Gotta Win Me One of These!

Apparently lots of people are getting into these giveaways, so I thought I'd jump on the proverbial bandwagon. Besides, winning something like this (compliments of Best Buy) from 5 Minutes for Mom would really get me in good with Dear Husband. Just sayin'.

What Are Eyebrows For?

All the questions, questions, questions, questions absolutely drive me nuts some days. Daughter has been at this stage now for a very very long time. "Inquisitive" doesn't even BEGIN to describe it. Many times she just asks silly questions that she knows the answer to, so I make her think about it and answer it herself. There's been a lot of these lately, and I've become somewhat desensitized to the constant drone of questions in the background and seem to have developed a few canned answers that I respond with on a rotating loop. My favorite response to questions that have no answers tends to be, "Because God made it that way!" (which tends to be said with an exasperated inflection in my voice). Today, however, Daughter asked me a question that stumped me. "Mommy," she asked, "what are eyebrows for?" I stopped dead in my tracks as I realized that in all my 35 1/2 years, I've never considered this. "Because God made it that way" was not a response I was going to accept, because I really wanted to know too. My first response, was that maybe they are just for "looks." Then I suggested perhaps they were there to keep stuff out of our eyes. I pondered silently to myself if I'd ever noticed my eyebrows keeping stuff out of my eyes, and I really didn't think so. It sounded good, though.

And so, as Son was down for his nap, I was Googling "eyebrows." Whatever DID we DO before Google? I would have had to wait for the next trip to the library (which would have probably meant DAYS of pondering this annoying question) and then look the topic up in one of those little wooden drawer card catalog thingies which would reference some Dewey Decimal number for some sort of encyclopedia and then use the book's index to find eyebrows before I could FINALLY have the answer. Fortunately, roughly 4.5 seconds left me with the answer, which was roughly close to my second guess. When I considered that their main original purpose was to keep sweat out of our eyes while we tried to outrun dinosaurs, I tried to remember if I was ever sweating so hard that I appreciated my eyebrows keeping the sweat out of my eyes. I was reminded of a couple weeks ago when I was spending an inordinate amount of time in the garage laboring to finish a couple pieces of furniture. It was about 100 degrees in the garage with no breeze and a humidity level of about the same. Before I could even begin staining or sanding I could wring out my shirt. I am certain that my eyebrows came in handy then. I am also amazed that I could have taken my eyebrows for granted for 35 1/2 years. At the tender age of 3 years and 51 weeks, Daughter has now filed this bit of trivia in the recesses of her growing little brain, and I'm sure that along with appreciating her eyebrows long before I realized I appreciated my own, she will find opportune moments to make use of this information.

Refreshing

One night last week I was putting Daughter to bed and we were following our usual routine of about 20 minutes of reading followed by snuggling with the lights out for a few minutes during which time we tend to debrief our day or discuss the meaning of life or some such thing. I looked at her innocent, yet impish profile in the dimness of her night light--her round cheeks and button nose. I was overwhelmed with how I'd forgotten to really notice her in the stress of the last month during which time the whole family survived the flu and the Big Move. So I laid next to her in silence for a couple minutes and just concentrated on noticing her while she gave me her current theory (on the meaning of life). I got all choked up over how amazing she is, and I interrupted her deep thinking and philosophizing to hold her close. I got all sappy with her as I expressed with great detail and emphasis how much I love her. She drank it up like a parched desert in the dead of summer. For the next several nights she would snuggle close to me as soon as the lights went out at bedtime and say, "Let's talk about love again!"

Last night we were repeating some semblance of the sappiness when the following conversation warmed my heart:

Me: "Do you know that before you were born, I wanted a little girl so badly. When you were in my tummy, and I found out you were a girl, I was so happy and couldn't wait to tell everyone!

Daughter: "Yeah! And when I was in your tummy, I wanted a mommy so badly, and when I found out that you were going to be my mommy, I was so happy that I couldn't wait to tell everyone!"

In my efforts to "refresh" my Daughter, I found myself also profoundly refreshed. And I decided that I need to return to the daily business of not just the busy-ness that has become the theme of our lives lately; I need to return to a conscious effort to slow down enough every day to simply notice the amazing treasures that are my children, and to take the time every day to tell them about it.

Back to the Regularly Scheduled Program

Happy Happy Joy Joy! Happy Happy Joy Joy! (Wasn't that a line from Ren and Stimpy?) I had 18 whole hours of bliss when I caught up on my work at about midnight on Monday night. I felt lighter than I've felt since about thirteen years ago when I boasted a size 4 on my 5'9" frame. Then my Tuesday work marathon began, and I am now no longer caught up. At least now I'm just back in the routine groove that goes along with this field of work. As a colleague once said, "You can never get caught up! Especially when you are a Medicaid provider!" The paperwork is sheer madness. But I can now breathe and function again at a level that is growing closer to the normalcy I enjoyed back in the day. Did I say normalcy? Boy am I deluded!

All I have to occupy my time now beside the routine of my career are two wee ones, a couple pieces of furniture I got the bright idea to purchase at Wood You in order to save some money by finishing them ourselves (Husband's reply was "Oh good! More projects!"), making window curtains and valances, and the list of--oh about three dozen things on the "Honey Do" list that I feel the compulsive need to oversee. Husband loves being "supervised" even more than he loves the list itself. So the way I see it, that makes us a good match for each other. HA!

As for news in the world of motherhood, after lunch today, Dear Son brought an ache to my heart at nap time. We've really gotten off the routine we were in before the disruption of this move. Now I have no idea when exactly Son will be ready to eat or sleep or poop. Yes, back in the day Son even had a poop routine. Apparently he tuned in to the fact that I like to run a tight ship! At any rate, I really wasn't picking up on his cues today. I was cleaning up the kitchen after our lunch of spaghetti, applesauce, and cherries. Son insisted on having a cherry whole, which he kept calling, "ball!" He held it up by its stem and grinned at it for a couple minutes. I watched him like a hawk, sure that he would try to eat it whole and choke on it. I left the table for a millisecond to get a paper tower to clean up the spaghetti splatters that somehow made it a good 15 feet across the room. In that amount of time, Son had bitten into the cherry and smeared cherry juice all over himself and his highchair and was fishing in his bib for something. I simultaneously noticed the pit missing from his cherry, snatched it from his bib pocket and managed to distract him with the idea of an ice cream cone before he could scream about the fact that I had just stolen his most prized possession. Meanwhile, I considered hooking up the garden hose at the kitchen faucet and just hosing the whole place down.

Since I ultimately decided against the garden hose idea, it took a good amount of time to clean the kitchen up after the bright idea of serving spaghetti yet again to a 19-month-old monkey. Ya'd think I'd learn after going through this a time or two. Actually, I have learned. I'm fully aware of what I'm getting myself into when I serve spaghetti. It's just that Son LOVES him some spaghetti, and because I am a deluded and doting mommy, I continue to give it to him. By the time things were partly cleaned up in the kitchen, I had to abandon the task to deal with both kids doing the dueling poop thing again. I swear they plan these things just to plot against me. Daughter is getting good at managing her bathroom needs pretty independently, but she HATES to be alone and frequently requires an audience. If she doesn't get one, she insists on saving her trophy by not flushing and insisting that I take a look at it before we send it to septic heaven. I just knew I wasn't going to get Son's pants changed while Daughter did her business without a big meltdown. Once poop chores were completed, I decided to push ahead with Son's nap time routine of stories, but he started fussing and pointing to his crib and crying for "Lam-Lam" (his favorite stuffed animal, which is a lamb, of course). I got him "Lam-Lam" from his crib and tried to coerce him into stories. He kept pointing to his crib. I scooped him up and he put his chubby little palm to his lips and kissed it (his way of blowing kisses), which his routine these days at nap time and bed time. I felt sad because I wanted to snuggle him. Especially after his simply ADORABLE gesture of blowing kisses, which gets me every time!

I left his bedroom amazed at how easy he can sometimes be and reminiscing at how Daughter has never been easy a day of her life and would never have gone down for a nap like this. I would have to hold her until she was sound asleep or she would scream every time I tried I to put her down. If I put her down anyway, she would scream forever. Forty-five minutes into this routine, I would go into a room by myself and scream for awhile too. Many were the times I expected the neighbors to call Children's Protective Services on me and I imagined losing both my child and my license to practice therapy. You would think I would feel pure and simple relief at Son's nap time behavior, wouldn't you? While I was satisfied at the easiness of it, I felt that familiar old bittersweet ache in my heart. It felt like a preview to the day when he reaches an age that he won't want me hugging and kissing on him at all. I know that day will arrive way too quickly. I returned to the kitchen to finish cleaning up the mess with a little less indignation in my heart as I reminded myself sadly that this too shall pass one day.

I Don't Suck!

Oh, Mrs. Flinger...I needed that. I SOOOOOO needed that! It's my favorite award of ALL (note sidebar). Because frankly, as far bloggy friendships go these days, I totally feel like I suck! I mean, I even missed your post on July 10 saying that I don't suck because July 10 is a marathon work day for me and I'm not even home on that day, and because I just sometimes miss posts these days...even from my favs. And it's pretty bad when someone has to point out to me in my blog comments that they've bestowed an award on me and I haven't even noticed. Thanks for the awesome award, but are you SURE I don't suck?

I only have a minute to post a few pics of the wee ones. It's been way too long since I've posted some pics!

Here's Son practicing his electric guitar moves. Note all the boxes in the background. I think this was three days after we moved in.



















And here's Son demonstrating his love of tools and his love of "helping" Daddy chip away at his "Honey Do" list. Any guesses what Husband is saying at this point?














Isn't this a face you just want to kiss?

Here's the face Son makes now when you put the camera on him. He's saying, "Cheese!" in case you can't tell.













And here's the biggest "Cheese" of all. Little Miss "My four-year-old birthday is coming up soon!" She not only ACTS four-going-on-twenty-five. I mean, check out that pose! Wish I had time to post about our recent trip to the water park, which was Daughter's first time in a full size swimming pool and how she cried when we had to leave because she was having so much fun. But alas, I got work to get done before Son awakes from his nap. Another couple hours and I will be all caught up! That is, until the new cycle of paperwork hits with my sessions tomorrow.

Dumpage, Pure Dumpage

Bling bling! So I recently discovered that Tracy had also granted me an award, and I had not yet seen her post in which she bestowed this flattering honor onto me. Thanks, Tracy! It's so awesome to feel loved! Especially since I had long ago accepted that I did not expect to win any blogging popularity contests. It's flattering to be recognized by so many of my peers that I've only recently met via blogosphere. It's especially flattering because I haven't been my blogging self these days. I haven't had time to visit or comment at my regular blogs. I haven't had time to write all the posts that I'd love to write. I haven't even noticed that my peers have honored me with recognition and said esteeming things about me at their own blogs. I've been a crappy blog friend. For these reasons, I feel a little guilty about the bling on my blog! I also gotta come up with some good stuff to write about, since apparently a whole lot of people liked hearing about The Neighbors who are NOT (YAY!) my neighbors anymore!

I've also whined a whole lot recently about being so swamped with moving and settling into a new house and trying to climb out of the hole I call "two weeks behind in work." It just so happened that I doubled my work load just before we moved by adding two anger management groups to my summer work schedule. This is good, because I love what I do. This is also good because it doubled my part-time income (handy for times like moving to a new, larger, more expensive home). This boost in work is good for at least ten weeks and probably longer, as I hope I will continue to be contracted to do more groups. I love to do therapy groups. The interpersonal dynamics are so much fun. The only not so good part is the timing of it all. I'm plenty busy without doubling my paperwork and administrative duties right now. I think I need a secretary! Ha! Boy does THAT feel good to say. For several years post-college, pre-becoming-what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up, I WAS a secretary of sorts. I just had glorified names like "Senior Secretary," "Administrative Assistant," "Program Coordinator." There's no shame in doing this kind of work, it's just that I was really bored and discouraged because this was not what I paid an ungodly amount of money for in college. I guess that's what happens to people who complete a dual bachelor's degree in classical piano and creative writing. We graduate college neck deep in the cost of loans to pay for an artsy-fartsy degree and then we discover we can't pay the bills with that degree. We then tend to feel miserable as we suffer through jobs that are not in our field of expertise but for which we are still overqualified and underpaid. Some of us, like me, get so bored and miserable, that we enter graduate school for the mere stimulation of it. For me, I also stumbled upon my calling when I took graduate level courses out of boredom. Somehow I started this post with being busy with my work and totally digressed. All my blog posts turn into brain dumps these days.

I'm beginning to see the light. Really, I am. And it's not because I've been to a Billy Graham revival, though some days I feel like I need one. I'm nearly caught up to real time in my work load, and now I just have some old paperwork to catch up on. Like eight treatment plans. I could knock it off in a half a day if I didn't have my full time job, namely MOTHERHOOD, demanding my full attention every minute of every day.

Speaking of motherhood, I've realized that I've been writing a whole lot about myself and not so much about my wee ones lately. So here's a plug. Son is now saying more words than I can count. He is also pushing a couple more teeth out, which helps explain why he was having so much trouble sleeping through the night and napping, which (true to Murphy's Law) coincided nicely with the timing of our move. It's always nice to be doubly exhausted and fatigued and to come a hair's breadth of blacking out at the Stuff-Mart after a bout with two kids' flu bugs, your own flu bug, several days of packing boxes, two solid days of moving, and then trying to purchase groceries to feed your children so they don't starve in your nice big new house. And will ya look at that? I've managed to digress into whining and focusing on myself again.

Somebody, please...either shut me up or shoot me!

Do you ever get near the end of a post and realize it did not go at all the way you intended it to? Do ever feel like you have Attention Deficit issues?

On a final note, I haven't gotten an answer to the circling copters yet, but the new "neighbors" about a half mile up the road (are they really "neighbors" if they are that far away?) said they thought the action was focused on a house behind them where there were apparently also four police cars with the copter. They said this was not the first time. Hmmmmm...may be some new neighbor stories coming along. While there haven't been any more circling copters, there were a couple vultures circling the same area of our woods the very next day. And you know the kinds of things vultures like to circle (do I smell something?).

Getting a Head Start on Superstition?

You may notice a little more blog bling at my sidebar. I was nominated by Jesse for a Rockin' Girl Blogger award, which is totally flattering. Also totally embarrassing since she nominated me over a week ago, at the same time that the "BIG MOVE" began, and I just realized it. I didn't read or post or even set foot in the Internet for a good solid week. Since returning to Internet Land, I am limping along with an air card that wants to disconnect me every 10 minutes or else swimming totally against the current with dial up. Being at least two weeks behind in my work, I've had to forget about catching up on lost time with my regular blog reads and pick up at real time rather than where I left off. I still don't have time to do any regular reading. I've been spending precious little leisure time on the computer, and yet I am still swamped and trying to catch up on work.

It's really hard to get any real "work at home" done if the job description doesn't include changing a certain 18 month old's diapers, providing undivided attention to both the Bambinos, fixing breakfast, cleaning up breakfast, fixing lunch, cleaning up lunch, going to the park (unfortunately NOT for my own leisure time), making phone calls related to work in between the demands of the smallest people who live in this house, sending a work-related fax here and there, putting the wee-est one down for a nap while desperately coveting my own nap, fixing dinner, cleaning up dinner, unpacking a box here and there, washing the wee ones, getting the wee ones to bed before racing to catch up on my work and working until I can't keep my eyes open, and then crashing to sleep for not long enough before getting up in time to shower and pull myself together before the wee ones wake up and we do it all over again. Sound like fun?

Tonight was actually my night for change of pace. I got to go lead three back to back therapy sessions with troubled adolescent girls, in the midst of which I had to do a crisis intervention and recommend hospitalization for one girl (whom I wasn't even scheduled to see tonight), then lead an anger management group comprised of about eight aggressive adolescents, followed by another crisis intervention that resulted in confiscating all razors and sharp objects to assist in the prevention of self-mutilation. Does THIS sound like fun? I felt like TODAY was Friday the 13th, but I'm still 50 minutes away from it. Fortunately I'm not on the job tomorrow, though I fully expect to get at least one crisis call. I even have adult clients that I see in my office wigging out right now. There is definitely SOMETHING in the air! Even if it's not the scent of massive poop piles this time.

Daughter commented today, "Isn't it peaceful being away from our neighbors?" Followed by, "Isn't it nice that our neighbors can't let their dog leave poop piles all over our yard anymore?" Yes, yes, yes. However, I'll have to find some new blog fodder. The only poop we're finding in our yard now is that of the unrecognizable sort, assumed to be left by some wild animal that meandered up from the woods long enough to have a dump near our house.

As far as wild animals go, I was thrilled to see my first live armadillo the other night. I lived in this area for four years before moving away. I've now been back for another seven years. In all that time the only armadillos I saw were the ones squished by moving vehicles. Obviously, if they were being hit by cars so frequently, SOMEBODY was seeing them alive (if only momentarily). I was really excited to finally see one that was its intended size and shape and not flattened and being carted off in chunks and pieces by vultures. Two of those fugly birds were working on one in the middle of the road the first day we started moving into our new home. First thing in the morning I saw the big ugly birds fighting over it, and by dark it was picked clean except for a discolored spot on the road. Yum!

I also saw a very large unidentifiable bird in my backyard this morning. At first I thought it was an ostrich. Then I remembered that we don't have those around here. Too big for a pheasant. Didn't look like the right shape for a wild turkey. I highly doubt it is responsible for the big gamey-looking poop pile near the house.

Other bizarreness includes the circling helicopter this afternoon that kept looping over the woods by our house. It was black and white with a large number on the top. It looked very official, and it was flying about 100 feet above the tree line. It went around several times before it moved slightly south and began the circling again. I thought of the decaying carcass smell we we've been getting faint whiffs of when we are in the backyard. I thought of the dead woman's body that sweltered in the heat of a parked car for several days before it was finally found in the parking lot at a local Wal-Mart (Peeeee-yewwwww!). I am now theorizing that some criminal has stashed a body in our woods and the officials are searching for it. The dead armadillo has been picked clean for too long for us to still be smelling it. Besides, it was a mile or so up the road.

If this is all just a warm up, I think I better just pack it all up and go to bed before Friday the 13th hits. I wish I had the option to just hide in under the covers all day tomorrow, like Snoopy did in the old "Peanuts" comic strips when he was waiting for the world to end.

I think I'm supposed to nominate some more Rokin' Girl Bloggers. I'll do it later. I'm too tired tonight.

Attention Deficit, Community Baths, and Kamikaze Beetles

I've never had problems with Attention Deficit. That is until we started our plans to move. Now I can't finish a single task without finding myself starting something else and then forgetting that I was already in the middle of something until I get distracted from the second task due to something else pulling at my attention, and that's when I realize that I never finished the first task. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the ledge and I need someone to talk me down!

Settling in? I think it's going to be a very long while. Still trying to find stuff. Still way behind with work. Still sleep deprived.

At least I have the corner jacuzzi to de-stress myself. As long as I can convince myself that bathing with two small children can still be de-stressing. The first time I wanted to try the jacuzzi, it was already pretty late and the kids still needed to be bathed before going to bed. I was going to bathe them (in their OWN bathroom) and then enjoy a private jetted soak in my own. Of course Daughter decided she wanted to try the jetted tub as well. By this time I was too tired to argue and too tired to wait until I got the kids to bed before I had my own soak. In the end, I agreed to share my bath. Since Son had been in a "hate baths" mode for several weeks and refused to sit in the tub (he stands at the side trying to climb out and screams the entire time you try to wash him), I figured it might help to hold him in my lap to wash him while in the tub with him. The good news is the bathtub is large enough for me AND my 18 month old son AND my almost-four-year-old daughter. The bad news is that the bathtub is large enough for me AND my 18 month old son AND my almost-four-year-old daughter. *sigh* Son seemed to do well bathing in my lap, and Daughter thought the jets were the coolest thing going. As she lounged in the water, eyes closed, head tilted back in full relaxation, she stated matter-of-factly, "This is my dream come true!" Now I can't get the kids out of my tub while their own bath tub sits unused, collecting dust.

On another random note, we have bugs in this part of the country. When I lived in northern Idaho, we didn't have bugs that you could see from a quarter mile away. We didn't have bugs there that you could mistake for birds. In the sweltering southern Midwest, we have bugs like this. I hate bugs. I really really really hate bugs. Flies are a minor annoyance; spiders give me the willies; those cricket-grasshopper cross breed looking things make me shudder; the Japanese Beetles are intolerable; but we now have all those and more. We now have an infestation on our front lawn of something that are apparently called "Green June Beetles." The June Bugs I've seen in the past are brown and not all that large. These suckers are shiny green, and they are massive. They sound like 747's as they zoom past your head and they are very poor navigators. This means that they smack into random things when they fly...like the side of the house, the cars, and your head. They are especially horrifying because you can't even catch the things in the beetle bags that do wonders with Japanese Beetles. Husband was kind enough to douse the front lawn in Sevin the other night. It seems to have helped. There are fewer of them, at least. But yesterday when I was at work, I opened the back door of the family-mobile to get out supplies for my anger management group, and a huge shiny green beetle rattled from some unsuspecting crevice at the top of the door frame and to the ground. Fortunately it was dead. Even more fortunate, none have gotten into the house. Yet.

I like living in the country. I like not being able to see your neighbors right outside your windows. I like having five acres to ourselves. I like having some woods at the back of our property. I don't like the bugs. I don't like the resounding chorus they sing after dark that hums annoying refrains of, "We're bugs! We're bugs!". I don't like sitting here in my walkout basement with the windows open on this beautiful summer day when it's only 80 degrees and seeing and hearing kamikaze beetles zoom past the windows and smack against the house. I don't like opening the storage room and being greeting by a nasty cricket-grasshopper hybrid with long twitching antennae appearing to be guarding HIS turf. I quickly closed the door to the storage room last night and bravely walked away and sought out my much bigger and much braver husband, who then was commissioned to go in after him and "Don't come out until you get him!" I know it's ridiculous. I know I'm a grown woman of 35 years. But don't try logic with me when I'm being bombed by homicidal beetles and stalked by creepy crickets.

Wake me up when it's January and all the bugs are frozen in icy cocoons in the midst of an ice storm!

Wanted: Lost Box of Underwear

...I'm back!

I'll start by saying I don't know where to start. I think this will take a few chapters. But not all in one sitting. I'm using freaking dial up, afterall. This really cramps my Internet style! It's been several years since I had to use dial up, and I forgot how annoying it is. It's like having a commercial break at every new page load. Thank God it's only temporary until we get the wireless up. Husband exhausted all other options. DSL? Nope. I think they probably laughed at him when he asked. We live in the sticks now, after all. Nearest town is only 1,000 people. Cable modem? Nope. Air card? Probably better than dial up, but apparently the service is pretty spotty. Fortunately our cell phones work from the house and the yard as we do have a cell tower a few miles away, and because we are on a bit of hill crest, we have a straight shot to it over the top of the woods at the back of our property. Last option was wireless. I tried to do my billing last night with dial up. Before I got started, I did a little math. I figured I had to do a total of about 75 page loads. It usually takes me about an hour and a half with high speed Internet. I managed to finish it in two hours with dial up. That was better than I predicted.

Right now Husband is out on the 5 acres with his new lawn toy. A fancy mower that cost six times more than my first car. One of the reasons I wasn't sure I wanted this house when we did the first drive by is because I didn't want to have to spend every free minute mowing. I also didn't want to fork out the dough required to buy a mower that would allow us to achieve the goal in a more reasonable amount of time. Alas, we loved the house, and for the price, we decided that the added cost of the lawn mower was still a better deal than anything else we'd seen. Husband's been at it for 2 1/2 hours, and I think he's about done. I imagine it took a little longer this time than it usually will, as the grass was up to Son's knees by the time we got the mower delivered this morning. Also, we will be planting a bunch of trees in the fall and sometime down the road we will be building an extra two car garage and shop, which will replace some of the grass.

The move was a nightmare. I came down with the flu bug Son had three days before we were to move. The next morning Husband got it too. With both of us sick we were doing well just to manage the kids. Forget about packing and preparing to move. The next day my mom had it. She was supposed to keep the kids for us while we got the moving done. Amazingly, we were all able to function and do our respectful duties by the time Moving Day arrived, but none of us were functioning at full capacity.

The move was interesting for other reasons as well. There was flash flooding and tornadoes happening in the middle of all the moving, so that was fun. The movers we hired to help turned out to be two pre-pubescent punks who probably weren't that much stronger than me. They dropped Daughter's dresser and broke the drawers. Other than that, it went pretty well. Though I still don't know who is responsible for collecting all this crap we had to move. Seven years ago we moved out here cross country with little more than the shirts on our backs. Something about seven years in the same home and the addition of two children during those seven years led to some serious crap collecting. I realized the other day that our new home is nearly four times bigger than our first home (the one we moved out of when we moved cross country with little more than the shirts on our backs). With the additional new room-full of furniture for our basement family room and the extra full size refrigerator in the basement kitchenette, we just fill in the space perfectly. The kids have an awesome play room/rec room to spread out in, and every space is well used, but not crowded.

A friend who recently moved assured me that when we look back on this, the last couple weeks of misery will all become a blur. I'm looking forward to that. Husband and I are just almost beginning to feel human again. We've even had a few moments to begin enjoying our new digs. After day two of moving, Husband and I were competing to see who was closer to Death's doorstep. We were sore and grouchy and tired and stressed and tired and tired and tired. Our first night at our new home we'd put a second 13 hour day in and we were drenched in smelly sticky sweat, as the weather was as equally muggy as it was hot. I didn't get the kids home until after 9pm that night and I finally got Son to bed by 10pm and Daughter to bed by almost 11pm. All I wanted was a shower, but it took until midnight to find the box that held my underwear. Turns out Husband mis-labeled it "Towels" when he should have labeled it "Wife's Underwear."

I've never so deeply longed for my underpants or so thoroughly felt relieved to be reunited with them!