Going to work nearly full-time after 22 years as a stay-at-home mom has been a huge adjustment. Moreso because my entry into the workforce has come at the same time we are starting a new school year. On top of that, I still have the editing job to finish. (And we're not even going to talk about those unfinished home organization projects.)

The editing job is why I'm at Pahookey Bread* on my night off instead of being at home with my family. As much as I ought to be doing school planning or putting away all those still-homeless clothes (the unfortunate victims, as you may remember, of an impromptu cabinet snatching relocation resulting in yet another of those not-to-be-spoken-of unfinished household organization projects)... anyway, as much as I ought to be home, or at least running errands if I am going to be out, I am instead sitting here at the aforementioned coffee-&-bagel-etc shop. (*Name changed to prevent discovery of this blog by stalkers who actually look at the 373 millionth page of a g**gle search.) Because the editing must be done.

I was going to try editing at home tonight. After all, nearly everyone was gone earlier in the evening, with the lone exception being a 14-year-old boy who would be very happy to play video games downstairs while I worked upstairs. Minimal distractions, right? This could work. So I set up a little table in front of the living room window where I would be free from distractions, grabbed a chair and my laptop, and started to get set up.

Except...

The window was dirty. There was a dead bee on the sill. I could see the planter on the deck with weeds in it and it bothered me, as did the overturned kiddie picnic table that all my kids have long outgrown. There was a book on the sofa. And even though I couldn't see them, I knew the newspapers on the coffee table were messy.

(Funny how those things don't bother me most of the time. I could sit down in my comfy chair to engage in facebook or a good kakuro puzzle and I'd be totally oblivious to all of them.)

Furthermore, the dog was barking. The kid downstairs playing video games probably hadn't set the timer and would go over his alloted time if I didn't interfere. The phone was poised to ring at any second, because it always does as soon as I get involved in something. And as soon as someone walked in the door, even if they went immediately and quietly to another area of the house, my concentration would be shot.

So I'm here at Pahookey Bread.

And I'm not editing. Did you notice that? But I will. I'm good at keeping internet playtime to a minimum when I'm here, if I even engage in it at all. Normally I don't, but I just had to check in with you all.

So I did. Just to let you know I hadn't dropped off the face of the earth or anything.

Now I'm off to fetch my manuscript from its cozy folder. See ya.

After making fun of myself in my last post for the spelling errors in the previous one, I made an even bigger gaffe at the end of that one.

All 3.5 of my remaining readers were too kind to point it out.

*Sigh*

Perhaps I should forget blogging and stick with pursuing an editing career. Or an edioting career, as seems more likely. Although I'm not sure I'd want to be the author with the misfortunate to get me as an ediotr.

Changing the subject without any sort of transitional sentence whatsoever (and would you believe I just typed "snetence"?)...

My schoolroom makeover is finished and ready to be organized! Not that it necessarily will be, since I have learned that reorganized space does not, unfortunately, somehow magically turn me into an organized person. (I can be very organized on paper; with "stuff", not so much.) But having so much extra shelf & cabinet space definitely helps, and so does simply having something "different". We all need to change things up every so often. Although we did not end up tearing out stained carpet other than in the new supply closet, the other changes --closet, "new" (recycled) cabinet & shelving, and furniture rearrangement-- have made a huge difference. My "new" space is much cleaner-looking, more unified, & less cluttered. (Well, until I get my stuff in it, anyway.)

You want pictures, I know. Yes, I have some. It remains to be seen whether I will have time to post them. Besides, I'd prefer to wait and take more pictures after I have everything in the schoolroom & supply closet put away & organized.  (Which means you may be waiting a very very very long time.)

I did get most of my history-and-lit shelf put away already. That was the fun and easy part, since I knew exactly how I wanted to do it. The rest, not so much. I also need to get the lightbulb changed in the supply closet before I can do anymore in there. Funny how that lightbulb worked perfectly fine for years and then decided to burn out a day after we made over the closet.

By the way, unlike my cousin & facebook friend who claims to have "literary ADHD", I think I must have "project ADHD". I really function much better on a one-thing-at-a-time basis, but you wouldn't know it.  Much as I can't stand the idea of starting one project before the last one is completed, I have a tendency to do just that. In this case, I sabotaged my far-too-long-in-process-but-nearly-finished bedroom reorganization project by stealing a cabinet from the bedroom to anchor the schoolroom project. It would just match the schoolroom shelves too too perfectly, so despite the fact that I had just organized it in my bedroom on Monday, I emptied it out again on Friday and had it carried to its new home downstairs. It looks great down there, but I'm not sure what I will do with all the clothing and miscellaneous stuff that used to be in it and is now all over my bedroom floor...

So I've had fun with my new space, but now I need to stop and get to work on the edioting joob. I may even try working in my "new" space rather than my office-away-from-home, aka P*nera Bre*d. We'll see how that works, since it is still out in the middle of everything; our schoolroom is not actually a room with a door but a corner of a large open room. My kids are perfectly quiet & content in their rooms right now, but I'm sure that as soon as I sit down in the schoolroom to do some work, they will be right next to me needing something and then will be back to ask something five minutes later and...

I'd work in my bedroom instead, but there are homeless clothes and stuff all over. See paragraph immediately preceding the last one.

This blogpost is beginning to sound as though I have Blogging ADHD. Rambly posts seem to be the only kind I can write lately. Don't expect any sort of a real "ending" to this, either, because I haven't come up with one. This is it. In fact, edioting hopeful or not, maybe I'll just stop right here, in the middle of a

My previous entry contained two spelling errors. One was in the paragraph in which I told you I was doing some editing and contemplating becoming an editor. I find this very amusing.

And just so you know, it is highly unusual for me to type "beacuse" when I mean "because". Usually what I type is "becasue". Really. And half the time I type my name as "Bethnay". What is really funny is that in the above paragraph, I caught myself typing "ediotr". Funnier yet is the fact that I caught the error before I had quite finished the word, so it came out simply as "ediot". Knowing how offended some writers become at the changes their editors make, I am sure there are those who do indeed think of their editors as "ediots".

I'm not going to tell you what the second spelling error was. You'll have to dig through and find it. Unless, of course, you have a life or something.

Moving right along...

In other news related to the previous post, that big mess in the homeschool/art room --the one that very nearly put me over the edge-- turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Hubz felt so sorry for me that he is enlisting some outside help to make sure the mess is taken care of quickly. (This is quite something, since major messes are rarely taken care of quickly at our house due to our unfortunate tendency to look at them and feel totally overwhelmed and suddenly think of 23 other things we need to be doing... and so it goes for days into weeks...) But that's not all. After he & his Builder Buddy Bruce are done packing up boxes and taking care of everything, the two of them are giving me...

...an Extreme Homeschool-and-Craft Room Makeover! Okay, maybe not extreme, but pretty major to me. They are tearing out stained carpet (we'll just have bare concrete floor for a while since new flooring is not in the budget), replacing some of my mish-mash storage with shelves & cabinets that actually match each other, and rearranging the space. They're also putting more shelving in the laundry/storage room so that the finished walk-in storage closet near our school area can be emptied out and transformed into a school-and-art-supply closet. Builder Buddy Bruce & I designed the whole thing out today. Hubz & I have great ideas for every room in our house, but few of them ever materialize; with BBB on board, this one most definitely will, and quickly. Not only that, since he & Hubz usually just trade labor and we are recycling some of the materials, this is not going to break the budget. I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am about this project, but I probably don't need to.

As for my new job, the holiday weekend means I have the next 5 days off. While this is rather unfortunate for the wallet, it does give me more time to do stuff around the house work on the editing and do some school planning. And of course I can hardly wait to organize my new schoolroom as well. Funny how a change of scenery can turn a dreaded task into an exciting one.

So whereas yesterday I woke up wanting to either (a) stay in bed all day or (b) spit nails at anyone with the misfortunate to cross my path, today I have been feeling pretty happy. I am rather up and down like that.

Stayed tuned. I might actually post again sometime.

I wrote most of this on Tuesday and finished it now, so read it as though it is Tuesday. You can do that. It's dated as though it posted Tuesday. I can do that.

The less I blog, the more I don't blog. Or something like that. The longer I go without blogging, the harder it is to do it. Besides, all my good intentions get sabotaged by life. It is very sad when life has to impede important things like blogging.

I didn't even blog about Spaz' 14th birthday. But I scanned the old pictures I was going to use, so that was something.

There is no way to get this blog caught up with my life, so I am just going to sort of start in the middle here. Here's an overview of the past week:

*I worked on the editing job I have mentioned. I really enjoy this and would like to pursue it, though I'm not sure there will be more work where this job came from. For that reason, part of me doesn't want to finish it, beacuse... well, when it's done, it's done, and then what will I do for fun? I do obviously need to finish it, probably within a few weeks, and I still have quite a ways to go.

*I trained for and started my new 2nd-shift "boring job to help pay the bills". I am doing data entry for a school portrait company and worked my first full shift last night, 4-12. I will be doing this 4 or 5 nights a week through mid-November and then the job will probably end. This will be a huge adjustment for all of us, since I have not held a job outside the home in 23 years of marriage. Obviously it will have an impact on our homeschool as well. I could write a lot more about this, but I'm thinking I have a decent chance of actually finishing and posting this, so I'll not hinder my odds.

*One of the kids finished a thorough and much-needed summer-long bedroom overhaul-- not redecorating, just weeding out, cleaning, & organizing. Yes, it took all summer to do that. This has resulted in a really nice bedroom that is the cleanest & neatest in the house and a school/craft area just beyond that is now the sloppiest and worst. There are boxes and piles of stuff all over and it just pretty much makes me want to cry. All my delusions hopes of cleaning & reorganizing the already-messy-&-cluttered schoolroom for our new school year have pretty much been flushed away.

*My brother (age 45) had a stroke one week ago and is still in the hospital, though doing quite well. The stroke was in the cerebellum, which affects balance & fine motor. His speech and reasoning were not affected, for which we are all thankful. In my family, losing verbal or logical ability would be like... uh, trying to think of a good analogy here... like an athlete losing a leg, or an artist losing vision, or a politician losing his pork fund, or something. Fuzz and I drove 1-3/4 hours each way to visit him on the second day, which turned out to be the worst day possible to visit. Six hours at the hospital yielded one 4-minute conversation in which I'm sure it was all he could do to not ask me to just leave so he could sleep and get rid of his pounding headache. However, we had a very nice 20-minute phone conversation on Sunday which more than made up for it. He is even posting his own Facebook updates now, which means I don't have to any more.

*A major crisis erupted with one of my young adult kids. Actually there have been crises with this particular kid for about 5 years, and they just seem to get more serious. It ain't over yet, either. Said kid needs to be whacked upside the head with a 2x4 to knock some sense back into that good brain. Said mom needs to cry less and wander around the house less and run the mouth less and pray more.

So that's been life around our house.

I had decided a few weeks ago that we would start our "official" school year (which differs from our "summer school" in matters of quantity, frequency, and structure) on September 1. We wouldn't be full swing until the 21st, but we'd start our structured, school-focused days nonetheless. When I found out sortly thereafter that my job would start not on the 24th of August as I had first been told but on the 31st, I considered deviating from the Sept 1 plan, but decided to go ahead with it anyway. "Time to adjust" is overrated, right? I'm sure people start a new job one night and a new school year the next morning all the time. And it isn't as though I would be tired or anything, since my job would entail sitting in front of a computer for eight hours. May as well just start everything all at once.

So last night --I mean this morning-- when I got home from my first night of work, I wrote a little sign on our message marker board for the kids that said, "Happy 1st Day of School!" I think it was almost more for me than for them. I needed to get myself into the mode and the mood so that when daylight came, I would jump out of bed all ready to start a structured day of intentional learning.

Or not.

Some seven hours later, after about an hour of hitting the snooze button, I dragged myself out of bed. The kids, of course, were not yet up. According to the loose "schedule" I'd typed up, I needed to get them out of bed about 45 minutes later. I made coffee and wrestled with the devil on my shoulder throughout my shower. After said shower and a couple cups of coffee, I still felt dead on my feet.

I looked at my marker board note. I listened to the devil on my shoulder. I wiped off the marker board and wrote a new note:

"Happy Last Week of Summer Break."

Because I am flexible like that.

The kids were rather elated. I was rather relieved. It was a wise move.

Note from Wednesday night, when this was finished & posted:  My 2nd night at work went well and I had tonight off. The kid crisis has been pretty well averted, at least for the time being. Hubz has hired a friend's daughter to come and help me take care of the mess downstairs. I haven't done a lick of editing yet this week. My brother is still doing great. The kids and I are not even doing "summer school" and are  thoroughly enjoying having one last week of summer break.

Conversation with Biz over lunch yesterday:

Biz: "So when are you guys going up to (our friends') cabin?"

Mom: "August 42-45."*
      (*not the actual dates) 

Mom again: "Why? Do you want to go with us?"*
      (*rhetorical question whose answer is already presumed to be No.)

Biz: "No, I just wondered when the house was going to be empty."

Um... should I be worried about this?

Mom: "You wonder when the house is going to be empty? That's a rather disconcerting statement.'

Biz: "That's not what I meant. I just wanted to know when, if I stop by, there wouldn't be any food."

Oh, Okay. That does make me feel a little better. It also rather confirms my suspicions that he stops over not so much because he likes to spend time with us but because we feed him.

But I'll take having my son stop over for any reason at all. And I still like that explanation of the "empty house" statement better than the obvious one.

In other news, Biz showed up for our lunch date wearing a button-down shirt. He did not text anyone the entire time we were together. He seriously debated between salmon and tilapia before settling on a steak. (Lest you wonder, we were doing L*gan's 2-Fer deal; it was still a cheap date.) And one of the sides he chose was skewered vegetables.

They really do grow up.

You guys wouldn't believe how many recent unfinished posts (including some almost-finished ones) I have languishing in my queue. So in the interest of actually finishing an entry and posting it, today's post is going to consist of a brief, facebook-status-update-like comment.

Up at 6 today to get Spaz to church for a youth group outing to the Fort Wayne Zoo. This is a good 2 to 2-1/2 hours earlier than I've been getting up this summer. It's kind of nice, actually. After getting back, I did some touch-up painting around a window in my bedroom in a spot I had missed yesterday. I started this window-trim-finishing thing on a lark last Friday (it had needed doing since we replaced windows well over a year ago) and this should be the last thing. Maybe I will get the room put back together by the weekend, but i really doubt it, since I plan to do some clutter-elimination and reorganizing.

Uh yeah, I knew I couldn't actually write an FB-status-update-ish post... but that's okay. Continue...

On the agenda today:

1. Begin editing a manuscript. I am trying to break into the editing/publishing field, which is difficult when I lack experience. So a nice editor I know (who happens to be related to me) is giving me a chance to show what I can do. I already did a practice manuscript for him; this one is real. He has much more confidence in my ability to pull it off than I do. This is scary!!!

2. Have lunch with my birthday boy, who turns 22 today. This means I have been a mommy for about half my life!

Definitely too long for an FB status update... Continue...

3. Go pick up curtains that are supposed to come in today. Right now our living room windows have six different curtains/valances on them because we are trying them all out. What doesn't work gets returned. So far everyone (hubz, kidz, guests who've happened by) are unanimous on one set-- the one that I don't like. Too dark and hotel-ish looking, in my most-important opinion. The ones on order from a different store are the same pattern as those but in different colors; here's hoping they'll be "the ones".

4. Maybe go to the farm market and maybe not; we've yet to consume everything I got last week.

5. Enjoy not driving the 35-mile round trip to piano lessons, since the teacher is on vacation. (And the next two Wednesdays, both Spaz & Fuzz have all-day events, and the two Wednesdays bookending these three, Spaz had/will have an all-day activity... C'est summer, when lessons are sporadic but the mom still requires the practice...)

6. Take Fuzz to a free horseback-riding session at a local ranch ministry and then probably have her friends sleep over.

Okay, so that wasn't really facebook-status-y at all. But for me, it was indeed brief. And hey, it's a post; that's what matters.

Time to quit procrastinating on my editing. Must... get... off... the internet. Must put in scary CD-RW and start scary job so that it will cease to be scary... After I get some more coffee...

As mentioned, last month we lost our internet service for an entire week. Of course, we had called our cable internet provider as soon as service went out, and we called again when the problem was not resolved. When told that it would be several days before a repairman could come out, we fussed and fumed. We grumbled aloud about it every day. Life was rough, I tell you. Boy, were we glad to get it restored.

A week later, our phone service went out. We hardly noticed. We'd pick up the phone to make a call, hear no dial tone, say "Oh yeah, I forgot that our phone must be out," and pick up our cell phones instead. It was three days before we thought to contact the phone company.

Does that speak volumes about our priorities, or what? (Granted, I think we'd have been a tad more concerned about the phone had we not had our cell phones to fall back on. Still...)

Our internet, phone, and TV actually come through the same company. Here's hoping the TV will go out next. I might simply forget to call about that one altogether. Unfortunately, my HGTV-addicted Hubz would be all over it, with the help of lots of friendly reminders from the kids.

(Note, accompanied by deep *sigh*: Once upon a time for many years, we had one TV, with rabbit ears only, and it was hardly on. Cable TV was, in our book, a foolish matter of "spending money in order to waste time." Alas, combining business and residence on one property rendered high-speed internet a necessity, and with it came cable TV. Or to put it more simply, times have changed, and so has Hubz.)

Oh well.

Back to the phone business. Here's the clincher: There was not even a problem with our phone service. The reason we didn't have a dial tone was that someone unplugged the phone cable box, quite possibly for the purpose of plugging in a video game accessory.

And it took us 3 days and a call to the cable company to figure this out.

You can bet that if it had been the modem which was unplugged, we'd have figured it out in about two seconds.

Sad. Very sad.

As if I weren't having a hard enough time returning to blogging already, our internet has been down for nearly a week and was behaving quite poorly for over a week before that. Hubz, Cheez, and I all just thought our computers were having issues until we started talking to each other, which was right about the time Biz came over and got on his computer and informed us that we were having internet issues. Oh. And then it just stopped altogether. Apparently our cable modem is in its final stages of life or something like that. The cable company is coming to fix it tomorrow, hooray. Of course, they will be charging us a service call even though the modem technically belongs to them. Hmmm. All the more reason to switch to another service. We are running out of arms and legs to pay this one anyway. Funny how they hook you with a good price and then the fees go up and up...

Okay, sorry. You are not here to read about my internet woes. (What are you here to read about, anyway?) And I have only yea much time before this coffee shop closes and my computer and I have to go back to our home netless home.

I have oogles of headblogs clamoring to get out of my brain and onto the blog. Unfortunately, I can't blog, even here. There is a lovely duo here at this coffee shop playing some lovely gospel-y bluegrass-y music. Not only is it really difficult to not sing along; it is also really difficult to THINK! Blogging (unlike Facebook) requires thinking; ergo, if I can't think, I can't blog.

But I have to post something. It has been far too long. It doesn't take an abundance of brain cells to copy an old post, so while the majority of my brain cells are engaged in mentally singing along to "I'll Fly Away," the remaining few still in service have found an old post for you to enjoy.

This post was written a couple years ago after I had picked Spaz up from his second year at church camp. Tomorrow I will make the same trip, but I hope not to have the same conversation... 

As noted in my last post, Spaz was at church camp this past week. This was his second year.  Due to certain issues Spaz has (including, but not limited to, a tendency to go into meltdown mode), we were a bit hesitant last year to send him.  But Spaz is well-known, well-liked, and well-understood at church, and we had peace knowing that, whatever arose, he'd be loved and taken care of.  And he was.  One counselor stayed up talking with him til 2 am when he couldn't sleep one night, another calmed him out of his sole meltdown, and the camp nurse deftly removed the head of a tick from his upper thigh.  All in all, he had a great time, and his counselors, despite spending 4 days with a bunch of 9-to-11-year-old boys, seemed to have most of their sanity still intact.

It always helps Spaz if things are kept simple.  (Hint to other parents of KWADs: I also make sure HE is the one who actually puts everything in the suitcase, in hopes that it will help him remember what he has & where it is.)  So in preparing for camp, he & I packed "clothing rolls"-- socks, underwear, T-shirt & shorts rolled up and secured with a large file-size rubberband.  (Socks are not normally a staple around our house in the summer, but state law mandates that kids at camps wear socks and close-toed shoes.)  One roll for each day, plus one extra.  A couple 'pajama' rolls, too (which of course, since he is 11, are not actually pajamas, but rather T-shirts and knit shorts that he uses specifically as sleepwear).  He thought this was great.  I figured that, like last year, he'd come back with a couple rolls yet unworn, but it never hurts to be on the safe side.

Post-camp conversation at the ice-cream shop:

Mom (observing Spaz' filthy camp T-shirt, swimsuit, and lack of state-mandated socks):  So, Spaz, how many of the clothes we packed did you actually wear?

Spaz:  Um, what I came in.  Plus this shirt they gave me.  And I wore my swimsuit all the time.

Mom:  Spaz!!!  Didn't you put on clean clothes after showers?

Spaz:  ShowER, you mean.  I just put my swimsuit back on.  It was clean from the pool.

Mom:  You didn't by any chance wear your pajama shirts & shorts to bed?

Spaz:  The first night I did.

Mom (not really wanting to know):  And then...?

Spaz:  I told you, I wore my swimsuit the whole time.

Mom:  Ooo-kay.  And did you, perchance, use your toothbrush?

Spaz:  Yup!  Once.

Alrighty, then.

Though not apparent at camp & the ice-cream store, the smell became quite noticeable upon our arrival home, and he was sent almost immediately to the shower.

At least I don't have a ton of laundry to do.

*Sigh* Memories...

Well, the singing has stopped but the coffee shop is closing, which means it is time for me to go "Fly Away". Here's hoping we'll be hooked up again tomorrow.

I was shoveling mud off the cement curbing at the bottom of my flower garden a couple weeks ago when Fuzz skipped over to see what I was doing. For reasons we have never been able to determine, water and dirt collect in this spot, melding into a lovely soft mud, and it is a never-ending battle to keep it clear. Generally I don't bother to try, but with Cheez' open house looming, I was putting forth extra effort in all aspects of yard and garden, and this stretch of curbing was no exception.

"Shoveling all that mud off, huh?" was Fuzz' astute observation.

"Yup," I replied. "Not that it will make a whole lot of difference. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, and this will be full of mud all over again."

My ten-year-old looked at me, at the shovelfuls of muck, at the muddy curb, then shook her head and made her pronouncement.

"A noble but pointless effort," she sighed, and ambled away.

Gotta love a kid who tells it like it is, and in fine literary style to boot.

Cooperative limericks at the dinner table last night provoked a friendly debate as whether the word "grovel" ought to be pronounced gruv-el, as per the mother's insistence, or grah-vel, as per the eldest daughter's insistence. Debate was settled by the dictionary, which says both are correct. Likewise for the word "hovel".

Hence, contrary to the firmly stated opinion of Daughter Who Just Won Her School's English Award, the word "shovel" does indeed have at least two rhyming counterparts, thus rendering the phrase "There once was a man with a shovel" a perfectly valid opening line after all. Score one for the Mom Who Should Have Been an English Major.

By the time the debate was settled, it was of little value to the limerick in question anyway, as I had already changed my opening line to "There once was a man with an axe." This was a bit risky, as a couple of my children have a propensity toward violent poetry when given opportunity, and such a line gave obvious opportunity. However, the other tools which came to mind were not easy rhymers. "There once was a man with an edger" and "There once was a man with a pitchfork" really were not going to cut it. Besides, each of them had potential for graphically violent follow-up as well. So "axe" it was, and we did manage to get all the way around the table and complete the limerick without undue grossness. (This is even more amazing considering the fact that we just yesterday became embroiled in a heated dispute with the very organization with the power to levy something which begins with T and conveniently rhymes with "axe"... But that's another post.)

Anyway, you'll notice I was sort of stuck on this theme of outdoor tools, and I really couldn't tell you why that is. Men with shovels and axes make for rather lame openers. Generally our limericks start out along more creative lines. To wit: "There once was a windmill that sang..." "A girl who refused to eat salad..." Or --my personal favorite, from Eldest Son With Strangely Wry Sense of Humor-- "There once was a cow with no udder." (I'm not certain we were ever able to finish that last one, either because we couldn't find proper rhyming words or because we were too busy trying to regain our composure.)

But back to the whole pronounciation debate. After discovering the dual pronounciations for "grovel" and "hovel", I couldn't help but look up one last word. Wouldn't you? I mean, who among us wouldn't love to be able to dig every so often with a shah-vel rather than a shuv-el?

No deal. There is only one correct pronounciation for the word "shovel". I know, I am sad about that too.

But at least we all learned something, which only goes to show that every family ought to do build-your-own-limericks at the dinner table. And that every dining room ought to have a dictionary within easy walking distance.

Well, the busy busy month of May is over and so is all the graduation hoopla! Cheez graduated last Thursday, the graduation all-nighter that I helped to coordinate & chaperone was held immediately after, and then many weeks of preparation culminated in our big graduation bash for Cheez and Biz yesterday.

I can almost breathe again-- almost. I have a Kids' Club (Wed nite church) T-shirt project to figure out, exam tutoring at Cheez' school alma mater, and a wedding gift to make or buy this week. Then the wedding to attend this weekend and our Kids' Club trip to the Chicago zoo a week from today, and... and... and that's about it. Then I can really breathe and maybe even blog again.

Except that I was going to start "summer school extra lite" with the kids on the 10th. We'll see whether I actually do. Actually our last couple weeks of school (which we "finished" on the 22nd) were extra extra lite. Sometimes that's just what you have to do when life is busy.

Yesterday I scrambled til 5 pm, partied til 9 pm, hung out til 10, and cleaned up til 1:30. Today I looked at gifts and cards with Cheez until 3 am, slept til 10:30, decompressed over the phone with my mom til just after noon, decompressed with Cheez when she woke up at 1:00, and am still in my pj's at 2! My poor hubz worked just as hard as I did yesterday (although he went to bed several hours before I did) and has been hard at work since long before I was up. I'm a little spoiled, wouldn't you say? There is a truckload of cleanup still to be done, so perhaps I should get started on my day now.

I hope to be back in blogland a little more often now!