Oh, I already need a nap!

Today was brilliant! I will come back to that... but for right now, this very moment, while I am exhausted and longing for sleep... I would just like to pose this one question to you:

How is it possible that I have only just completed my first day of the new semester, and have only attended two of my four classes, and yet I am already behind in my reading assignments???

I mean, the things I'm reading are WONDERFUL, but for serious? If this keeps up I will surely go blind, deaf, dumb, and unable to parent in a matter of weeks. Usually it takes months for that to happen! What gives man?

I am all of a sudden terrified that I am not good enough, smart enough, or driven enough to do it... and those are all of the things that I usually console myself with. This is going to be a long 4-5 months.

Just sayin'.

January 20th, 2009

So that's tomorrow's date. It's a special one, and one that I have been waiting for for the last 8 years. Of course, what's amazing is that really we've been waiting for a day like tomorrow for our countries entire history. I'm grateful for the fact that I will be able to spend it on Sproul Plaza on the Berkeley campus watching with thousands of others as our new president takes the office. I'm not the most patriotic, and I'm not the biggest Obama fan around, but I can't tell you how happy I am to be able to say good riddance to Bush.

Plus... classes start! So that's exciting.

Every day that I am here, I love it more. I feel at home and it's pretty awesome :)

Oh... hey there!

So... it's been awhile. Finals came and went, and I survived a semester at Cal. It could have been better, but it could have been far worse and to be honest, people get a little irritated at my complaining when they find out what my grades were. Still though, it wasn't perfect and that's a problem for me.

Then I survived the holidays. And when I say that I survived, I mean really it was pretty horrible. So now I'm back in Berkeley and have said so long to OC (hopefully for a very long time) and my boy turned 10 and I am going to sit around for two weeks feeling old and lonely and getting a head start on spring semester reading.

It's going to be a good one, classes on theory and crime and violence and power and subjectivity. Sounds good to me!

Is it over yet...?

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.

Oh mama!

So my mother was here visiting for the weekend which was both wonderful and highly stressful. My mother is one of my best friends, and though our relationship can be a bit (ha!) dysfunctional, overall we get along rather well and at times we actually seem to share a brain. The thing about my mother (grandma,) is that for my son, it means that it's time to act like an unruly, ill mannered, disrespectful, spoiled little brat. Which is exactly what he did for the majority of the weekend visit. Top that with the passive aggressive "woe is me" attitude that my mother, bless her heart, can sometimes have and we've got one exhausted me.

And did I mention I'm working on writing a midterm paper? Right. Not a lot was accomplished this weekend in the way of paper writing. But that's alright. I'm learning how to balance school and family all over again. I did it once when I first went back to community college at Golden West in Huntington Beach. The difference of course, was that in HB I had friends and family all around me, and I was juggling a full time job on top of being a single mom with a full class load. The balance there was different. It had more to do with getting the help I needed to just get through the long days and nights, where as here, in a town hundreds of miles from family, the balancing act involves finding the time & making room. Instead of needing them for tangible things, I don't really need them at all. I still love them and want them around, it's just not quite so need based.

Moving to Berkeley has allowed me to see how much more functional I am when I'm a little further away from the nest, so to speak. I don't fall back into the same codependent routines that I was raised watching. I don't feel like I have to do things any certain way to make other people happy, and in that I am able to do things in ways that allow me to be happier.

But I will miss my mom. Being able to show her around the Cal campus was quite amazing. She's never looked so proud. This is all new for us. This school business. The idea of my graduating and going on to do something that I love instead of something that I have no choice in, well... it's awesome.

But what am I doing here... I still have that paper to finish!

It's not all sunshine and roses here kids...

But it's not the end of the world. There are uphill battles, but they are surmountable. Midterms are mostly over, the stress of being a single mom is almost, but not quite overwhelming, and we are getting through it. One day at a time. One minute at a time. One chapter and homework assignment at a time. I am discovering new fears, new strengths, as well as new friends and new goals. I am not going to leave here the same person that I was when I came here, but it's for the better.

These last few days have been hard. I've let my personal life get in the way of my academic life, which is to be expected, but I'm a little behind because of it. Nothing I can't catch up on, but man o man is it hard to admit that I'm not actually perfect after all. I know that I can't really afford to take time off from studying, but:


sometimes you just have to stab an overgrown squash and give it an angry face to come down from all of the stress.

My son and I did that. With some fellow UC Berkeley moms and their kids. It was good fun that all of us needed.

Hopefully soon I will be able to tell you all about this woman that is what we've come to refer to as our "house mom." I want to ask her if it's okay for me to write about her first, but I'm pretty sure she'll be okay with it. I hope so anyway...

So... I hate to leave you all so soon, but I really must get back to this studying business.

The Last Friday Before the First Midterm...

It seems so daunting. So overwhelmingly different than anything you've ever done before. And at the same time, it's just another test, right? The dreaded midterms! They are officially upon us, or upon me, rather... and if there is any one thing that I can say about them it's that I am just as anxious for them to be over here as I was for them to be over at my former community college.

That being said, I feel very uneasy about the whole business of midterms. It's not that I'm "worried" as much as it's just that I feel totally unprepared. Totally.

Which is sad, a little, because I am that person that makes flash cards and does all of the reading and gets A's on the homework and shows up and participates in every lecture and discussion section and I still feel like I have no idea what to expect.

It doesn't help that I have meetings with two profs next week to discuss the final project for those classes. REALLY? Is it even possible to start discussing final project topics yet? I need to get focused and super quick like!

And, hello...? I have to start planning out my spring semester classes already! It's crazy talk! (Of course the crazier talk is the fact that I'm seriously thinking about taking 3 science classes with labs next semester. Really though, Bio, Paleontology, and the follow up to Bioarchaeology, who wouldn't want that schedule!??)


In other news, I'm meeting people and making friends. I would call it "networking" if I didn't intend on keeping these people in my life for years and years to come. I have some plans for my time here. Good plans that will help people like me in the future. Plans like a single parent student club that will provide emergency cash assistance to struggling single parents through donations & fundraising efforts, and that will hopefully (we have yet to talk to that department head) offer tutoring and mentoring assistance to the school aged children of single parents while they are in school, from education or child development type majors who can use this experience for units while us single parents benefit from having someone to watch/assist our children after school.

It's all sort of complicated, but I have a Psych major friend who is working with me, and together we will make it work. Even if it doesn't end up helping us, we want to put in it place for the next generation of old single moms trying to get through all this crazy red tape.

This is in addition to the time I'm going to volunteer working in the archaeology lab. And also in addition to the time I would like to spend getting dirty at the actual dig site.

These are amazing things that I'm being given the chance to participate in. I'm not sure what I did to deserve all of this, but I sure am happy about all of it!


They want you to think here. Not just in the bathroom stalls in the art building, but all of the time. When I came to Berkeley, not only had I never heard the term "research based school" before, but I never would have been able to tell you what that even meant! Now, I'm involved in actual research projects, at an actual research based school. I am working on things that will be published, not maybe, but definitely. I am involved in projects that I never could have even imagined being involved in just a few months ago. I have plans and ideas for new research projects as well. I love it here.

Can I really do it all...? Who knows! But I'm going to have a damn good time trying to find out :)