Fortunately, It Didn't Last Too Long.

KidOne was able to give me some money yesterday afternoon, as she got paid. Two rolls of quarters and a twenty, so I can get a little gas (the car is on 'E') and milk and do some laundry. The laundry is especially important; it has been piling up and several essential items are running low. Thank goodness for understanding and generous kids. KidTwo was going to send money from her first paycheck earlier in the week but hasn't gotten it yet and isn't sure how or when she will get it.

Yesterday I finally got a big envelope sent off to Victims' Comp. Last March I spoke with a woman there who was very helpful, so I sent it to her attention. The receipts in it total almost $1,500; here's hoping I get reimbursement. When I spoke with this woman before, she approved a couple of items while I was on the phone with her and a check showed up in the mailbox just a week later. It would be lovely if this claim produced a check even almost that quickly. We are in sore need of getting dug out of this hole we are in.

I'm booked up to watch infant twin girls beginning in October. Their mother is a vet student who has a year or two to go; Dad has already finished his education and is working down in the Bay Area. They have a darling 2y/o girl, and now the twins who arrived three weeks ago. They found me through craigslist two months ago. I am looking forward to having the babies here, to spending my days caring for them while Mom learns to be a vet, but the apartment HAS to get the last few improvements in the living room and we need a crib. A playpen I've already got, but I want a proper crib for the girls. And a swing. Generally I am anti- parking children in things to keep them pacified, but I think with twins a swing will be justified. There are going to be those times when they are both awake and wanting attention, and I will have to have a way to keep one quiet while I take care of the other.

Today the plans are to contact the new mayor (I've been emailing him about street and sidewalk hazards in the area and he's invited KidThree and me to take him for a walk to show him what we are talking about) and to do laundry and to get back to the advice nurse at the hospital re: some issues with KidThree. That will be enough for one day. Tomorrow I babysit BabyJ in the morning. I did get one response to a new craigslist ad I put up, but then the woman hasn't called in response to my return email. Hmmm. I'm looking for people who need childcare occasionally or to fill in when their regular caregiver is not available.

Right now I'm working my way through "King Horn" in Middle English Metrical Romances. I'm self-taught in Middle English, so the going is slow, but I do get a lot of enjoyment out of it. The writing is so muscular (for lack of a better word) and gives me such an interesting glimpse of life way back when. I love reading Ovid for the same reason, only there I get to read him in modern translations and so have no trouble with the language. One day KidThree and I had got onto the subject of people through time and I read her the bit in Ovid where the narrator is frustrated with his lover because she is upset that she burned off her hair with her curling iron. The narrator didn't understand why his lover needed to mess with her hair in the first place, and then why she was so upset with the damage when she knew it would grow back. His reactions so mirror how modern men react to things like that with women; I used it to show KidThree that people are people, whenever and wherever they are.

I'm also reading "The Thousand and One Nights," but am only up to Night Fifty-Three. That gets me to wonder about Shahrazad (the spelling from this version). All that storytelling for all those nights, with three gestations and three deliveries and three infants to care for, and all of that unmentioned in the stories. She must have had very fortuitously timed labors and then lots of household help.

For carry-around reading I'm just grabbing paperbacks off the shelves; right now I've got "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel." Haven't read that one in years and years. I owe the library money and so can't go check out books, so I'm going through the shelves here at home. I've read all of Jasper Fforde and Terry Pratchett and am now just taking whatever my hand falls on. It's nice getting acquainted with old friends this way. I have next to my chair a book on Chinese mythology that is especially nice and sometimes leaf through that; I've added that to my pile to take to my visually impaired friend at the senior center a week from Saturday.

And now off for my second cup of coffee (to the accompaniment of Shahrazad's storytelling) and then to help KidThree for a bit and get the laundry going. The story of my life these days.

A