My New BFFs

I have 22 new best friends. I went to the first of two Social Work orientations yesterday and met the 22 fellow students I will get to know intimately over the next three years. I can't remember if I mentioned it here that I'm enrolled in the part-time or "Distance Education" program, which means it will take my cohort and me three years to earn our MSWs as opposed to two. For the first two years of our program, we will attend classes only on Fridays on the campus of North Carolina Central University in Durham. The third year we will be on UNC's campus in Chapel Hill for full-time study. I will complete two field placements (or internships) and am looking into a summer Study Abroad class in Costa Rica. It's all so very exciting! We did kind of a "speed-dating" exercise yesterday where we had four minutes to chat up our partners before time was called and the next partner moved over. It was the kind of thing I love (and the kind of thing David hates), and during the exercise I found out who also had small children, who went to UNC as an undergraduate, who also majored in English and minored in Women's Studies, and who did VISTA and AmeriCorps after college. (At least one woman and I share all of the above). When I walked into the restroom during a break and saw a fellow student/new mother pumping breast milk, I knew I was in the right place. We'll all be facing the delicate balance between work, family, school, and fun and we'll be helping each other figure it all out.

Buzzworthy Book

There's a new book out that has caught my attention, The Political Brain, which examines brain research and political campaigns over the last forty to fifty years and reveals how emotion, not reason, drives people to vote the way they do.

From publicaffairsbooks.com:

The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.

And a book exerpt from a Review at Daily Kos:

... the left has no brand, no counterbrand, no master narrative, no counternarrative. It has no shared terms or "talking points" for its leaders to repeat until they are part of our political lexicon. Instead, every Democrat who runs for office, every Democrat who offers commentaries on television or radio, every Democrat who even talks with friends at the water cooler, has to reinvent what it means to be a Democrat, using his or her own words and concepts, as if the party had no history. If this is how Coke marketed itself, we would all be drinking Pepsi.

What two prominent Democrats have to say about the book:

Bill Clinton
"This is the most interesting, informative book on politics I've read in many years...you have to read this book."

Howard Dean
" ...a must read...we will win the Presidency if our candidate reads and acts on this book."

All of this is, of course, very timely and interesting to me in its own right.

BUT, what makes the book even more interesting to me is that I know the author. Remember when I posted about visiting Emory last August and having this great dinner with chatty professors and holding my own and even making the whole table laugh? The author of this book was at the table, and yes, he laughed.

Yearly Letter #4, JLC

Dear Johnny,

Yesterday, August 5, 2007, exactly 5 days after you turned four, will go down in history as the day you officially learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. I got back from an hour-long yoga class, and there you were, in our street, with Daddy starting you off and Grace cheering you on, riding your bike, all by yourself, without training wheels. When I saw you, when I actually saw you riding and concentrating and your face just beaming at your accomplishment, I screamed. I screamed just like I did when Grace's first tooth came out, because, I mean, this was huge. Huge. I told you I was soooo proud of you and you asked over and over, "Are you super proud of me, Mommy?" Yes, Johnny. I'm super proud of you. I don't know what made yesterday the magic day, but I think it had something to do with your new skateboard and your motivation to go ahead and get the bike thing down so you could move on to skateboarding then skiing, then snowboarding and then surfing. Yeah, at the tender age of four you're already an extreme sports little guy, our little J-Dog.

The thing about you and being four is that no one really can believe that you're only four. When you were one you looked two, when you were two you looked three, three, four, and, well, you get the idea. It's like ever since you came out, you've been racing to grow up and get big. I remember nursing you at, like, only 6 weeks, and I could not get over just how strong you were. I think that's why I hold on to those times in the day when you want me to sit beside you on the couch and watch "SpongeBob" and give in to the requests to sleep beside Daddy and me so you can pinch my arm and I can rub your back. And your pleads not to trap you, because when you ask me not to trap you, you're really begging me to roll around on the floor with you and trap and tickle and laugh with you, and as long as you keep asking me to do that, I'm going to do it.

I don't know exactly when it happened--somewhere between the daily routine of morning juice and cereal and just one more story at night--but somewhere along the line you got old enough to ask about the cute things you did and said when you were a baby. Or you'll pick up a toy and ask, "Is this one of my two-year old toys?" I just can't believe how fast you're growing up, but I'm loving it all the while. I love how your mind works literally, like mine, and that when I suggest that we work on "handwriting," you assume that I mean writing, or tracing, over your hand. I mean, why wouldn't I mean that? And when I say that I'm afraid "People Falling Down" isn't on tonight, you ask why I'm afraid. You want to understand everything and figure everything out--even down to why one of the wild things in Where the Wild Things Are has people toes rather than monster toes.

You have an incredible mind, and you amaze Daddy and me daily with the things you reveal. Not long ago, you, Grace and Daddy were at Weaver Street and you met a rock-n-roll guy that had a cool dog. On the way home, no one could remember the dog's name. You couldn't remember the dog's name, but you remembered something you saw on a Wiggles show earlier. You began describing a game they were playing with a paddle and a ball, kind of like golf, but with a flat paddle. Daddy instantly got it: Cricket. Cricket! Yes, Cricket was the name of the rocker's dog. We will be telling that story for years to come.

I know that as a just-minted four-year old it's not always easy to share and that you get really cranky still when you don't have a nap. And even though I look back daily and miss something you've outgrown, I won't miss the day you outgrow your whining, impatience and insistence that we buy you a toy every time we go into a store. I feel your strong personality, strong body and strong mind will eventually take you far in life. It's your heart, however, that I want to be strongest of all. And it's already getting a good workout. That's evident when you tell grown-ups that are helping Grace take a band-aid off to "do it fast so it won't hurt as much" and when you made the connection that the reason I screamed when Grace's tooth came out (and now when I saw you riding a bike for the first time) is the same reason that the parents are crying on the first day of school in the book, The Night Before Kindergarten. And that is "because the kids are growing up, right, Mommy?" Right, Johnny. Because my kids are growing up.

Love,
Mommy

Takin' Care of Bizness

It all worked out. My residency status is all resolved and my $2,900 tuition bill was slashed to $1,492. Grace went with me to pay my bill and it was weird holding her hand walking on the campus that holds so many secrets of my past, taking care of current school-related business. When David found out how much we were going to "save" now that I'm a local, he asked me if he could buy an Xbox. I told him no...but that I would let him buy a new dress if he wanted.

Bird and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

They've been working on replacing the 12 air-handling units in the building where I work. The work started on July 18, and on that day, all the A/C units were disconnected. Slowly over the past 2 1/2 weeks, the A/C units have been coming back on-line. There's one remaining unit to fix. Guess whose office that last remaining unit cools? That's right--I personally haven't had A/C at work since July 17. I got home today and David had the air set on 80. It felt like the North Pole.

I think I accidentally washed my hair with conditioner this morning. So, I "shampooed" it with conditioner, and then I conditioned it with conditioner. I'm having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad hair day.

My tuition bill is due tomorrow and for the last several weeks I've been seeking out various loans that will aid me in paying the $3,000 bill. For one semester. I re-read some of my MSW materials today and saw that the estimate for tuition and fees for first-year, distance-ed (meaning Part-Time), in-state students is roughly $2,700 for the year. When I inquired about this, I received an e-mail back saying they think I'm an out-of-state student.

Now I have to get that straightened out, pay my tuition bill, do a little music and storytime session at the kids' school and take Grace to 2 therapy sessions tomorrow. (It would have been 3 sessions, but one was canceled, thank God).

I think I'll move to Australia.