Bi And Large

OK, back safely from camping!! When I have a spare moment I will upload pictures and tell you all about it. It was lovely! We discovered that Pete and I are too old to sleep comfortably on the ground like we used to and that late August nights are really cold at this latitude - frost warning the first night, ugh! But it was so much fun. I highly recommend KOA's too btw. Nice places and they make camping with kids soooo easy!

I'm just going to grab a quick shower and head out to Amy's Open House. I am so excited to meet her teacher!

Tomorrow Pete has a meeting thingy to go to and then it's Labor Day and then school starts! Nothing like hitting the ground running. I STILL don't have a job and I am really down about it. I didn't get the one I most recently interviewed for, which I really wanted. I feel like I screwed up the interview and I'm annoyed at myself. We're out of money. I feel like Pete is frustrated with me. Argh. Must find employment.

Um what else. I have a UTI from camping. The kids need shoes and I can't figure out how to buy them. My parents have decided to buy a condo up the street from us and live here part time, a couple months a year. The dog makes me crazy. My garden is all weeds and I feel bad about that since we look like the foreclosure property on the block but I HAVE NO TIME!!!

Anyway back when I catch my breath!

We leave tomorrow morning for our camping trip and thank God!!

I have lots to update on but it has been an absolutely flat out crazy few weeks. I seriously dragged myself through this past one and I am amazed everything got done it was so crammed full. My parents, Amy's birthday, I had a couple great interviews, fighting with doctors, getting Amy's physicals done, relationship stuff, school starts on the second, touring Iris' class with her, Amy's open house, bus safety training... OMG I m wiped. We are off for 4 days of well deserved disconnect with society in the woods of Wisconsin. We'll be back Wednesday night!

I've been in a manic phase the past few days. Which always tempts me to write glowing, exuberant descriptions of how wonderful and poignant and truly breathtakingly soul-touching every day is, but then I realize that it is the mania coloring my vision and not actually the way life is. It's so hard to describe. An example: yesterday I was driving the kids and the dog back from a romp in the park. We were stopped at a red light. As I was looking at the window, a fuzzy ball of fluff floated by on the summer breeze before lifting past my car and into the blue sky. I was overcome. It was a sign, I was certain of it. It MEANT something, it had to. And my brain started running away with itself in words too beautiful to describe about how amazing and important and lovely that fluff was, and how it touched my LIFE, and I needed to share it all with everyone because maybe that was the purpose I was put on the earth was to see that ball of fluff, and it was so incredibly beautiful I started to cry there in the car and I missed my green light. And then a few minutes later, as I was trying to think of the best way of describing this incredible, amazing experience to others, it struck me. Dude, it's a ball of fluff. It's a seed pod from a weed. Happens all the time. And actually, although it was in fact kinda of pretty, it doesn't mean anything, I just think it does. Argh, foiled by my brain again. So I spent the rest of the drive home trying to shut my brain up and reminding myself that life was just normal, honest, and I had to just believe that.

SO. That all make blogging and keeping up with journals and emails and stuff kind of hard. Because once I start writing, all of the amazing and important and wonderful starts pouring out and then I realize I have been talking about dust bunnies or rocks or something, and it sounds a litte crazy. So hang out with me a few days until I get back to normal. Normal, or depresed. Either way!

Today has been a lazy Saturday, which we have all needed. We set up the tent in the backyard, Pete just started a bonfire, and we're doing a dry run for the girls on camping before we expose them to the great woods of Wisconsin. The tent, may I say, is freakin' *awesome.* We found a family on CL selling their super nice $400 tent for $180, and when we opened it we found it had never even been used. It's such high quality, it makes me laugh thinking about the tents we used to camp in when I was a kid. Seriously, we could make a year round home in this thing. It is so stable, and large without being bulky, and has 2 rooms (either 2 bedrooms or 1 good sized bedroom and 1 screened in shelter for eating without the bugs.) It has beautiful bay windows, and vents for cool air at the bottom, and it sets up in a flash. It has lights with remotes, and shelves like a closet, and just all kinds of cool stuff. I love it! Now I can't wait to go camping.

Anyway time to get dinner put together, and then we'll be toasting some marshmellows before the girls crawl into their sleeping bags. I expect to see them back in here around midnight or so but hey, that's half the fun right?

By the way, anyone wanting an *excellent* free version of windows office suite wuld do well to check out Open Office at http://why.openoffice.org/ My laptop came with a very short free trial of Office and I actually do use word processors and spreadsheets and things like that. But I don't really want to pay like $150 for Office because, well, I don't have $150. And even if I did I think that's absolutely ridiculous as a price and would never pay it. Open Office is a fantastic alternative by Sun that is full of features, fully compatible with Microsoft documents, safe, mature, well supported, and even comes with nifty benefits over Office like the ability to write .pdf's. Highly recommended!

Alright so the leadup to Sam's anniversary was excruciating. I could barely function and it wasn't so pleasant. But the day itself was not so bad somehow, although it had its own pain. And since it has come and gone, I have been finding my feet a bit again. You go back from the crushing grief to the less crushing new normal of bereavement. And I know that sounds overly dramatic and all, but that's how it feels. Regardless, it is manageable if not happy, and I am OK.

The car kicks ass.

My parents have just been out for a visit for Amy's 5th birthday, which isn;t until next week really, but whatever. My mom is in a wheelchair full time right now as her right foot has gotten really horrible bad. In early september she is having surgery to hopefully rebuild the whole thing and avoid losing it. While they were out here, my parents got a wild hair up their butt and looked at some condos for sale up the road from us, and tenatively decided to buy one!! So now they will have a place to stay when they come out here.

Amy starts kindergarten after labor day (that's 1 Sept for you Aussies) and she is alternately so excited and scared. It's a big school. Iris starts preschool at primrose the same time and she's just excited.

I'm looking for a job, which I hate. I already HAVE a job, which I love, and I don't really want another one on top of this. Furthermore everything I look at is either full time (not going to work for a second job) or doesn't pay enough to cover the costs of childcare or is just stupid. I feel incredibly resentful that I am being forced into it, especially if it means we would lose money on the deal, but what are you going to do. I did go on an interesting interview yesterday where I got to do all kinds of cool science stuff. Prepping slides and blood smears and running spectrometers and checking values and doing blood draws and tuff like that. The pay was $5 an hour. Five bucks. God I could make more babysitting. But it was a fun interview.

Anyway we're doing alright. Summer is in full swing, it's hot, we're going camping in a couple weeks, life goes on. I'm OK.