So I'm watching Dr. Phil, sitting around...

...no really, I'm not crazy anymore, I swear! I do feel much better and more clear-headed than I have in a month... I'm just working on taking care of other extraneous things that are keeping me from being my most productive - like how I just hadn't 'felt pretty' in a week or so (nothing done wrong on Ed's part, of course, just a feeling) so I Nair-ed my knees (they're impossible to shave) and did my finger & toenails (filed, manicured, and buffed them, then put lotion on), and now I feel much better. I also have to get the new plan down-pat so I've got it straight what I'm going toward now. It's a big change, although not nearly as big a change as my change I went through this time last year. I'm just refining my goal at this point, not rearranging my life to actually steer towards a goal. Instead of a 180 turn, it's like a 45 degree turn now. There are other things that need to be thought of now that my goal & somewhat schedule will be different in the fall. Like, for example, what school Natha will be going to kindergarten in the fall is a new question that comes up... He is currently in line to go to a magnet school this fall - back when I was living in a different neighborhood, the magnet school was a better choice than the usual school in our cluster for kindergarten. Now, Natha is a much different child, plus we live in a different neighborhood that has better test scores, ratios, diversity figures and programs than the magnet school. So, it needs to be considered that he might be best served at the elementary school closer to our house rather than the magnet school that *used to* be the best place for him. We've also got to figure out what factors into this decision and what does not - and whose opinions count and whose do not. That's just as much a factor as the statistics for the school... more on that as it develops...

I feel much better to have decided in which direction I am now going - there are now the details of how exactly to accomplish this goal. There is the change of research plan to knock back the scale drastically and the people that that affects at school - which is the main thing that concerns me at this point. I think that a lot of what I'm getting myself 'ok' with is the plan in general - making sure it's really what I want before I go and change the research plan. To go from being a very Hermione researcher who is after a publication to get into a PhD program of note to wanting to get a Master's degree and teaching license to become a science teacher (most likely in a high school) is a big change. Fortunately, I'm in a position at this exact moment to go down the alternate path without having to backtrack much at all. I'm quite fortunate to be going through these thoughts at the moment I am - I've taken the research class that I have to, I'm even in a lab where I can do projects of varying lengths and depths quite easily. As a matter of fact, I'm supposed to be figuring my project out for my thesis this week. Talk about timing. :)

Ed and I were talking at lunch about how much better behaved Natha is now - and the factors responsible for him changing to the somewhat-still-dramatic-at-times but infinitely-improved-overall child. There are a lot of reasons why Natha has changed, most of which transpired either directly or indirectly because of Ed's dedication to what has now become a lovely family instead of just a mother-and-child-brownian-motion. I hope he realizes the impact he's had so far on Natha - and why it was important for it to start now... I'm sure when Natha's older and graduates from whatever high school & college, he'll look back at Ed and I and thank us both for what we've done and will do for him between now and then to make it possible for him to be a happy, successful person. Even though I'm sure it's not going to be a smooth ride without any bumps - Natha *is* very much a boy-ish boy and will continue to challenge the both of us in new and interesting ways. That doesn't mean that we're not going to surmount them, however. Ed, you're a wonderful father, and I consider myself even luckier than I thought before because I've not just found the *one* for me, but I've found the best father ever at the same time. Imagine that! I was hoping to find one, but here I managed to find both of them, and they're the SAME person! Think of the odds of that one - and I wasn't even looking for him yet, but he found me - at a bar, no less! *Definitely* not the encouragement I'd like to give those people out trolling bars looking for that one person to marry in a large rose-colored fairytale wedding and live happily ever after and have lots of babies because that's what she thinks she wants (for the girls) or for some chick they can 'do' and not have to take to dinner and call her later because that's what he thinks he wants (for the boys). Doesn't help either of them have a honest appraisal of the bar-as-a-method-of meeting-people situation... but then again, girls don't usually like me to begin with, so this is just another thing to add to the laundry list, and the boys don't know what they're missing when they didn't call me back (and no, they didn't take me home and 'do' me - because I wouldn't let them- I just gave a few of them my phone number and they didn't call back. Oh, darn. :) ) See, going to the same bar once a week for several years pays off!!!

I need to delve more into deeper emotional things, so I'm off to write in my non-computerized journal for a bit. Yous guys don't get to read that one, though. I might be back later, depending on how that goes - I'm getting my fill of drama at the moment, watching paternity drama on Maury. I know, I've got more guilty pleasures than I thought. It just so happens that until recently I haven't gotten to enjoy them as much as I would have liked, and now I have a little more time for them. They make me feel silly, but in that good, pint of peanut butter and chocolate ice cream in one sitting kind of way...