I started Elinore in her musical education this weekend while she was in Chicago. We worked on improvisation:

And concert repertoire:

Grace

Last night I had my 3rd official tango lesson. I signed up for an 8-week course through a dance studio in Chicago, and I have been LOVING it! Amazingly enough there have been equal numbers of men and women each week, and the instructor is hilarious. All in all, a great experience. Tango makes me feel tall, strong, graceful, seductive, DIVINE.

Then I get on the train. Still on my dancing high and chattering away on my phone. I boarded the train and went for my favorite sideways facing seats (they face the interior of the train instead of front or back). As I lined myself up with the seat and bent over (while still standing) to put my bag on the floor between my feet, the train lurched forward and I was launched into the air. I effectively squashed the girl next to me and caused all the other passengers to avert their gaze awkwardly. The squashed girl didn't even look up from texting on her cell, but I'm SURE that the conversation switched to the idiotic girl she now had to sit next to. It was a great ride all the way home facing all the people who just saw me and my tango shoes eat it. I had flashbacks to my infamous train ride through France to meet Jennifer, though this time I didn't have the cover of being the Stupide Americaine.. just stupide.

BUT I read something yesterday that said: If you can't laugh at yourself, you're not doing enough stupid things.

Cheers.

Graduation!

I did it!!! I graduated! AND I didn't fall off the stage :-)

I got to wear Psi Chi and Beta Beta Beta cords with my black Harry Potter gown. Thanks everyone for coming and supporting me, I was really happy to have you all there.

Congratulations, Laura!!

I'll let someone else post about it, but here are a couple photos.

Elinore in real time

pictures don't capture personality.. so ...

PS I sprained my ankle

Hit the Dirt

I've been working on my bio take-home all day and there was a dinner for graduating seniors in the biology major at Cascarelli's, so I invited Halley to go with me and she asked if I wanted to go with her to the barn afterwards and ride her horse Raleigh. I said why yes, yes of course I'd love to. So we gathered up our riding clothes, went to relli's and got a free pizza. So we headed out to the barn and changed into our riding attire, Halley tacked up Raleigh and we headed into the arena. After about 20 minutes or so Halley decided he was getting tired so I should get on. It was great, he was really controlled and easy to ride, the gait changes were awesome and his canter was really nice. So I changed directions and picked up a canter going the other direction...only he picked up the wrong lead (wrong foot in front for the direction we were going) and he got confused, flustered, I don't know. Just to fill you in Raleigh is an ex-racehorse. So he takes off full gallop and I thought at first we were just going to go through the fence to the other side of the arena, but then he changed direction so we were headed for the viewing gallery that has no windows. My last thought before bailing off was "I'm going to be the first one to go through the viewing gallery." But I didn't, I landed, flat on my back against the wall (I didn't hit it) and Raleigh took off to the other side of the arena. I got a lot of dirt in my pants and a scrape on my back, but I came up laughing and I would've gotten back on, but Halley decided she would make him work a little longer. I would like to thank Don from Aerial for forcing me to learn how to fall, it has come in handy :-)

I really wanted to end my college career with a bang. Though I may still have a chance to fall into the viewing gallery on Tuesday for my last riding lesson.

GRADUMATATING!!!!

Well, I'm done with classes, FOREVER...or at least until I decide if I'm doing more school.

I will miss cum laude by .1, bummer. But I'll definitely make the Dean's list with somewhere between a 3.6-3.7 for the semester. I was also fortunate to have my only sit-down final cancelled for graduating seniors if we did well enough on our papers. So once I finish my Bio take-home I'm done!!!

Dumpster Diving for Clipart

The title pretty much says it all.

Monday I came in to work and there was a pile of broken down boxes inside the back door. Before he left I asked our cleaning guy to take them out to the trash. A few hours later I got a call from one of our Parent Volunteers asking if we'd gotten the art projects she'd dropped off through the mail slot in the back door over the weekend.

I hadn't seen anything. Neither had Deborah, neither had Yecid or Angelica. I had the sinking feeling that they'd been tossed. Unfortunately this is also Parents' Week where everything has to be PERFECT so we have our best foot forward. Luckly we didn't need the projects she'd done until Tuesday. The day went on.

Tuesday morning comes and all the teachers are frantically looking for the clipart locomotives, wagons, and cabooses that are supposed to be cut out on red, yellow, and blue cardstock. DARN. I had forgotten. I quickly started pulling out similar colors of cardstock so we could make photocopies ourselves. Then I realized photocopying and cutting out 100 of each was going to take more time than we had and wouldn't be done for the start of class.

I took a deep breath, rolled up my sleeves, hiked up my britches, and headed out to the dumpster. Sure enough, after some pilfering, I found them.

I've hit a new low. Or maybe a new high. Is this what motherhood is like?