So here we are... nearing the end of the first semester. I just took my last midterm on Monday and I have my first final on Friday; pirate archaeology! Anyway it's almost over. I miss my friends and my family and (most of all) my dogs. It's a crime that I have to be separated from my little princesses... but soon I will be petting puppy heads and getting puppy kisses. December 22nd I'll be on a plane back to OC for two weeks for x-mas and my son's birthday. We can't wait!
Being here is challenging in ways that I never would have imagined, yet it is also allowing me to make connections with some of the most amazing women. Moms like me who are nothing like me at all. Women of all shapes and shades and backgrounds who each bring something wonderful to the table. Literally to the table, you see there is one friend of mine who opens her table up every now and then. We sit in her kitchen and talk about the kinds of things that need changing in the world. And we make plans to change them. It's not just talk either... most of these women are on their second year here and have already initiated some fantastic programs that will make life easier for the next round of women that attempt to change the lives of themselves and their children by giving this academic thing a try. Things like babysitting co-ops and emergency single parent food banks. Things like a single moms club (eh-hem, I must say that I was involved in that one) and emergency contact phone trees so that we will always have someone to call if we need help with life, or anything.
It's cold tonight. In more ways than just the weather. Life has been good to me, and I've had to watch some people fall down. I think it's getting close to time that I stumble a little myself and I'm terrified. I'm not afraid of total failure, I know better than that... yet something in me thinks that I can't possibly get through it all without some setbacks. So I'm bracing myself for more than winter.
Enough already... I don't want to bring anyone down! I can smell the from scratch veggie soup simmering in the kitchen and my boy is practicing drums. It's good in here... hard, and tiresome, but still good.
