The Great and Random Ramblings of Cannwin

It is finals week for me, and I am extremely excited to be done with it. I overdid myself this semester and took 14 credits. That's five classes. This may not sound like much (just two over the average) but for a single-mom with four children and a job this was insanity. Especially since two of those classes were English classes and I was forced to write WAY more than I had time for (I had three essays due this week totaling nearly 20 pages of writing and another 3-4 of pure citations). Also, I moved. Yep. I moved in with a friend and her partner. They are the best and gave my children and I a place to stay until I have my feet back under me. The rent is half what I was paying. It's a tight fit for all of us but it's so much better than where the kids and I were at that I couldn't be more grateful. Next semester I am going to be dropping down to part-time and focusing on working more hours so I can actually afford to live. I'm also consi...

We are at Gap and there's these moccasins for sale. The boys go over to check them out and the Mischievite says "My friend has a pair of these!"  Albowin snatches them from his brother's hand and says..... "Are those real ones like really made from Indians!?" *** On the way to school we see this hot air balloon. The kids are all loving it, then: Vicbowin says: "I've never been on a hot air balloon." Albowin: "Me neither." Mischievite: "Neither have I." Remewin: "I have! In Afwica." ***

I think learning another language is going to be the death of me. I had all these high hopes for getting A's from now on in college and now all I can think is.... B's are good too. But I can say 'no me gusta pongo salsa en mi comida' which possibly translates into I do not like sauce in my food. Oh dear....

Well... I bought a new car. Well, new to me. It cost me a months rent that I'm not sure how I'm going to recover from, but at least I can take the kids to school. SuperFreak found it on craiglist for me and nearly died from excitement. It's a 1997 Chrysler Concorde with only 81,500 and it's all mine now. I also got a job. This is the real excitement in my life because it's a job as a writing tutor at the college. It pays minimum wage and I only get a few hours a week (which really is all I can do) but oh my I love it! I don't think I've ever truly loved a job before but I feel like I can excel at this. Life is good. It's hard and it's crazy but it's good... Now... if I could only figure out how to pay that rent. :/

I seriously don't know what I did to piss off the god of karma but this year has been the worst ever for me. Yesterday at 3:15 pm I was driving through an intersection when a red car magically appeared right in front of me. I T-boned the poor lady and totaled my stupid car. All the witnesses say I ran a red light but I would swear on a stack of bibles it was green. They also told the police officer that I was texting, which I was not and can prove! Albowin got to ride in an ambulance to the ER where they inspected his eye for glass. None was there. No one was seriously hurt, although today my wrist hurts so bad I can't even squeeze the cap of a soda bottle. I have no car. I have no money to buy a car and I now have a ticket for running a red light. I would very very very much like to move back to South Dakota where my life was simple. I would also like this year to freakin' end already!!!!

My days are so crazy right now that sometimes I wonder how on Earth I'm actually keeping up with it all. I get up at 7AM and go, go, go until at least 10PM. But just telling you that isn't going to give you a real idea of what I do. So I'll lay it out for you. ** 7AM My alarm goes off and I stumble out of bed rubbing my eyes and shuffling to the kids rooms. I don't get the opportunity to hit the snooze button because if I'm not up and moving within 5 minutes of that alarm we are all late. 7:50AM We HAVE to be out of the house by now if we are going to have any breathing room for our schedules. Which really means if we aren't all yelling at each other all the way to the Irish Twins school then we need to be in the car by now. 8:00AM When we typically leave the house. 8:13AM When the Irish Twins usually make it to school and barrel out of the car. 8:15AM When their school starts. 8:30AM Drop the Mischievite and Rem...

This last weekend I went to my first ever Demolition Derby... you know, those red-neck American things where people have an excuse to hit each other's cars. I wish I had more pictures than this but I used SuperFreak's camera and not my own. Who is SuperFreak?! You may be wondering.... This is: SuperFreak is obviously not his real name... but it fits. lol. Anyway, SuperFreak was driving in the Demolition Derby with the above car. This would be a before image, it's not so pretty in the after image. I had a lot of fun though! Now I want to drive a Demolition Derby Car. You know there was only one girl in the whole thing (okay maybe there were 2)! That's unacceptable. Women need to stand up for themselves and do cool things like crash cars together. I mean if we are as "bad" at driving as everyone keeps complaining we should be pretty kick-a** at a Crash-Up Derby. Right!? Well... that's what I think at least. Anyway...

Summer has been fantastic. I spent my weekends wandering around Southern Utah with friends and trying my hardest to avoid the scorching summer sun. Sadly, I didn't have the internet on all my excursions. Or at home either. Stupid internet. So, on Monday I'm headed back to school, I'm excited... I'm taking Spanish, Intermediate English Composition, and Math. Oh and Library Science (which I fully plan to test out of in the first week of classes--someone lecture me if I don't please). Anyway. I'm hoping to be able to blog more often from school and my laptop because I will have more access to the internet than I currently do.  I seem to always be apologizing for non-blogging lately. I'll stop doing that. :) Oh...  And I met someone. He makes me smile.

Movie magic! This is us playing with the webcam embedded in my new laptop. Once the kids figured out it could do fun things like this it took me a bit to stop them from using elbows, knees, teeth, etc. to get in front of each other. No, they weren't that bad.... no one actually used teeth.

Yesterday the Mischievite wasn't getting ready fast enough for me. I kept telling him to get dressed and he just sat there on his bedroom floor, in his undies, with his back to me. "Hey!" I finally said, after a good 10 minutes of asking. "Get dressed you!" So the Mischievite turns to me, wipes his fingers on the floor and says, "Oh, sorry mom... I was just having my booger breakfast." AAAAHHH! I swear boys may be the death of me.

I am currently having what some people would call a 'crisis of faith.' Which actually translates into I haven't been to church in 7 months and I'm perfectly happy with that. My faith in God has not changed or lessened in any way. My faith in my church has definitely hit a road block. Now here's the clincher. It's always really bugged me when people stopped going to church because someone offends them. Really? Is that as far as your devotion and faith goes? Yet I have found it so incredibly easy to lay the blame on others for my own inactivity in my religion. I could blame the horrible rumors that I KNOW are out there about me (I've heard them, it's not me just being paranoid). I could blame the teachers at church who I completely disagreed with even before my separation and subsequent divorce. I could blame those few extremely close people who utterly back stabbed me and left me to fend for myself in a most un-friendly, un-christli...

The kidlets went hiking with Ralexwin last weekend. This is the picture he emailed me. They are getting so big!!!

Over the weekend I went up to Bryce Canyon with some pretty awesome people I know. It was fun, but not the story I want to tell you. On our way up we noticed this car driving up the frontage road so fast that it past us on the freeway. This is really saying something because I-15 up through Utah is an 80mph road.... I usually go 85. So this guy was going at least 90. And the frontage road wasn't paved. So, we're watching him and making all sorts of comments about how he's catching just a bit of air every time he goes over a bump, or how we're just waiting for him to skid. Then I say "I've never actually seen a car accident." It was like I jinxed the poor shmuck, because right then he skids. Dust envelopes his car and for a moment all we could see was the cloud of brown, then we saw him. FLIP-FLIP-FLIP. We're pretty sure he went front over end first and then side over side. We were mesmerized! And neither of us thought did anything but watch f...

I'm going to try going back to some very basic blogging tactics I used years ago to kick start my writing. Probably not all of these but a few of them like: True Me Tuesday or finish up my 52 Photos series or Kids Say the Darndest Things . The problem with my 52 photos, or any photos for that matter, is Rosa and I had to part ways recently... so the pictures will be a bit grainy as they will be from my iPod, Blanca. Any other ideas you have for me? Or blogging themes and memes that I used to do that you miss? I miss you guys very much. I am working on getting back into the swing of blogging every weekday.

I'm sitting here in the brand newest cool building on campus waiting for my class to start and doing several things. 1) Watching the construction workers outside my window... very fun. ::wink-wink:: 2) Thinking about my impending weekend, I think I'm going to Bryce Canyon to watch some friends run a half-marathon. I've never been to Bryce Canyon. 3) Trying to filter out all the things I might find fun to do as a career from those things that I think would be AWESOME to do as a career. I know we've talked about this before, but hey this is my forum so I get to talk about whatever the holy he** I want to right!? So here's what I know: Feminism makes me feel alive and full of purpose. Domestic Violence prevention and support is something I feel I'm pretty knowledgeable about. I love to write and am in the Bachelors of Arts in English program. I want to get a Bachelors in either English or Women's Studies. I want to get a Master's Degree in...

I'm sitting on my bed at 10:40PM not doing homework. I ought to be writing a paper... but its near the end of the semester and my pile of homework should be doings is getting long and tiring. So I thought... 'I ought to blog.' Independence Day was crazy and consisted of several vomiting children. I think I should go through all past holidays on here and just count up which ones involved the stomach flu because I seriously think I'm jinxed. Albowin actually threw up in front of about 40 people right in the middle of the fireworks show. That was a first for me, I've never actually had a child throw up in public before. But it's passed through our house now (knock on wood) and moved on to some other poor souls home. Anyway. Now I feel guilt about not doing homework so I will go. Perhaps I will have more to talk about tomorrow. This blog post seems strangely lacking. :)

This morning... after what promises to be one of the longest, most horrendously drawn out Fourth of July's in my life... I was laying in bed with my darling Vicbowin and talking out through some of the anger we had been experiencing the day before. We had spent a lot of our time yesterday yelling at one another and, as it always does, this had worn us both out pretty good. So I was laying there, loving my girl and cherishing our quiet moment together when I had a very profound thought. (That I'm now going to share with you). Parent-Child relationships are long term relationships. They are complete investments of our time, energy, love, and support for, hopefully, an entire lifetime. Yet for some reason we never once question whether the relationship will end. There is never a point when we say, "I am so tired of not being loved by you in the way that I need. I'm sure I could find something better somewhere else." It's never even considered. With child...

Tomorrow is our countries birthday yet again. Usually during holidays I like to think back onto past ones and reminisce. I'd rather not do that this year. This year will be different than any year ever before in my life. So  I am going to have fun with my kids and my friends. I will enjoy the hot summer weather and endure the wailing of my over heated children. I will possibly barbecue and eat watermelon and watch fireworks and just live. Then it will be back to school on Thursday. I'm almost done with the semester. 6 more credits almost done with. WOOHOO! Did I mention that I made my decision to study feminism official? Yep. Well, as official as I can make it at this school. I declared that I am seeking a Bachelors of Arts in English with an emphasis in gender issues. The nice thing is that because I am so early into the process of school I can hand pick all my elective credits to go with my emphasis. I am excited. :) In other news: The other day Albowin declar...

Yesterday afternoon around 4PM I received a text from my brother that said; FYI Wildfire up Mink Creek there's a  very real possibility mom's house is gone. She's gone to town. Now, my family isn't anything if they aren't dramatic so I sort of thought maybe we were working on over exaggerations here (see 'Someone Else's Blood'). I should have known that if my brother was the one texting it would be serious. It was very serious.... it IS very serious. Apparently (from what I've been able to gather) the fire started around 2PM, from fireworks, in one hour it had spread 250 acres--that would be because Southern Idaho is the most dry, juniper filled, sage brush over-run... I digress. The fire went directly over the area I grew up in. DIRECTLY (this image is past my mom's house) Imagine getting a call saying that the neighborhood you live in was on fire and the next door neighbors house had already burnt down and you pretty much...

I am typing this on my brand-new-very-own-bought-it-myself computer. She's silver... so in honor of all the other names I have for my electronic devices (Blanca is my ipod-touch, Roja was my camera that I no longer have) I have decided to name this little lady Platty.... for plateado which means silver in spanish... and is the color of my girl. Today I scrolled through all the blogs I follow for the first time in 6 months. It felt fantastic! Like I finally came home or something. So now I can sit here and write til my fingers go numb and be at one with my words again. I'M SO EXCITED! Oh, and she takes pictures and has a built in webcam (hint-hint Meaghan!): (This is me trying to figure out how to work the webcam) I am a happy single lady today. Buying my own computer was super scary, but I feel empowered by doing so... that's sort of funny I suppose.