Dawn Is Me

I’m still in school and its still running my life.

I’m got used to thinking in terms of my kids and school, so college semesters (where you cover in three and a half months what they take nine and a half months to cover) always seem to take me by surprise at the speed with which they gallop by.

I’m about a week away from Thanksgiving break. When that’s over, there will only be another two weeks of classes before finals.

I’ve got a crap-ton of work to do.

I’m taking six classes this semester. I have huge, colossal papers to write for two of them, papers we’ve kind of been working on all semester, plus another, minor paper in a third course. Fortunately, I don’t have finals in any of those courses.

I do have finals in the other three courses, though. They are things like Spanish I and Statistics, where you kind of can’t write papers. And the only reason we’re not having a paper and a final in Fundamentals of Archaeology is because my professor has been unwell and probably won’t have the energy to grade them.

All of which reduces to the fact that I’m not exactly going to be vacating during my Thanksgiving vacation.

But that doesn’t matter. I expect to be doing a lot of homework and housework during those five days but I also am very much looking forward to the holiday. Gina gets home from Ithaca on Friday. We’ll all be together for a week.

And we have more to be thankful for than we have in a long time.

I haven’t been in here in a long time.

It’s not that I didn’t have anything to say. It’s just that I’m having trouble making up my mind how much of what I have to say can be said in public.

A lot of things have changed.

As of this writing, Baker is in jail. It came out that he had abused our children — badly enough that it landed him in jail, indicted on 22 charges of varying sorts of endangering a minor and facing a 15-year jail sentence that his attorney bargained him down to.

He’s gone. I have petitioned for and obtained sole custody of my minor children and I have orders of protection where they are needed. I will keep them safe.

We moved out of his house. I now have a home, something I haven’t had for a good three or four years now.

It’s getting better.

I got a part time job at Walmart (something which I am curiously embarrassed about) and I’m still a full-time student. I’m taking 20 credits this semester, which is the maximum allowable and I’m seeing why that is. But, between the job and the school and the kids and the whole single mom thing, I don’t have much time to sit around thinking about how scared and lonely I am.

By the time I get around to really noticing, I might not be scared and lonely anymore. Who knows?

This is where I get to start all over … again. From here, it’s mostly uphill.

Another installation of Konversations with Kimmie, augmented by Revealing Responses by Ricky:

Kimmie (staring across the room): Ricky’s got a lot of definition in his shoulders. (pause) Hey, Ricky, I can see your nipple.

Mom: What does that have to do with the definition in his shoulder?

Ricky: Oh, yeah? Hey, Kimmie! (whips aside his muscle shirt to fully expose the nipple in question)

Mom: Eeeeeee!

Kimmie: Lawl!

Ricky: Wow, Mom!

Kimmie: Take it off, take it all off. (pause) But don’t really.

(It’s not all angst in the life of Dawn Is Me.)