nary a wimper. josh would've puked.

gonna send this to ellen

bed a six

do you remember when you could go to bed anytime you wanted and it didn't matter that your homework wasn't done or that the laundry was in huge piles on your bedroom floor? i do. my kid does. he's in bed now and has been for thirty minutes and it's still an hour till the sun goes down.

cuando tenia un ano...durmio mas que otros ninos. claro, no lo recuerdo pero yo lo se.

mmmmm

i am so hungry right now and all i can smell is josh's garlicy, chile-y brisket that he's slow cooking in the oven. torture to my salivary glands and digestive system and olfactory sensory perception!

o my god. he's flipping it right now and the smells are wafting through the room. the newcastle i'm drinking is only making it worse. damn him for bringing me good beer and damn him for making good meat. sometimes i can't stand him. at all. not even a little. bit.

ode to finnie

you're so little and cute
i love the way you zoot
out when pooping
and return when
you want to be changed

you're so little and sweet
i love the way you sweep
with the backyard broom
but its too big for
you to push around

i hope you never grow up
i hope you grow up strong
i hope you never grow up
i hope you live too long

love and kisses,
yer mam

la petit dejeuner

this is at breakfast/lunch on a monday at the counter cafe. the food was very good but quite expensive because as much as possible is organic and grown locally. finnie loved it because he could look out the front glass and see the buses and cars on the street. plus he found this new hat. what luck.

can you start monday?

these are wonderful words. everyone has wanted to hear them from time to time. ok maybe not everyone. like the bum down the road selling roses? that's his nightmare. but it's my dream and i'm excited that i've got my foot in the door to a school. where there's schooling being done.

i'm going to be working at premier high school which is an alternative high school for at risk youth. they want me to start as a temp so that they don't need the negative woman at the front desk to train her replacement. does that make me a consultant? i like the fact that they need me there to do a specific job and that when it's done they will figure out if they want me in another job or not. it's like an incentive to do well because i always take the low/easy road at jobs that i don't care about. i figure out how little i can do to get good reviews and raises and i stick with that. i know it's a terrible trait but it stems from not REALLY caring about the job i am hired to do. like at whole foods it was take this spreadsheet and enter it into this screen. repeat for the next four hours. eat lunch. now take this spreadsheet and...you get the picture.

maybe this will be different. if not...i'm not sticking around. the promise of a just a little money lures me in very easily but i have my goal and it's in sight and i'm not wavering. i want to teach english to spanish speaking people and learn spanish myself. i'm on the road but i can't get side tracked by the billboards that say..."hey! start monday"

el park

today at the zilker playground a lady asked me if finnie was a boy or a girl. that makes the second time today and the umpteenth time this week that someone couldn't tell. and i could understand if it was people who didn't have children but they were all people that had children with them or were talking about how much he looked like their grandSON.

i suppose it's funny to me because if he was a girl he'd be in pink ALL THE TIME. and dresses and little frilly socks and sparkeldy purple flats etc...they'd know if he was a girl. and i don't think it's so ambiguous now either. i mean turtles and fishies and trains? well, he is awful pretty so it's not an insult. i just think people are smarter than they are most of the time. oooo that makes me a bitch i guess.

oh piffle

this is my grandmother betty joy. she fell and broke her hip on wednesday when she was trying to step over her electric blanket cord. luckily she fell close to her phone because she never wears the alert necklace that she has and she lives alone. she had surgery last night and i haven't heard how she is yet execept that she was in quite a lot of pain and the morphine they were giving her wasn't helping so the doctor gave her some diloted which is much stronger. she slept on and off through the night and when she woke up my aunt said she saw the doctor and thought he was incredibly handsome and sweet and flirted with him all day. he had been to iraq to care for the soldiers and she was quite taken with that.

we lived really close to my grandparents when i was growing up. they lived on a lake in a canyon and we lived on the rim so i used to hike down when i'd get bored. my grandfather had a paddle boat and cane poles to fish with and a peach and nectarine orchard. he was always trapping racoons and shooting them or bitching about his china berry trees or sitting on his back porch drinking jim beam and soda. my grandmother and i played gin rummy and she taught me to play her organ and i would thread the needle on her sewing machine when she couldn't see it. i love her and i miss her and i hope she recovers quickly.

hugs,
chelsea

someone's out there.

am i crazy? did that work? it's like there's a bloggod who answers prayers. much better than in real life.

f this

so i am going to move my blog to wordpress. it is basically the same except the address will be fortuitush.wordpress.com.

please forgive me but i can't seem to get these people (hello! are you there? yeah i'm talking to you.) to help me get comments. and i want to know what you think. i value your opinion! and that's no bullshit but this service is. all my love to google but you got some shit to work out here.

hugs,
chels

poor tummy, it absorbs the worries.

so in the latest feud with my mother i seem to have pissed her off the point that she won't email me. i asked her to stop emailing me vague ignorant conservative propaganda like this:


John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were walking down a Washington DC street when they came upon a homeless man.

John McCain, gave the man his business card and told the man to come to his office for a job. He then took $20 from his pocket and gave it to the man.

Hillary was very impressed, so when they came upon another homeless person, she decided to help. She walked over to him and gave him directions to the welfare office. She then reached into McCain's pocket and got out $20. She kept $15 for her administrative fees and gave $5 to the homeless man.

When they came upon yet another homeless person, Barack told him "have hope...change is coming..." and gave him nothing.

Now do you understand the difference?"


Ok aside from the 4 misplaced commas let me clue you in on something. This is the format for a very popular joke. As in "a priest and a rabbi walk into a bar" but where's the funny? where's the punch line? where's the non sequitur like "the bar tender says 'is this a joke?'" or something of that nature. it's not there! there is only a question to which one could possible say 'no i don't understand' which is exactly what i did. there are just too many things that i have questions about.

first of all why are these three people walking down the street without their body guards? where's reggie love?

second, why is it that the first is a homeless 'man' and the rest are homeless 'persons'? did the writer of this fine inquisition decide to improvise the gender to make it more appealing to the brainwashed masses? why not homeless children? that would've worked better for me.

also what homeless person doesn't already know where the welfare office is? most homeless people can't get welfare anyway. you have to have a job for that kind of aid. if i was writing this twisted piece of crap i'd have told him where the food bank or the HOMELESS shelter was. and what homeless person actually WANTS a job? they make more money off of people like the john mccain character than josh and i put together for the last five years.

and what is the difference between these characters really? they all will never know what it's like to be the homeless people and probably don't have much on their agenda for homeless people because you can't really help those that can't help themselves. i mean, much love to the homeless for keeping it real and all but come on. the only legislation you see on the chronically homeless is how to keep them off the corners with their bothersome roses.

and so i'm really not convinced that these three people, had they been walking down the street together without reggie love et all, would've even stopped to give the bums the time of day. it's just not on their agenda. which is what i should do with the email. just delete it because i have bigger things to focus on. but i can't quit thinking about the shit head who wrote this, is sending it out to all these people, and all the people who are thinking "well yeah! i see tha difference! my mind sure is made up now" (insert bumkin voice ala jeff foxworthy)

anyway. so my mom is pissed at me now because i told her not to send me anymore of this political crap. so be it. i've bigger fish to fry. and mmm! do they taste oh so good.

so cute!

this morning

we had an eventful morning...first josh and i took finnie to daycare so that we could go and run errands. we had to go to josh's lawyer's office and pick up some paperwork, then go to the dmv and try to get his license back. he's been going through the driver surcharge program for like 900 years trying to deal with this dwi that he got back in 2003. we thought it might be kind of a hassle because we've been up there before and they're always all 'you have to do this' or 'you have to do that' like the freaking vogons on hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. all bureaucracy.


so josh goes behind this little window and talks to the guy while i'm hoping everything is going to work out but trying to be a good girl and just pretend my cuticles are the most interesting bits of stimuli in the world. (i'm a good wife) so then josh comes around the corner looking dejected and motions for me to leave with him. the whole time i'm walking over he won't look at me but we get out of the door and as i ask him what happened he's like 'man, shit...i got my license!" and flashes the most beautiful piece of paper i have ever seen. aside from our marriage certificate and finnie's birth certificate, and oh yeah, all of that money we got from running our porn business last year. but it's beautiful, you get the point.

there are countless things one worries about when one doesn't have a license. can i take my kid to the store without getting pulled over, going to jail and having to tell my wife that our son is with the CPS? do i have to stay at this job FOREVER because noone with hire me without a valid license? should i go to that melvins show and risk being turned away at the door because i don't look over 42? etc...

the best part of the whole thing though was that we decided to go and have 1 mimosa a piece (ok we had two but we were still under the legal BAC, right?) at Magnolia Cafe. We were sitting outside next to the fence eating our breakfast when i see this blurry fuzzy blob plop into josh's lap. josh just sat there with his bagel and lox looking at me like "what the fuck? and we turn to see this german shephard sized squirrel bolt across the table and onto the patio floor. in his haste the squirrel left the pecan he was chasing in josh's lap and josh, still staring at me like "what the fuck?" threw the pecan on the table and said "well i got HIS breakfast."

the squirrel left scratch marks all over josh's right hand so i think the official tally was tied at 1.


and now i'm going to pick up our sweet boy from da-da-da daycare! a lovely day indeed.

neighbors

i know i'm suppossed to be working and studying but i can't quit watching the guy who is my neighbor. the window that my desk is at looks into the back yard of a duplex where a young guy has been walking around on the roof, fixing windows, trimming trees and smoking cigarettes.

i started watching him because the other day josh told me to look out the window at what was sitting in the middle of the yard. there was a plant on top of a milk crate which was on top of a plastic lawn table just a basking in the sun. can you guess what that plant might have been? yep! only in austin would someone put a pot plant in the middle of the yard for everyone to see. does he not see my window? does he not know that the cops have been called on them before for the noise their dogs make? or does he just not care because he's growing it for personal use and will only get a ticket?

the best thing to me is that the lady next door to him is obviously very old, has a chihuahua and dumps all of her junky medical equipment onto her porch. there's a walker, a wheel chair a humidifier, etc...so maybe the pot grower is just trying to freak the old lady out. no telling.

inanycase, i find the speculation better than tv. and WAAY better than studying.

noises

i love this little boy. what you probably can't see at first glance is that he's raising his shoulders so that he can shriek. for joy.

finnie's favorite pastime

in our family we can be polite and call it breastfeeding when we're talking to doctors and my baptist grandmother, but around good company it's well known as titty feeding. and i have been doing it for a YEAR. i know there are those granola mammas (who i admire wholeheartedly) that go for two three four years with the kid on the teat but personally i'm a little tired of his eight teeth taking total control of my sweater cows.

just a little though. i am, for the record, a strong advocate of titty feeding. some but not all of my reasons are selfish. for example, a woman burns five hundred extra calories every day while lactating. also, a baby who is breastfed for longer than a year doesn't have to be given cow's milk which can cause anemia and has too much sodium and not the right balance of nutrients for baby humans. and AND! there are lower rates of postpartum depression in breastfeeding mothers. not to mention the money you save on formula. there are many many many reasons for continued breastfeeding and just a few reasons not to... and i think i'm at the point where i'm thinking of weaning finnie, but then he wants to nurse or i can tell that he would go right to sleep if i did and then i give in. i know its lazy but if he's less stressed and i'm less stressed and there's no crying hissy fit upon bed time, then why change that? because its uncomfortable and blah blah blah...round and round in circles.

with anything i start, have started, will start, i know that thinking about weaning and gathering information will be the first steps. then we'll try and try and one day he'll end up not even thinking about the fact that we had the ritual together everyday for the first year of his life. he'll know subconsciously. and i'll know but probably won't mention it to him unless i want to embarrass him in front of his friends. but i'm not sad about moving on...i'm proud that we bonded and i'm happy that it was such a healthy experience for both of us. i can thank him for keeping me sane and he can thank me for all that wonderful titty milk.



-

HA-LE-LEU-JAH

LAST DAY AT WHOLE FOODS!

finnie's first birthday

yesterday was finnegan's first birthday! we had a party on sunday afternoon that turned out to be a great success. it was kind of an impromptu swimming party...we forgot to tell the parents to bring swim clothes so there were a few naked boys one little girl in a puffy ol diaper and sidney who's mother is ultra prepared for water sports and had her swim suit in the car.

we've set up the pool for finnie before but i don't think he quite knew what to do with it until he saw the other kids splashing and having fun. it reminds me how social he is and gives me a glimpse of his personality. i think he's going to have his dad's ability to make friends with anyone and his gentle caring natures that makes everyone gravitate to him. he was hugging all of the kids but mostly he wanted to hug taylor, my cousin chelsea's 3 year old. finnie would walk up behind him while he was playing on the floor and throw his arms around him and lay his head on his back. until taylor moved then he would follow him and try to play. i'm so amazed at his abilities...i think for me that's what the party was celebrating...he's grown physically yes, and he's walking and understanding and that's all great but now i see his humanness developing and it gives me the chills. i love that little boy and every moment that he's been in my life from the very beginning.







here's to a lifetime of birthday parties!

love,
che

cathartic floundering

ok this less hurtful idea is not coming to fruition. i feel like i'm always self destructing. and pinching people where i know it might hurt them because i am so sensitive that i take anything they say to heart.

i don't know why i'm generalizing all of this. it's really about josh. i feel like he doesn't give me enough affection so when he tries to it's way past due and i ruin it. like last night i told him "you shouldn't give me any affection, josh, you should just go to sleep" and he rolled over and asked if i wanted to "lay up in his arm pit". this would have been a really good time for me to accept his offer and get up in that arm pit for some lovin. but what did i do? i said "no, i don't" and he rolled over and went to sleep.

then i had a dream that he told me some beautiful girl looked really beautiful when she woke up in the morning all beautiful. and in my dream i kicked him off the bed.

so first of all i was sarcastic with him which is not a good way to start any kind bid for attention. i want us to have a healthy, fun, friendly relationship, but he ignores me when i talk, then i start talking more because i'm nervous, then he gets annoyed, and i think "he's never loved me, ever, its only because of finnegan that we're even married"

how do i make this work when i'm batshit crazy because my mom is batshit crazy? and how do i make this work when i don't have any example for what normal human behavior looks like in a marriage?

so i kissed him a bunch of times on the face this morning while he was laying in bed and i told him i loved him. because i do. i just wish we communicated better and that i wasn't so defensive and shitty.

what i wannnnnnt to talk about

in future posts i would like to examine luck. i know that it's going to take a while for me to start writing about how fortuitous we are in everyday life, but i'd like to begin with some personal observations of daily luck and move on to how i see it affecting others. eventually i'd like to take some personal accounts and recreate them here for you.

i know you're just jiggling with excitement but i think it's a subject worth poking around in. i mean, how much do we think luck affects our lives? is there a norm for how much faith americans put into the idea of being lucky? how many different idiomatic expressions are there that include luck. like getting lucky, lucky dog, lucky! luck schmuck...etc...and last... how can i get lucky with your mom. that's the most important question. stay tuned for all the juicy details.

don't touch it!

what else do i love? dry ice. it's fun!

First!

I love love love pot pie. Don't you?