Photos My 2 Year Old Took a Few Weeks Ago

I don't know why but these crack me the hell up.

Dyscalculia 4evah! Math Wits Nevah!

I have no sense of direction.  Still mix up east and west because in my mind, cowboys who went west would be right handed.  And eastern exotic types would be left handed.  This was my logic.

I get math concepts but didn't memorize my multiplication tables really, ever.  Still can't do twelves, although I'm good until I get to 4 dozen.

Struggled with all my inner brain muscles to get low C's in any and all math-related classes.  Chemistry with my beloved Sr. Ellen revealed my absolute inability to figure out mole.

When I won the bean counting contest in 5th grade girl scouts (off by one bean!) I used a complex circular system of my own devising that I came to find out was calculus.  My girl scout leader, Mrs. Popernick, thought I cheated, CHEATED, my lack of math skills was so notorious.

I loved playing the clarinet but was a horrible sight reader of music.

And of course I had myriad and deep other gifts in the Language Arts,  which blinded teachers to my obvious deficits.

I have always known I sucked at math.  I just ignored it and chalked it up to my language side taking up the math energy.  No big deal. I learned to live with it.

Still can't balance a check book (how archaic!) or do long division (who needs to anyway?) or deal with money concepts such as interest, compounding, percentages, and the like (this would be a little useful, actually) or read a map (GPS!).

Couldn't read an analog clock until high school which my entire family thinks is hilarious.

Miss Columbia University Graduate school CAN'T TELL TIME!

Hardee har har.

So on XOJane.com I read a piece on DYSCALCULIA AKA Math Dyslexia and whoa.  It was great.  I just wanted to come out of the Dyscalculia closet and let it be known.  I was never tested or wanted to be. But as they say in Kindergarten "You get what you get and you don't get upset." It's a mild form of dyscalculia but I got it.

DYSCALCULIA PRIDE, yo!

Anyone else have this?  I'm so glad I got the dyscalculia and not actual dyslexia.  The idea of not being able to read with ease and gusto depresses me.  For obvious reasons...

Embrace Change, Me Hearties

There is a monthly thrift sale in my neighborhood Collegiate church that I have been going to every month for about 10 years.  I adore it.  Today I got a pup tent for the boys 2 beautiful pottery books for me and a great shirt from Zara that I would have paid for new if I shopped like that.  All for the low low price of $13.00.

Both my boys spent time in the thrift sale space when they were tiny little baby boys and I was a new mom, singing A Big Red Bus and The Farmer in the Dell, and making play-doh giraffes and fighting over a puppy dog pull toy.  I feel connected with my neighborhood and my family in a way I never have before.  And I'm totally into it and have accepted the dried up rat corpse that we pass every day on the way to school, the playground of woe around the corner, the junkies that shoot up in cars in front of my yuppified building.  For real.  I love it all.  The good the bad and maybe especially the ugly.

And now we gotta move!

When and to where are still an effing mystery but still, we are moving before school starts, I fear.

And then I picked up the kindergartner from kindergarten and wept a little with the teachers (there's one and a half weeks left of school) and then home to sign up for a refresher driving course.

I'm not as crazy as I was last week.  I am even crazier.  A blogger who chooses to remain anonymous told me to embrace rather than fear change and THAT belongs on a tattoo on my ass in gothic letters with a complimentary pirate skull.

Thanks for all the twitter following- it's the little things.  I'm writing a lot.  And reading too- One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia.  So so good.  That and the New Yorker's AWESOME Sci-Fi issue.

And drinking lots of iced coffee and eating lots of hot sauce laden Mexican delights.

Stay tuned...
xoxo