Today I went to meet my adviser. What a person! I love her. She was of course the mother of one of my friends in high school. As I sat in her office and we started talking children and families, so much came back to me about conversations that I had with her and her son. I told her how my own sisters have kids who have started having children at the age of 19 like I did, but that mine seem to be making good choices. Mine have other options besides marriage at a young age. She is partly why. She interacted so well with my friend-- I wanted to have that with my own children. My children and I are more intellectual than me the grown-up and them the little idiots who obey me.

I called the professor from the university parking lot in tears because I couldn't find a parking spot and asked her where I could park and she said, "You are driving?!! You are independent! I am so happy for you!" I was happy that I was driving around looking for a parking spot! Oh the joy of being upset with such a problem! The only parking spot available to me was ironically out by the elementary school that my daughters had gone to, next to the public bus stop.

She laughed at my transcript, "I remember when you struggled in that stats class. . . how did you make it through Shakespearean lit-- oh, you didn't." My transcript is an unwritten history of me having to choose between difficult choices, getting around a northern city on a bus with two and then three little kids-- what terrible years! I still have 250 usable credits.

English is choosier than human services-- the D's in history are not counting but she said they won't matter because they will be replaced with B's and A's and improve my GPA. The master's application will only look at grades from last spring on as far as how they will decide if I belong or not. I had thought about becoming a doctor. I spoke to biology and the adviser simply said, "Start taking science and math and get A's." I wonder if I could and still get into medical school. My adviser encouraged me to stay with literature because she knew that I loved it and she said that anything other than my passion will suck the life out of me, that my life is hectic and crazy and that I have to study and teach only what I love. Will this pay the bills? Everyone I spoke to on the phone on the way home seems to think that I am finding my place. I got home and Anne had said the same thing to me in the comments section below in the last post.

I took my eldest to late breakfast and slipped her some money and she thanked me for never making her ask for it. My CEO mother had a great job and money to spare and she made me petition her and show her my finances or at the very least explain them before she helped me out. We're talking about justifying why I needed help on an allotment of $923 a month and $300 in food stamps from which I paid $600 rent-- I did not make it past the wait list for heating assistance. I paid for utilities and bus passes on the rest. It's occurring to me how bad things were but how they are not bad for my children-- and my kids are aware of it. I don't tell them, but I've told them about it and they remember a lot of it as they saw it all happening.

Sunshine got rejected from one of her modern dance classes. It's a blessing in disguise. They are putting her in to a ballet technique class which is so much better. The studio is more in to The Recital! than they are in to substance. "Perform for all your friends!" Technique classes are really what every dancer should be doing for the first three years before being allowed in front of any one. I got there a half hour early to see her in Modern and she was in tears. The owner was there and telling me how she was behind. She brought up the technique class and I was like, "Sunny, these people finally have it right. They spend way too much time on the recital and never enough on technique! Technique is the way to go! Bella, you are fantastic for offering technique!" The owner was not happy with my acceptance speech of the situation and asked me to keep my voice down but I said, "What's to hush? This is the finest decision you could have made! Why don't you do more of these technique classes?" Three other parents turned around, "You are offering more technique, Bella?" They surrounded her and I winked at her. I called to affirm the decision and she didn't seem upset and she may offer more classes in pure technique next semester "being that you created a stir over it."

It was funny. The woman telling me this kept saying that Sunny was "a little behind." This woman has to weigh 250 or more pounds. She is big, OK? I don't have an issue with people who are overweight, but the monologue in my head as I listened to myself and hardly heard her was astoundingly funny. She kept saying, "a little behind" while I was thinking about her big behind-- her hulking huge posterior. She could get in my SUV and it would sink three inches. She has a degree in dance! WTF! She is maybe 30 years old and a posterchild for Weight Watchers and Cardiac Anonymous.

I was glad that I had shown up earlier to buffer the humiliation and when we got to the car, a chocolate cupcake from one of our church friends' bakeries greeted her in the passenger side.

As I sit here writing, I have three children standing around me with different agendas, each ignoring the others. How do they do it simultaneously? Dash is reciting the list of clouds that he learned today, Guy Smiley is reading his spelling words, and my five year old is playing the recorder over it. My almost two year old hopped up on my lap and grabbed my pearl necklace and Jack-Jack the almost four year old just ran out to announce that he went potty and everyone yelled hoorah because he will make a mess in his pants if we don't cheer him on! In the dining room I hear my husband dramatically reciting Sunshine's Spanish words and comparing them to her French that she has to learn for her technique class. He sounds like he is trying to be Pavarotti with how he reads them in his tenor voice and sounding more Italian. For some reason, he just threw in a Japanese saying and is breaking a word down. My seventeen year old is on the phone with a friend and her best guy friend just got engaged. He is her age.