State of the Union Address

Oh dear, has it really been more week than a week since I posted? It's been so long since we caught up, so I figured I'd give you a head to toe account of how I'm doing lately.

Hair: Falling out, which it has been doing on and off for the last year or so. My hair will just start growing back long enough to get extensions, then fall out before I can make the appointment. I even started eating meat every day--a desperate measure for me--and (sigh) nothing. I feel like people are always staring at me and hoping whatever exotic disease I have isn't contagious. A friends assures me it isn't that bad.

Brain: Over tired. Precalculus, biology, chemistry, repeat as necessary. Most of my classmates are either youngsters supported by their parents or have these phenomenally supportive spouses and families. Mine are supportive in theory, but they aren't willing to do anything crazy like... the dishes.

Face: free of makeup. No time. Plenty of stray eyebrow hairs, though, if you're into that kind of thing.

Clothes: clean. I do have some standards. I'm getting more casual by the day, however. I walked into class on the first day of the quarter wearing a silk designer shirt with a lot of fussy folds held together by a belt and shoulder seams, topping True Religion jeans and adorable suede ballet flats. Eek? Everyone else was in the baggy sweats and torn jeans that apparently comprise the uniform of this generation. I'm not going that far, but I have definitely downshifted into jean and tee mode.

Nails: decidely unmanicured. Short. Boring. Like my hair, but not falling out.

Shoes: a whole other issue. A professor who shall remain nameless has a few simple rules for lab day: closed toed, no cloth or other easily permeable material. Sound simple enough? I wore some adorable kitten heeled loafers and the 'no heels' caveat was added. Fair enough, but I actually own not one pair of shoes that meets all three criteria. Out of maybe one hundred pair of shoes. I keep looking for something cute and suitable, but nothing has surfaced. I do have ballet flats, but I think they rather miss the point because they leave my feet unprotected.

I feel like an ambassador to another planet. Academia is hostile to homeschooling, ignorant of the grassroots organic/environmental movement of which I am a proud part, and generally a yin to my yang. These are people who think Al Gore deserved that Nobel Prize and that the average person needs someone in power to tell them how to manage every aspect of their lives. Can I get a side of ration with that intelligence? I am an oddity in the crowd of fresh, impressionable things. A thirty something mother who has experienced the real world and came back to report. I have a young face, so sometimes I feel like a spy. Does my math teacher know that I have eight-count-them-eight children? He likely thinks I am tired from a kegger, which would explain the dirty looks every time I yawn during his early morning lecture.