my boys

It is 8:00 am Friday morning, I am home and hooking S up with the Backyardigans (or "backyard begins," as he calls them) so I can shower. J is still in bed trying to recover from the EMU cd marathon combined with 5 gigs in one week and finishing up his first session of after-school songwriting at Willow Run.

The cartoon starts (begins) and S says, "I don't really like the dancing."
"Really?" I ask, "I think it's kind of cute."
"No," he says, shaking his head, "but, " (waving his hand dismissively in the air around his right ear) "whatever."
WHATEVER? Holy Mother of God. I've just been whatever-ed by my two-year-old.

Secretly, I was proud to see that he could tell it was a dumb argument and was willing to drop it even though I didn't say he was right. Also, I think it shows that he knows it's pointless to try to get me to change my mind. Also, this may be an indication that he's more like his Dad, and won't follow any stupid line of thought relentlessly to its ultimate, usually pointless, conclusion.

So I showered, we watched the rest of the show - which is actually hilarious and charming, with surprisingly good music - played pirates, ate sandwiches, got dressed, and began to wonder about Papa. S took his flashlight (which, incidentally, is now his constant companion. This can be especially frustrating at 6 am, when he comes hulking up the stairs with a hoodie over one arm and the giant flashlight in the other, like some kind of midget Dragnet guy, to rip me brutally from sleep by jumping on me and shining it directly in my eyes. "Why are you hiding Mama? That hurt you heart?" No, buddy, just my eyes.) upstairs to interrogate my, still-sleeping, partner in crime.

"Why you sleeping, Papa?"
"Mrghphnmrr."
"What you said? You are awake now? Let's go paint."
"I can't."
"Why? What happened to you? Are you stuck?"
"I did the hokey-pokey and I put my whole self in. Now I can't get it out."

giggles

"I can help you, Papa. I'm really brave and strong."

over and done

finally sent my research paper off last night,
several pots of coffee and a tin of rescue remedy later,
and in my triumphal haze I am realizing that I was - as usual - obsessing a bit too much.

As a freshman and sophomre in undergrad, I was a music therapy student. My prof was on the certification reveiw board, and a founding editor of one of the major US journals in the feild. He expected all of us to write like we were going to be published. Today. One paper every day (plus rewrites) in APA. He was a facist dictator disguised as a professor and I still hear his voice as I'm trying to organize my thoughts into compatibility with the requirements of the 6th edition.

Having sent the paper, I can now look back and see that I was writing it as though the authors of the articles I was reveiwing were going to read and critique my work, rather than an over-worked professor who has probably not a clue about music education to begin with.

Oh well. I faced down my demons and overcame the urge to move away or shave my head or drink myself silly; and I got it done.
Now I can go be ridiculous...

visions of ypsi

The consultants have spoken. Ypsilanti is less of a shit hole than it used to be!
We're still raggedy enough to be identified as an at-risk city by the generous state govt, but now we can call it "interesting, real, and edgy!" (Check out Mark Maynard for more info on the visioning meeting).

I never thought I'd come back to Ypsi after undergrad, but here we are, 2 degrees, 7 jobs, a mortgage, and a baby later; singing her praises to anyone who will listen, walking to the co-op, going to visioning meetings, and feeling pretty damn good about how far we've come.

Yep, we. When Peter asked about J's plans for finding a space for CR, I heard my self tell him that J is determined to find one, and we're not moving, so "it's just going to have to be in town!" and I realized that I really feel attached to a place as a home for the first time in my life. I know store owners and community organizers and at least half the population of the corner brew on any given night. When I drive through still-sleeping depot town with my cafe-au-lait ala Bombadill's, the scene (and the caffeine) makes me so happy I almost don't mind going to work.

I think things really are getting better. Ypsi people are actually seeing themselves as capable of advocating for positive change. Perhaps it is a blessing that the pavers on the corner of Michigan and Washington are messed up by truck traffic, and Water Street is stalled, and the Vu is not, and EMU doesn't pay taxes and we're all just struggling a little bit to keep it all together; maybe it's just that that keeps us from becoming self-satisfied and complacent and ignorant of the needs of others in our community. So the parking lots need to be resurfaced, and we could use some better signs. We have great music and art and vegetables and beer, lots of lesbians, the most phallic building in the world, and one happy music teacher avoiding a research paper by baking chocolate chip cookies for the recording engineers of the first full length Community Records studio album. Things are looking up.