Last week, HB and I finalized our decisions about our divorce decree agreement. Consequently, on Monday, I printed it out, proofed it one more time, signed it in front of a notary, and sent it by 2-day FedEx letter to him.
He received it, looked it over one more time, signed it in front of a notary, and filed it with our county court yesterday (Friday, 23rd) in MN.
At the end of that sentence, I sighed inadvertently.
Now, we wait for the judge to get around to making a decision on it. Could be 2 weeks, could be 3-6 weeks.
Once he signs it, we will be officially divorced.
I, as you might imagine, have mixed feelings about being at this stage. Part of me is glad to have everything almost finalized; part of me is still sad about the breakdown of our relationship. My feelings sort of ebb and flow; I say that, because it doesn’t feel quite right to refer to it as a rollercoaster or some sort of up and down analogy.
So, there you have it. The latest update on our process.
I have had happy stuff going on this week, and I’ll write about it more soon.
Last week, I was at Port Aransas, TX, near Corpus Christi on the eastern coast of TX, for vacation. I was with Texas Seestor (TS), Trainwreck (Tr), older niece (M) and younger niece (YN).
I had an exceptionally great time. Floating around, swimming, bouncing around, and playing in the pool for pretty much all day from 8:00am to 4 pm was just fantastic.
This is a bit of a tangent, but I am definitely a “water” when it comes to the whole water, air, earth, fire personality types. My dreams are usually water dreams, and I just love the feel of being in the water. I never dream about earth. If fire or air is in my dreams, it is usually a nightmare of some sort.
Anyway, mornings were usually a time when I sort of took care of M, because she and I both wake up early (6:00ish). Most mornings, I was only able to occupy here and allow TS and Tr to “sleep in” until 6:30, maybe closer to 7:00 if we were all lucky.
One morning after she woke me up at 5:00am, I really wanted to go out to the water and take photos of the sunrise. You might recall that last year, I was able to take sunrise photos every morning from our condo’s patio and I wrote a blog post this spring with a few of my best shots.
This year, due to the location of our room, I actually had to take more time to do it, because I had to take the boardwalk out to the beach to get shots.
But I love the boardwalk, because it allowed me to experience this interesting transition from condo and building to ocean. And on the way, I was walking past the dunes which were actually still green this year and not all dried out; I guess all of the rain they got a couple of weeks ago due to hurricane Andrew was actually helpful.
Here is the end of the boardwalk before I got onto the sand.
And then just as I was setting up my tripod at the bottom of the steps, this group of about 8 (or so) teenage girls dressed in white gauzy dresses start walking past me onto the beach. Right into the sunrise area.
ugh.
But the adult who was with them, with the big fancy camera, stopped and talked to me about how it was their last morning here and how the sunset the previous night didn’t work out. How she had to get them all up and ready by 6:00 am, blah, blah, blah. I was sort of sympathetic, but I also knew this might be my only morning to get out and take photos. She ended up saying that she’d try to keep them down the beach and out of my line of images. They were only partly successful. Thus, some of my photos do not have the sun actually centered. *sigh*
But, I caught the first glimmer of the sun over the clouds.
And one of my favorite parts is the sound of the seagulls calling out to each other over the background sound of the ocean waves.
Once the sun rose a little more, I decided to try to capture my joy in being out there. This required me to use the self-timer on my camera and to sort of guess where I needed to be in the photo.
For the first one, I only had the timer set at 10 seconds, because I didn’t check it ahead of time, and when I got out there, I realized that I’d left my shoes on. As I was trying to pull off my shoes, the camera snapped the shot.
oops.
setting it for 20 seconds worked out a bit better.
of course, when I ran back to the camera, there was that girl in the photo again.
it isn’t perfect, but it is all that I had energy for.
I realized it is quite difficult holding ones balance with ones arms raised in joy while not knowing when the waves were going to come in. Once a wave comes in and the water sucks back out, it is rather hard to keep ones balance.
Then attempts with the sun shining on me.
oops.
try again.
then back to the ocean and the birds and some close ups.
After some photos of the seaweed, I headed back.
It was a beautiful way to start the day. It made up for waking up at 5:00 am.
And then, after breakfast, it was back to the pool with M. We had it all to ourselves for about an hour.
I don’t go to the MSNBC site everyday, so I often miss it, because they only have it every few weeks or so. But the good thing is that once you are on it, if you keep clicking previous, it will keep taking you back to older ones.
I was looking at it today, and some of the photos were reminding me of my family.
My older niece, M, usually bonks some part of her body at least once a day – I think she may average around 3 a day right now.
Texas Seestor is usually the one who consequently holds her and kisses it to make it better. So this photo reminded me of them.
Please don’t think that the appearance of either of them remotely resembles the orangutans!
Then I saw these photos, which reminds me of my younger niece (YN) when she is eating her mushy foods by spoon in her highchair.
Thank goodness there is just one of her! Can you imagine feeding triplets? or more?
This next one reminds me of playing blocks, playdough, or cartons with M. She just loves to make towers.
And this final one reminds me of my parents’ new home in TX.
There are a LOT of deer in their neighborhood. And when I say a LOT, I mean that the house right next to them had 3 deer in it the other week eating the grass. And one of the homes down the road had a whole herd of about 10! TEN deer!
crazy.
And since they live on a golf course, I wonder how many times the golfers end up seeing deer run across the course?
Yesterday, we did the sort of thing that Americans do on the 4th of July when they live in a warm weather state.
We went to the pool!
This pool is far nicer than most, because it is at a friends’ home.
Here we are headed down to the pool.
But this photo also serves another purpose, because you can see the little awning covered area that is next to the pool. This is where we did the other Key American Event on the 4th of July: we grilled. (We being the male half of the couple that owns the home.)
Of course, to put a true Texas spin on the holiday, we grilled meat for fajitas.
But believe me, the fajitas were really fantastic, and a real treat, as compared to burgers and hot dogs.
And we finished the meal off with another Key Food on the 4th of July: apple pie with vanilla ice cream on the side.
Those of you who look at Flickr regularly may have already noticed the plethora of photos taken and captioned as being at my mom and dad’s house here in TX.
The basic story is that since they have not moved here yet, but they have closed on their house, Texas Seestor or I go once a week to check on it.
Last weekend, we needed to deliver a piece of furniture to Mom and Dad’s house. And while we were at it, we figured we’d look at the sprinkler system and try to figure out how to make it water more in the sunny backyard and less in the shady frontyard.
We were afraid to tell M (older niece) where we were going for fear of confusing her. We didn’t think that we could tell her we were going to Bam-ma and Bop-pop’s house without her thinking that they were actually going to be there. Instead, we just told her we were going on “an adventure to a special house!” She seemed to think that was explanation enough for a car trip.
When we got there and we could show her the empty house (and lack of Bam-ma and Bop-pop), it was easier to explain the concept that this is where they would live…
…. sooooooooooon.
First, she just wanted to check out the outside by looking through the windows.
She was a bit hesitant to go outside while her younger sister (YN) was hanging out inside.
But when I pointed out the swing in the backyard and told her I was going out there, she was ready to go!
I don’t have a pic of the two of us swinging, but I got that one of Trainwreck carrying YN out to that part of the yard.
Here are some additional shots of their backyard.
This one is from underneath the arbor. You can see the swing again just to the left of the upright.
Here is another shot taken from under the arbor.
Lest you think all of that green grass is their backyard, I should explain that their backyard backs up against a golf course. The golf course starts around where those double trees are located; the closest part of the shadow that they are casting is about where it switches from their yard to the golf course.
It is really peaceful.
I’m sure that you will see more photos of us out there over the years.
I’m looking forward to their moving here this fall!
Well, I am officially here according to the state and my school.
For the state: I have my plates and driver’s license.
For the school: I have my ID card/number, lots and lots of HR paperwork completed, an email address, and (just yesterday) a phone number!
My office at school is coming together. I have the “before” pics, but I am waiting to post them until I do the “after” pics.
Everyone is being super friendly and helpful. A lot of the students who are doing research for the summer and are around and being introduced to me remember me from my genetics lecture (in class). Thus far, only faculty remember my seminar, but if this school is anything like my last school, there are students who remember it who are too shy to say anything about it.
I have a really great room for my lab space, but it needs a big cleaning. It is a place where a handful of old computer monitors have been “stored.” Some extra chairs and a couple of classroom desks are also in there.
However, the admin is super about getting work orders in so that stuff gets removed ASAP. And a summer research student is going to help me clean up the lab space during incubations in his experiments. He is doing PCR, so he has a 4 hour block of time when he is free on a fairly regular basis.
I’m working with IT to get the right kind of tablet PC for my teaching. I cannot use an iPad, because I have to run powerpoint on it, and the iPad cannot run Microsoft products. The school has a discount with Dell (big surprise there), but the one that they had gotten for me to try out, and I tried yesterday, has an awful touchscreen for writing. These weird lines shoot off to the left when I write on a powerpoint presentation slide. Perhaps it is a setting issue, but if the reviews on the Dell website are to be believed, it is an inherent flaw in Dell’s choice of touch screen technology.
I used a Fujitsu at my last school. Evidently, they pioneered a lot of the touch screen technology for tablets.
Here is the short-ish video that I took of me using it while videotaping myself (one-handed). Not all that exciting, but since I taped it, I feel like I’ve got to do something with it.
I guess that is it for now. Thus far, I’m unaffected by the hurricane; it is just rainy here.
Last week, I had a new adventure! I took care of one a child aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall on my own for the very first time.
The child was, of course, one of my nieces. This time it happened to be the baby niece, we’ll call her the younger niece (YN) – as opposed to the older niece (ON). Hmmmm…
… ON is sort of a bad abbreviation for blogging. I guess she will have to go back to being M for Munchie.
Anyway, Texas Seestor called me on Tuesday night of last week. I was due to drive up to their home on Wednesday in the late afternoon already; we had made previous plans for me to help out while Trainwreck went on a business trip overnight and potentially into the next night too.
While on the phone on Tuesday night, she told me that YN would have to stay home from daycare all day the next day (Wed) due to pink eye. I knew Texas Seestor had at least one important meeting, but she had already started thinking about how she could call in from home. TX S’s meeting was in the afternoon, so I offered to just come early and take care of YN for the afternoon, and she decided to take me up on my offer!
Mind you, I had never, and I mean never, ever, taken care of kids for babysitting on my own. Even when I was a teen, I was absolutely not interested in babysitting. Consequently, I’d never changed a diaper. I had a cursory knowledge of how to tell the front from the back, and that wiping with baby wipes was involved, and that it is necessary to always keep one hand on their tummy and/or distract them, depending on their age.
I had fed a baby with a bottle (YN) for the first time ever the week before. Due to timing of visiting and the wealth of family around when M was a baby, I’d never fed her a bottle, oddly enough.
So, I arrived early to learn the tricks of the trade.
And just to be clear, I’d also never prepped the “solid” (i.e. mushy) food for a baby in a high chair, fed a baby in a high chair with a spoon, prepped a bottle with a bottle warmer, and what else….
… well, that seemed to be plenty of stuff that I had to learn in a short period of time.
The timing was right for Texas Seestor to show me how to prep YN’s mushy, rice/oatmeal baby food using breast milk. Then I learned how to feed her the food. YN is an exuberant eater – big surprise when you are talking about a female in our family, eh? She is still learning how to not spit out the food in her mouth by accident, but she is getting better.
The baby bird resemblance is really cute. You know what I mean right? I’m talking about the big open mouth when a baby is ready to have food put into her mouth.
And I learned how to use their bottle warmer.
And, once again, the timing was right, because YN ended up with a poopy diaper before Texas Seestor had to leave for work. So, I got to see how to deal with that too. Luckily, YN is so young, and she is pretty much only eating milk and this small amount of rice/oatmeal and small quantities of various pureed vegetables and fruits. Thus, her bacterial flora in her intestines hasn’t really kicked in yet to produce a lot of methane gas. Translation: it doesn’t smell much.
There was just enough time for me to eat lunch while Texas Seestor dealt with about 5 chat conversations at once on her computer. Then TX S. did one last run through of potential timing of eating/sleeping, I took notes, and off she went.
Thus, I was Home Alone with YN.
It was a really nice day, albeit tiring, due to my slight nervousness about doing stuff.
She napped for about 45 minutes at one point, drank a bottle, ate solids, played in her exer-saucer, played on her mat, and did her kneeling version of attempting to crawl. I was able to get a fair amount of video of her attempts to crawl, which was a fun way to pass the time.
I did have to change another poopy diaper and a couple of wet ones. But that was all easy-peasy.
One thing I already knew about her is that if she isn’t completely chipper and smiling, to check her diaper. She is such a happy baby, that it is relatively easy to guess that there is something wrong if she isn’t smiling. And it is either that she is hungry or that her diaper needs to be changed.
One challenge was that she was less than chipper at one point in the afternoon. I had just changed her diaper, and it was 0.5-1.5 hours until her afternoon bottle, so I was rocking her, b/c I thought YN was just tired. Luckily, Texas Seestor called around the same time and after we discussed amounts eaten earlier in the day, we started thinking YN might be hungry. Also, since I had YN in my arms, Texas Seestor heard YN’s vocalizations and recognized the sounds of hunger. Thus, even though it was early-ish, we decided that I ought to prep a bottle.
Now I’d already prepped a bottle earlier in the day with one hand while holding YN. But this time, I had to aliquot out a smaller portion of the breast milk in the fridge so as to not waste it; this was just in case YN only drank a small amount. And aliquotting bottles that are really sealed tightly shut is not something that I could do one-handed. I had to place YN on her mat, and she got a little fussy while I did that step. But she was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall good once she got her bottle.
And of course, she ended up drinking everything – including the aliquots.
She slept for about 10 minutes after that, which was just enough time for me to get my hopes up and think I could take a 15 minute nap too. But that wasn’t the case.
Oh well. It was fine that I didn’t nap. I was just a little less energetic that evening.
And one other thing that is worth noting, because it was fun is that Texas Seestor and Trainwreck have a fantastic backyard with lots of windchimes and things that move in the breeze amongst their landscaping. At one point during the early afternoon, I took YN out there and we looooooooooked and looked at each thing for a while. She really loves being outside, and the areas I took her to were shaded. It was really nice – for me too.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of those. Maybe later I can at least take a shot of the windchimes.
YN’s joy of the outdoors, even in the summer, is an indication to me that she is certainly a Texas girl at heart.
All in all, I’d do it again, easily. It was fun.
And that is really the end of the story.
Oh, one postscript: They had caught her pink eye early enough that when I arrived, I couldn’t even see any inflammation. Other than her altered eating schedule, it didn’t seem to be affect her at all. She went back to daycare the next day.
And now, that is really the end of the story. For real.
Just a quick update b/c I have to run off shortly to get my TX driver’s license when they first open.
I know that my family is patiently (or would that be IMpatiently ) waiting for a blog post about a day last week when I took care of my youngest niece.
I’ve had some stuff that I’ve had to do in the mornings that has cut into my blogging-over-breakfast time. And I’ve discovered that I’m not really a lunchtime or suppertime or really any-other-time blogger, oddly enough.
The quick news is that I’m slowly becoming an official, in the eyes of the state anyway, resident of TX. I got my plates on Monday. I got the rusted bolts removed from my car at the Honda dealer yesterday (Tuesday) so that my new plates could be attached. It took a while, but they did it free of charge. I suspect that the bolts really should not have rusted quite like that; one of them had to be drilled out. My car is starting to look much better. The old plates were dented from where HB had run into some stuff and/or someone had run into him; I don’t recall exactly. It was his car first.
And yes, today, I’m attempting to get my driver’s license. They open at 8:00 and I hope to be there at 7:50-7:55. The other day, I got there, and the line looked like it was at LEAST an hour long! This is in contrast to the County Tax office where I got my plates where I waited about 15 seconds.
In other news, today is the day that my colleague (fellow Bio prof) and crew (i.e. college students) are going to help get my office furniture out of my apartment and into my office. I’m super excited about it! Once it is in place, I can tackle my many boxes of files and textbooks. Eventually, I’ll get my garage cleaned out to the point where I can park my car inside!
I hope to have pictures of the before and after to show you within the week.
And then, of course, I’ll write up that other post too.
This is a very small red hibiscus that I spontaneously purchased at Home Depot the other day. It is on my front patio which has a lattice fence around part of it for privacy. I can see it out my front window when I sit on my couch.
I don’t believe that I mentioned it previously, but I managed to hook up my Wii last Thursday (today being Tuesday). It was actually very simple – remarkably so.
I was telling TX Seestor and Trainwreck on Friday how every time I manage to accomplish something that I used to have HB do, I have such a feeling of accomplishment. This applied to the wireless router too. Of course, the wireless router took about 1 hour of chat time with a technical service rep to get it accomplished; so for that one, when I was done it was more a feeling of exhaustion!
But anyway, back to the Wii.
Part of the reason I hooked it up was so that I could do some Wii fit. I ended up only doing about 10 minutes of balance games and yoga that night, because it was getting late. But it was enough to know that A) it was working just right and B) my balance has gone back to being sort of bad again – at least, in regards to where it was previously. I’ve always swayed slightly with my eyes shut. I notice it the most when praying in church with my eyes shut while standing. If I’m in a pew, I just hold on to the one in front of me. But when I was up in front on a morning that I was singing, I just had to crack my eyes instead.
Every now and then, the body test for Wii fit asks me to shut my eyes. When I do, my little red dot that indicates my balance just goes allllllllllllll over the place. No surprise there.
But it will get better with more balance exercises. I just have to work on it again.
Yesterday, I drove to school to use the free rec center. I hopped right on a treadmill, put my nano on a walking mix that I’d made for walking around the lake back in MN, and away I went. When I was on the treadmill, the view was of a grassy area, tree, and parking lot. Which, let me tell you, for 50 minutes is really really boring. As I just wrote, I’m not balanced enough to do it with my eyes closed at this point, so there was no way to avoid the boring view. At least with my eyes closed I can try to envision something pretty – like a lake. When I was at a gym in MN, I often just lightly held onto the rails and shut my eyes. This time, I ended up just singing the songs to myself and letting my eyes sort of glaze over instead.
In order to get a better view, I could try to exercise here in town on one of the walking paths, but it would have to be early-ish in the day before the temp gets too high.
The challenge is that I’ve always been more of a 3-6pm exercise person. I get a boost of energy at that time of day, so trying to go earlier in the day will require more will power.
In the meantime, I was so proud of myself for staving off a migraine after doing Zumba the other week when my heart rate reached 167. But this time, my heart rate never went up to 150 and I still got a migraine in the middle of the night. ergh. One more reason to stick to balance games and yoga for a while; I don’t get migraines with those.
Today will be a reading day and maybe some balance games.
She is still learning how to not spit out the food in her mouth by accident, but she is getting better. 