I'm Alive.

I'm back, did you miss me?  Nothing has changed, for the worse or the better.  Which is good, I guess.  I'm not sure how many kids lived with us a year ago, but now the number is 4.  One 24 year old who pays rent, one 22 year old who not only doesn't pay rent, work, or help out in any way shape or for.  He also snatches any cash that an unfortunate person might leave laying around the house, which is apparently how he makes his living.  He is going to school, that's a plus.  Liv is still at school, Jack and Grace are still going at it and Jack's hormones are still raging.  We still have the dog and the cat, the fish died and we replaced it with a guinea pig, which is a really gross little thing I have to say.  Like a chubby, tail-less rat.  If you're on the fence, I'd recommend you not get one.

June in Seattle is still gawd-awful.  Schools out on Friday the 22nd and we are heading to Boise and then back down to Utah to visit Gramma and Grampa in Arches for the 4th of July.  Yay!  I can't wait to get out of Mossville USA and smell those Russian Oaks.

I wish I could bring all the kids (jk) but it looks like it might just be Grace and Jack.  Even Jack is iffy - he hates car rides and we hate him on car rides as well.  So yeah.

Christmas in July

I haven't really talked about the weather in an out and out 'talking about the weather' kind of way for a while, so I'm going to talk about the weather in this here, short little post.

Disclaimer:  I am FULLY aware that the rest of the country is experiencing sweltering, unbearable, and evenly deadly heat.  I feel awful for them and hope it passes soon.

I, on the other hand, am experiencing the coldest, grayest summer of my life.  Granted, I lived in Southern California for the first 18 years of said life, and summers there are pretty fabulous as a rule.  But, as long as I've lived in the Pacific Northwest the summers have been pretty good.  Occasional rainy periods but always long bouts of sun with temps exceeding 80 degrees for extended periods of time.  Perfect really.  This summer on the other hand, went AWOL.  I'm freezing most of the time.  I have a space heater aimed at myself every morning and evening.  Yesterday it was 83 degrees, the pool was filled and we spent the whole day on the deck basking in what would be a fluke, cuz we are back to the northwest gloom today.  I awoke to booms of thunder and gray skies.  Ack.  It's killing me.  I have SAD (seasonal affective disorder) so I NEED the summer more than anyone else in the whole entire world.  I wait and wait, I anticipate the sun's glorious rays shooing away the darkness in my head.  Not good.  I can't wait to get out of this God-forsaken place in August and head towards warmth, desert, dryness.   If things don't improve soon around here I'm just going to get the Halloween decorations out and call it a lost cause.  Ho-ho-ho.

I did it! Now what?

So I actually made it through the three days without eating any solid food except a bit of watermelon.  And, I actually had a huge burst of energy yesterday, which I am still feeling this morning.  That might be the fact that I'm drinking strong coffee on a very empty stomach, but whatever.  I had very little hunger, a little weakness here and there, but otherwise it was a piece of cake. 

I didn't clean out my system (if you know what I mean) as I'd hoped but I'm optimistic for today.  Now the problem is I don't know what the heck to do.  Should I eat?  What should I eat?  And, guess what, I don't even want to eat!  I'm going to finish off my Naked Green Machine today before foraying into solid food and then I'm just not sure.  Maybe I have acquired one of those eating disorders like I prayed for when I was a teenager.  Just a month of anorexia, that's all I ask! was my fervent prayer. 

I'm taking Gracie out for a haircut today, gonna clean out the trailer (note to self:  get tabs), and obsess about what my first solid meal in four days might consist of.  Mike is on his way back from Canada, and the sun is actually shining in Seattle...pretty much, hallejulah!

Update!

     It's been a while.  This blog was created to keep in touch with Liv while away at school but it morphed into a way for me to be a little creative in my mostly uncreative life.  It became a little cathartic, and I say "little" because there's really only so much you can say when you know people who know you, are reading.  My husband stumbled upon it one day and was concerned that he came across as a bumbling dork.  For that I am sorry, I just report.

     Liv has been home so much, the 1.5 hour drive isn't enough to keep her away her my awesome mothering, that I haven't needed to keep her updated on our doings.

     Liv ended  up at Western and is in fact finishing up her quarter next week.  She'll be home, back to the basement bedroom for a few months and has procured a position with the "City" as a fire hydrant painter for the summer. 

     Sam moved back home in January, down to the basement as well.  She broke up with that guy, and is a very happy, single, working 23 year-old.  I'm happy to have her back, in every way.

     Other than that, I really don't have much to report.  We are hoping for some positive changes next month, which I am not at liberty to discuss until such changes occur, which they better.  So send positive energy our direction. 

     I anxiously await a weather change, Seattle has been mired in rain and clouds all year.  We finally hit 70 degrees last week.  Seriously, end of May.  My mood is bad, I'm usually feeling a happy bump in my brain by now but this daily darkness is not working for me.  I fantasize about moving to a sunnier clime on a daily basis, but my large brood of children keep me grounded in the realization that being away from any of them for any amount of time would counter the effects of sunshine in my eyes. 

     Camping season will commence this weekend with our annual trip to Leavenworth.  I give that a sincere yahoo!  Finally!!

Not too bad...

Um, Liv, if you're reading this, I have some bad news.  We suffered a slight bit of flooding this weekend due to the aforementioned blog entry entitled "Aloha".  We lost about 1/4 of the carpet in Liv's room, luckily I put in the stick down squares so we were able to just pull up the wet ones and can replace them with new ones.  I did not panic or freak out, you would have been so proud of me.  I was very zen about it, especially after watching the news on Sunday and realizing that we got away with very little damage compared to so many other people.  The rain was freaky though, it never stopped all night, most of the rivers here in the great northwest jumped their banks and lots of people lost everything.  Mike and I were out in the midst of it checking gutters and putting down tarps around the house.  We had to end up stapling a big blue tarp to the south side of the house and sloping it down like a tent to direct the water away from the foundation, so far so good.

We stayed hunkered down for the weekend and watched the rain come down in sheets.  It was cozy.  Grace and I have almost managed to beat Donkey Kong Country Returns but that last boss is a real beezy.  We watched a lot of TV, cleaned house, read, and cooked...my ideal weekend, I never got out of my sweats, I even slept in them.  Ahh.  I even finished wrapping all the presents I have bought so far, that's a big deal as I'm usually up until 3:00 a.m. on Christmas Eve finishing up.  Not this year!

Picking up Liv tomorrow night at 7:00 and then Sam is off to visit Kourtnie and Trevor in El Paso on Wednesday morning, she'll be gone for a week and is sooo excited, it's Trevor's 2nd birthday already.  Crazy.

Aloha!

This blog has become some sort of depressing weather report lately.  Saying that I will go on to mention that we are battening down the hatches for some record breaking rain heading our way, one of our famous Pineapple Expresses.  Sounds so tropical and it is, kind of, it's a stream of rain and warm air caught in a system trough coming from Hawaii and heading towards us, we could get a couple inches of rain.  So Mike is at Home Depot getting some gutter extensions to lead the water away from the house, he added and adjusted tarps to our leaky roof areas and cleaned out the leaf-filled gutters.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we are prepared enough and won't have to deal with anymore water issues here at the homestead.  Liv is arriving on Tuesday evening, hopefully not to another "weather event".

One more week until Christmas Winter Break,  I'm almost done shopping now, awaiting a couple more packages by FedEx.  I will have to brave the elements and my mental state to do some actual shopping to finish up.  I've assigned Mike some tasks, like picking up gifts for his littlest nephews and taking care of Brynn's gifts.  We decided not to buy gifts for each other this year but that always bites me in the butt, so I have been grilling the kids about whether or not Mike is getting me a gift, just in case.  So far they say they "don't know anything" but they are terrible liars and I'm concerned. 

We watched "Eat, Pray, Love" last night, so good and such beautiful scenery.  It was between that and Twilight Eclipse, I figured I'd give Mike and break and chose the chick flick over the tween drama, that poor man.  Anyway, I'm going to grab my couch blanket, a cup of mocha, and watch Eclipse while the Pineapple Express has it's way with us.

Bah Humbug AGAIN

As if my life isn't filled with enough anxiety and depression, cuz that's pretty much my constant state of being from mid October through April, with little sprinkles here and there the rest of the year, my effing roof is leaking again!!!  Flat roof over the bedroom, which we FIXED already, starting leaking again during another torrential Seattle rainstorm last night.  Luckily my hero, Drew, showed up at exactly the right moment, forget that he actually showed up for leftover chili, and saved my ass.  This is a new leak, where the flat roof and the slanted roof meet.  Drew climbed up in the downpour, in the pure darkness, and threw a tarp over the leaky part and stopped the stream of water landing in the center of my bed, on my newish Pottery Barn comforter non-the-less.  It seemed to work, although in order to stop the leak I had to remove the tarp from the other flat roof, over the kitchen, which started leaking on Thanksgiving day.  It's a small leak so I found an old ski jacket one of the kids left in the storage room and crammed it around the stove vent, the source of the leak in the kitchen, and so far so good.  I come from pioneer stock.  In case you are wondering, Mike is out of town, another one of those "Mike coincidences" that pop up so frequently.

Crazy weather has been predicted for the northwest this year and we have not been disappointed.  This morning it rained harder than I have ever seen it rain at my house.  Thunder and lightning, it was like nighttime at 8:00 this morning when I took Jack to school.  I actually like dramatic weather so I'm pretend complaining about that, except when the dramatic weather falls on my super adorable comforter.

Like I've inferred above, my anxiety is over the top right now, I'm trying to finish up my Christmas shopping on a shoestring budget, I'm almost done but my seasonal affective disorder is not allowing me even go near a crowd of any sort.  Luckily our closest shopping center is an outdoor mall, which helps as I'm not forced to get too close to other humans.  Blech.  I've even managed to avoid the Center's annual Holiday Party, which features a chocolate fountain, my worst nightmare.  Seriously, so gross.

I tried to cheer myself up the other night by watching a late movie (anxious sleeplessness), FYI...don't watch "The Lovely Bones" when you are depressed.  Derr.

Brrrr!

It's a winter wonderland in Seattle.  Snow has been falling all day and its butt-cold.  Presently 27 degrees here at our house.  I'm not a fan of the cold and this house doesn't do real cold well.  I'm pretty sure it's not at all insulated, from what we saw when we did our kitchen remodel a couple years ago, which was just a wall you could peek through behind the old drywall.  We have radiant heat as well, which is a lovely heat when its 45 degrees out but a weak, weenie, pathetic heat when it's 25.  I've been a terror about making sure we are hermetically sealed, every exterior door has a towel jammed in the thresh hold, curtains are all closed as soon as the sun isn't shining into the window.  We are burning logs, using space heaters, and bundling up under blankets on the couch. 

The great news is that I'm picking Liv up at the airport tomorrow for Thanksgiving break and she was just talking about how much she missed the seasons...ta da, have some winter.  It's not supposed to get much warmer than the mid twenties tomorrow with "bitter wind chills" so all of this will be one giant sheet of that famous Seattle ice.  Viva La Nina!   I'm not sure how I'll actually get to the airport, but I'm gonna do my best cuz I can't wait to see my girl.  Her room turned out so cute and cozy. 

Thanksgiving is at our house again this year and I still haven't got my turkey, I've been busy!  Mom and Steve are coming over and I can't wait to have all my kids together for dinner again.  I also can't wait for a heaping helping of my amazingly delicious stuffing, if I don't say so myself.